We believe every content creation organization (CG-VFX) using Flow Production Tracking software in some way faces challenges when transferring data between its offices or with its outsourced vendors and clients. To address these challenges, we designed and developed a UDP-based high-speed application in sync with Flow Production Tracking. FastX is highly reliable for all types of data movements—transfers of scans, work files, final output, multisite/remote renders, CG Files, vendor output, files to DI, disaster safe backup, and final output to clients. Most of the transfers mentioned resemble work related to the CG-VFX industry. But FastX was actually designed to address many industries that deal with high-volume data transfers in daily operations.

In this session, we will show the new media and entertainment Autodesk Platform Services-oriented software and give an introduction to how the APIs work. The Autodesk Platform Services Flow Graph Engine API is already in beta, with the Media and Entertainment Data Model coming soon to support the Flow Asset Management tools. This class will focus on those features that will also be included in the digital content creation (DCC) tools, but from an API perspective to show how customers can automate and access the data and functionality in an automated way.

The complexities of managing a production can be a challenge to any production team, particularly when dealing with substantial amounts of data across various tools. Centralizing data tracking plays an essential part in optimizing the production process—a necessary strategy in any dynamic, client-centered industry where production teams need to be agile and capable of making swift adjustments to schedules and priorities. In this introductory session, we'll look at how to use Autodesk Flow Production Tracking software's cloud-based data management capabilities, demonstrated in the context of a simple games workflow. We'll explore the interface, explain the structure of data within Flow Production Tracking, and demonstrate how to use pages to track data and provide insights that decision makers can use to inform the success of their productions.

This session will share details of a project called the VRED Session Management Service (VRED SMS). A prototype built by solutions engineers working together from Autodesk and Amazon Web Services (AWS), VRED SMS demonstrates how VRED 3D visualization software from Autodesk can be deployed and scaled on AWS in an on-demand way. VRED SMS allows applications that can interface a REST API to request a VRED collaboration session. Automated workflows execute to prepare the requisite instances and VRED configuration for a requested VRED scene file. This solution comprises a variety of AWS services, including but not limited to EC2 Image Builder, AWS Step Functions, AWS Systems Manager, AWS Secrets Manager, AWS Lambda, Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon API Gateway. It is also deployed using AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK). To automate the configuration of Autodesk's VRED software, this solution uses its Python and web APIs. The programmatic and workflow-driven nature of the solution makes it relatively simple to customize.

In this session, you'll see how you can maximize innovative VRED, Alias, and Shotgun workflows and tools for your industrial design processes and workflows. Realize the power of the connected solution and see how the software can help you streamline workflows and improve efficiencies. Understand how you can take best practices from automotive design and apply them to the industrial design process.

Creating movies involves a lot of work, including delivering productions with increasingly impressive special effects and realistic computer-generated scenes, all while meeting tight deadlines and compressed budgets. Collaboration and efficiency are essential as complexity increases. This talk will use real-life examples from the film and games industry to show how open technologies can help clients improving collaboration and efficiency while providing strategic benefits for enterprises to contributing to these open technologies.

The schedule is never done. Plans change and schedules needs to adapt. Project scope, deadlines, and resource availability are all constraints that impact a schedule. These constraints often change throughout a project's lifecycle, and production teams need to be capable of making swift adjustments to keep their projects moving forward. On large-scale productions with thousands of tasks, making these changes can be a massive undertaking. Generative Scheduling is a tool that facilitates large-scale schedule iteration, pulling production schedules from Autodesk Flow Production Tracking. In this session, we'll look at how to use Generative Scheduling, use constraints to iterate on and optimize a schedule, create hypothetical scheduling scenarios, and use resource shaping to refine schedules. Simplify your production scheduling workflow by enabling production teams to quickly iterate and plan against ever-changing project requirements with this easy-to-use tool.

Production in the cloud continues to be a growing trend in the media and entertainment industry. Accelerated by the pandemic and ever-growing demand for content, the need for cloud-connected workflows to deliver more, faster has never been greater. As a result, studios are seeking modern solutions to improve pipeline scalability, collaboration, and data management. In this panel, representatives from Autodesk Media and Entertainment product, strategy, and sales, will join our customers to discuss how studios are investing in existing desktop and cloud products to help them achieve desired outcomes today, and how the media and entertainment industry cloud-based software Autodesk Flow will add new value to our customers' digital transformation journey by connecting workflows, data, and teams across the entire production lifecycle—from initial concept to final delivery.

If you're spending hours bringing your CAD data into VRED software, always applying the same materials, computing light maps, and making it over and over again through the product design cycle, this class is for you. Come and discover how an automated workflow—using VRED and orchestrated by ShotGrid—can save you enormous amounts of time converting, preparing, and updating Alias data (or any other CAD data), and turning it automatically into a ready-to-use aggregated visualization data set, freeing up time for 3D artists to focus on high-value tasks.

The digital creation process has made physical models rare. Today, iterative work around form finding, feature line definition, or design definition convergence has to happen digitally on 2D screens. Imagine if you could connect virtual reality (VR) full-scale visualization in VRED software with 3D modeling workflows in Alias software through custom tools that allow designers to sketch tape lines in VR, giving instant feedback to the 3D modeler in Alias—and use ShotGrid software to capture the sketched tape lines to feed downstream digital-modeling activities. Discover how Autodesk Consulting can help you improve collaborative workflows in your studio, going beyond out-of-the-box product capabilities.

In this presentation, we will explore the integration capabilities of the Autodesk Flow Production Tracking platform, focusing on how they connect with various tools to enhance productivity and streamline workflows. We’ll start by discussing the ready-to-use integrations available for Flow Production Tracking, including popular tools from Autodesk and third parties. These integrations facilitate smooth data exchange and operational efficiency. Next, we will cover customizing these tools, including an overview of the hook approach, followed by the development of a new app. We’ll then discuss creating Automation, Integration, & Customizations in Flow Production Tracking to trigger processes based on events. We’ll analyze the tools and frameworks available, examining event logging, the event daemon framework, webhooks, and action menu items. Thanks to the Flow Production Tracking API and Automation, Integration, & Customization features, we can demonstrate cloud functionality in Autodesk Platform Services, integrating 3D visualization, geometry optimization, mesh checking, or simulation.

Arcadis is a global architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) and infrastructure player with engineering teams working closely with visualization teams in Australia, Manila, Canada, and Romania. Since early 2019, Arcadis has provided traditional client-requested visualizations. As a leading AEC company and Autodesk Partner, Arcadis wanted to enhance its visualization capabilities through a new digital workflow integrating immersive worlds and mixed reality in its mobility business. The convergence of media and entertainment with the AEC industry through technology marks a transformative shift in both sectors. Traditionally distinct, these industries are increasingly finding common ground as they harness the power of advanced technologies to collaborate and innovate, and Autodesk is at the forefront of merging this technology to continue to deliver innovation to customers. This convergence continues to evolve and promise to redefine traditional boundaries and pave the way for innovation between these two industries.

This case study will showcase a new and innovative tool that Arcadis and Autodesk Consulting have developed. The tool is a significant enhancement in the interoperability between 3ds Max and Civil 3D software, with new features that will substantially shift the gamification efficiency in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) and infrastructure sectors. The interoperability features boost faster integration, reduce manual tasks, and decrease task time by more than 50%, leading to more-streamlined communications, more-efficient processes, and an increase in productivity and delivery. The transformation includes the creation of a new AutoCAD command, the development of a new add-in utility for AutoCAD and 3ds Max 2024 software, and an advanced approach to transforming CAD 2D infrastructure and AEC designs into 3D animated scenes. This advanced and innovative approach will pique your interest and open new possibilities for your visualization work.

LAIKA is a stop-motion feature animation studio in Portland, Oregon. Autodesk’s Shotgun project management software has been used to organize and automate aspects of the production of all its feature films over the past 10 years, from Coraline to the forthcoming Missing Link. In this talk, we will present how LAIKA tackles the design and manufacturing of the assets that show up on the big screen, how we use Shotgun software to track our production data (from scheduling to final delivery and beyond), and how we have built an efficient production pipeline using Shotgun as a platform. LAIKA exists at an interesting junction between visual effects and manufacturing, producing physical assets for a digital final product. As we go through our workflows, we will also reflect on the commonalities we have seen in how to create both physical and digital assets efficiently.

Let’s take a journey through the growing digital space and the merging of the many industries we once thought were islands all to themselves, looking at manufacturing, product design, e-commerce, construction, TV, film, XR, and the many pieces in between. In order to stay competitive, many of today’s largest organizations are blurring the lines between departments and speeding up the velocity behind the teams that take concept to reality. This class will look at the realities behind today’s market and focus on the groundwork that needs to be laid when scaling a business that leans on a 2D/3D digital environment. Whether you’re working with 3D models in a film, 3D mockups in a manufacturing workflow, 2D concept art in an architectural pipeline, or the product imagery at a furniture house, process and organization can be the key to success. We will dive into a few of the software setups alongside Autodesk’s Shotgun that can help companies succeed.

Learn how shotgun is a social design tool for the studio. How do we design for the future with tools of the future?

Join us to get a glimpse of our latest technical preview and learn about how Autodesk envisions Shotgun in the Design Studio.

Learn about all the possibilities that Shotgun software can unlock within the design studio workflow. In this session, we will dive into deeper technical applications of Shotgun, and how to configure Shotgun Toolkit to automate routine tasks and customize data hand-offs.

To manage the ever-increasing complexity and collaboration in the creation of physical assets for LAIKA's hybrid stop-motion/CG features, a Shotgun-based integrated browser workflow was developed that enables automated resource leveling and scheduling in a centralized system accessible to the entire studio. Highlights include a new custom charting application that integrates with the existing Shotgun infrastructure, as well as the use of Consilium Technology (recently acquired by Autodesk), a new, machine-learning-based, automated resource-leveling system that effectively balances and assigns resources. Together, they turn a time-consuming and error-prone manual leveling process into a fast and automated procedure that generates an accurate, adjustable, easy-to-communicate schedule.

See how Shotgun is providing a visual project management solution to the automotive design studios, allowing our customers to manage their everyday design data, foster open communication with their teams, and leverage workflow efficiencies and automation to improve the overall design process.

Pipelines lie at the heart of all studio workflows, connecting the many moving pieces in a visual effects/animation project. New features in Unreal Engine enable deeper and richer pipeline development capabilities, making it easier than ever to integrate with other production tools like Maya software and Shotgun to provide a seamless artist workflow. Connecting Maya software’s powerful 3D asset-creation capabilities with Unreal Engine’s advanced real-time rendering enables artists to get instant feedback, leading to faster work and better results, all tracked in Shotgun. This session will dive into Unreal Engine’s Python API (application programming interface) and show how to streamline artists' day-to-day work through automation and pipeline intelligence, capitalizing on key technologies like Filmbox and Universal Screen Description for interoperability.