When Fox Nation’s Revolutionary War docuseries called for A-list performances in historic American locations, GO delivered the future. Instead of flying talent across the country, GO recreated the Boston Tea Party and Mount Vernon as immersive SCAPEs using LiDAR, NeRF, and photogrammetry. In this panel, we’ll break down how GO brought Rob Lowe to a virtual Boston Harbor and Kelsey Grammer to a digital Mount Vernon—without ever leaving LA. From sustainability and cost-savings to creative flexibility, this is a case study in digital twin production, Autodesk integration, and the new blueprint for high-end, low-impact filmmaking.

Dr. Tonya Custis, senior director of artificial intelligence (AI) at Autodesk, draws on 20 years of experience in AI research to explore both the limitations and the transformative potential of AI in design workflows. While powerful, AI is often misunderstood—it’s frequently perceived as a catch-all magical solution rather than a tool with specific strengths and weaknesses. As AI becomes more commonly used in daily life, expectations rise for its role in professional tools. The best way to move beyond the hype, fear, and uncertainty surrounding AI is to develop an understanding of its history, limitations, and the types of tasks it’s best suited to help with. In this session, Dr. Custis will demystify how AI actually works, examine current trends, and outline the unique challenges of applying AI to design workflows—particularly those involving complex 3D design data. She’ll also share some recent work from the Autodesk AI Lab, offering a glimpse into the current state of AI in design and what the future may hold.

Join us for an epic digital panel dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusion in the gaming industry. This event unites game developers, designers, storytellers, and enthusiasts to tackle the challenges and unlock the opportunities to create a more inclusive gaming landscape. Power up your network by connecting with industry leaders, dive into an insightful panel discussion, and level up your strategies for breaking down barriers and championing representation in games. Whether you're a veteran player or a newbie to the field, this digital panel is your ultimate chance to connect, learn, and contribute to a more inclusive future in gaming.

Delve into initiatives aimed at attracting under-represented talent, normalizing mental health support, and leveraging technology to create a smarter, more robust workforce, in collaboration with industry leaders like Women in Animation.

SYNK is an innovative real-time production toolkit that enables content creators to produce linear and virtual content using the same tools and processes used by big studios with decades of experience in animation. SYNK allows assets from traditional digital content creation software and outputs from game engines to be managed in a single accessible environment through an integrated real-time workflow. SYNK manages the data from the early concept phase all the way to final delivery, enabling output to virtual reality (VR) and extended reality (XR), cinema, animation, video games, and virtual productions.

Hear from a panel of technical visionaries as they explore the role of Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD) in fostering open data exchange—not just in media and entertainment, but across industries. From traditional filmmaking to virtual production, architecture, engineering, construction, automotive, and manufacturing, our team of experts will explore how USD opens the door for seamless connectivity and collaboration across large-scale 3D projects of all kinds. 

Intangible heritage, globally, is under threat from aggressive urbanization and globalization, particularly in developing nations like Vietnam. To safeguard Vietnamese oral traditions, social practices, festive events, and childhood play, the project Play to Preserve the Past uses augmented reality (AR) to undertake a nuanced exploration of creative practice methodologies and considerations for creating immersive AR experiences. Central to this pursuit, the research endeavors to explore the question: How can creative practitioners harness the potentials of AR for seamless transmission of intangible cultural heritage?

About USD$2 trillion—that's the amount of money the architecture, engineering, and construction industry has lost due to bad data. Bad data is data that's inaccurate, inaccessible, and incomplete. In the industries Autodesk serves, data is a critical lifeline for project decisions and automations. But all too frequently, that data is not easily accessible, or, even worse, the available data is simply bad. Across the globe, the ability to use data in an insightful manner is no longer a "nice to have"—it has become a primary source of competitive advantage. Furthermore, with the acceleration of AI, the need for data is increasing exponentially. Those who use their data to make informed decisions and gain performance insights will ultimately emerge as leaders in their industries. Meet the leaders behind the industry data models to learn more about how Autodesk will help solve top customer problems.

As technology continues to evolve, the intersection of 3D design and artificial intelligence (AI) presents exciting opportunities for innovation in content creation. In this session, we'll showcase experimentation with innovative techniques—namely, ComfyUI, ControlNet, and Stable Diffusion—to forge a future pipeline that seamlessly integrates 3D rendering with AI-driven processes. We'll outline a visionary approach toward empowering artists and streamlining the content creation process. By using advanced AI algorithms and data-driven insights, we aspire to give artists greater control over their creations as they enhance their efficiency and creativity while using Autodesk tools, specifically Maya and Arnold software. Our vision for the future pipeline revolves around achieving a seamless transition from 3D design to AI render, while empowering artists with unprecedented control over their creations.

This course aims to educate participants on the innovative integration of machine learning (ML) techniques for deformation approximation within Maya software. Using approximations for (part of) a deformation stack can highly improve interactivity when using complex rigs, and can significantly improve the portability between different applications. It is designed for animators, game developers, VFX artists, and any professional interested in exploring the intersection of ML and 3D animation. This course will explore a demo of a rig with computationally expensive muscle deformations that is reduced to a simple, general, black-box neural network that only requires inputs from the motion system. We'll show the entire setup process in detail. In addition, we'll go over best practices, tips, and limitations to help users get the most out of this tool for their production needs.

Booleans are a foundational part of content creation, yet it was frowned upon to use traditional polygon booleans in media and entertainment projects. To solve this problem, Autodesk rebuilt their booleans from the ground up within 3ds Max software, creating a new, powerful, and trusted solution in the Boolean Modifier that unlocks exciting new workflows and capabilities. In this session, you'll learn about how and why this new system was created for 3ds Max, which benefits it provides, and how you can use it to its maximum potential in your own work to create amazing content for film and TV, games, XR, or 3D printing projects.

In the fast-paced world of product design, there's a universal challenge to stay ahead of trends while efficiently bringing products to market. X-Rite has addressed this with innovative solutions benefiting automotive brands and industrial designers alike. The PANTORA application simplifies digital material creation, offering a standardized platform for storing and sharing complex material data to streamline design workflows. The AxF format ensures compatibility and collaboration across platforms. Join us to explore how PANTORA and AxF can transform your approach to material design and 3D visualization.

AI tech may get all the attention, but there isn't an AI solution for the critical workflows that architects need to tell the stories of their projects. Designers want visualizations that simultaneously capture a building's aesthetic complexity and the hard data points of energy efficiency, occupant movement, and traffic flow. AI isn't delivering, and Chaos is stepping up. Come see the latest tools for Revit users to conduct energy analysis, with results that can be generated and understood by everyone contributing to your Revit project. Then see how to easily assemble visualizations from across teams and creation tools into real-time explorations, with animations features that go far beyond what design tools are made to support. Learn how quickly you can bring design options to life with stunning ray-traced rendering, dynamic crowds of digital humans, and realistic vehicles traffic. Chaos will show how all of this is possible today for the casual users while meeting the demands of specialists.

The kids are all grown up! The gamer generation has entered the workforce and they are not afraid to push technology to the limits for fast, high-quality results. In this class, you will see how the Autodesk Media and Entertainment collection can take AEC storytelling, visualization and simulation to the next level. Additionally, we will explore game engine workflows to create immersive experiences that help projects get to a finished state faster. Join us!

With the compound collection "Procedural Polygon Generator 2.0" for Bifrost, users can autogenerate buildings and all kinds of architectural detail. The goal is to build a construction history that works on various polygon inputs, and creates complex buildings without any further user input. This solution is used in the video-game industry and the film/TV industry for automated generation of environments, as well as for concept design and visualization in architecture.

The Autodesk 2024 Design and Make report showcases that 77% of companies report that upskilling employees is important. They also report they lack resources needed to design training programs. The Design and Make report also reflects that between 2021 and 2023 there's been a 143% increase in Autodesk's Media and Entertainment certification adoption, a 71% increase in AECO certification adoption, and a 100% increase in Autodesk's Design and Make certification adoption. Professionals and educators will learn about Autodesk's recognized certification and how earning certification helps validate your skills to employers and gives you the ability to differentiate yourself in this competitive labor force. Attendees will learn about available learning and training to upskill in Autodesk products. Additionally, they'll learn about our global distribution channels and reduced-price bulk vouchers for teams or students. Lastly, we'll discuss available state government funding for students. Twenty-five random attendees will receive a free voucher to take a professional Autodesk Certification exam.

The Autodesk Research Residency Program is open to external groups in academia, the startup ecosystem, and industries focused on novel project work. The program provides Autodesk with industry insights and offers resident teams access to a global network of innovators, events, and the Autodesk Technology Centers. Resident teams often work alongside Autodesk researchers and peers, fostering a conducive environment for problem-solving, ideation, and development with rapidly advancing technology like artificial intelligence (AI). As leaders in AI research and a trusted partner to industry, Autodesk Research and the Autodesk Residency Program are natural fits for Design and Make teams developing high-impact industry solutions with AI. This session will provide multiple case studies of the AI work taking place within the Autodesk Research Residency Program. We will feature specific teams using AI, and highlight how their participation in the Residency Program is accelerating their work and use of AI.

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.

Join Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) to discover its journey of adopting and deploying OpenUSD to build an interoperable Spatial Technology Stack (STS) with tools that include Maya software, 3ds Max software, Epic Unreal, and McNeel Rhino. The STS lets ZHA build immersive digital twins that enable deeper integrations between design and construction, enhance spatial experiences, and increase efficiencies in design and review cycles. In the session, we'll cover how no-code or low-code platforms and APIs, such as NVIDIA Omniverse, are enabling ZHA to build proprietary tools. These tools allow the firm to interact with and manipulate its data sets in processes such as robotics and digital fabrication. This approach reduces material waste while increasing sustainability and innovation. Join us to explore how this innovative approach revolutionizes architectural design, making it more engaging, responsible, and accessible to the architecture, engineering, and construction industry.

In this session, we'll introduce GraphQL and explore how it is being used to deliver the promise of "granular" data. As you have heard before, Autodesk is investing heavily in cloud data with Autodesk Fusion (manufacturing), Autodesk Forma [architecture, engineering, and construction; building information modeling (BIM)], and Autodesk Flow (media and entertainment) industry groups. At the center is also the Data Exchange API that allows data to be shared in a specific and durable way. From authoring to access, this class will explain the details about each software system, and how to use the GraphQL API to access the data. We'll also cover the fact that data can easily be accessed across each of the information models, and via Data Exchange.