Stephen Silver was hired by Warner Brothers Television Animation as a character designer and has been working in the animation industry for the past 15 years. He designed hit shows such as Disney's Kim Possible, Nickelodeon's Danny Phantom, and many more. In this class, he will talk about how he launched his career in character designs for animated TV series and share his experiences and view of the industry. Stephen will also discuss the importance of practice, persistence, patience, passion, and concentration. After this class, you will be able to understand how drawing communicates, what steps you should take in order to succeed in the work you do, identify industry standards for artists in the entertainment industry, and discover how to find your true passion.

The Character Animation Tool (CAT), built into 3ds Max software, is a versatile system for creating dynamic character animation loops designed for export into game engines like Unreal and Unity. You can use CAT to build custom rigs—including characters with multiple or nonstandard limbs—without the hassle of manually placing footsteps. Using the intuitive CATMotion editor, you’ll learn how to quickly develop and tweak essential game animations such as idle, walk, run, jump, and die. CAT also supports integration with custom motion data, making it ideal for both original content creation and iteration. Whether you're a game developer or an educator working with students, CAT empowers even beginners to produce polished, expressive animations full of personality and emotion. In this session, we’ll walk through the fundamentals—from rigging a mesh to exporting animation-ready FBX files—so you can confidently add CAT to your game asset pipeline.

This class covers the basics of the SketchBook Pro desktop application. You will learn how to create painterly effects that mimic real mediums and textures. We teach these techniques through the lens of character creation and creature design.

This class covers the basics of the SketchBook Pro painting and drawing software for desktop computers. You will learn how to create painterly effects that mimic real mediums and textures, and we will teach these techniques through the lens of character creation and creature design.

Although the character-animation process has been largely digitized, the fundamental approach has remained relatively unchanged for more than a century. Animators create performances by creating key poses, which they then string together in a sequence to create motion. They continue to add and finesse these keyframes until they get a believable performance. In this presentation, we will demonstrate a new approach to character animation that uses AI to transform the way animators work. With neural motion controllers, we use machine learning to model how characters move and behave. An animator then only needs to specify high-level intent, like when and where they want the character to move, and the neural motion controller does the tedious work of producing natural, believable motion. We will also demonstrate that by connecting this new technique with core Autodesk capabilities, we can create a production-ready workflow where animators retain full artistic control over the final animation.

Maya software has recently added some significant new tools for character rigging and animation. These include Offset Parent Matrix, which creates an entirely new way to think about rigging characters. Understand how this feature works and how it can simplify rigs to make them both faster and easier to understand. In addition, new utility nodes such as UV Pin, Proximity Pin, and Rivet can help accelerate facial animation and other skinning tasks. Learn how to use these tools to create better rigs for your characters. Animation features include a brief tour of the new Maya Motion Library, along with a number of animation productivity enhancements, which can speed the animation process.

We will fill this class with the tips and tricks you'll need to create many different types of macros in AutoCAD software. Macros are small groups of commands and routines that can be any length and don't require any special characters at the end of the line. In this sequel to the popular 2013 class you will gain knowledge about creating custom macros that apply to your business needs and enhance your productivity on designs. You will develop a custom tool palette on which you will place your new macros for quick access. Most importantly, you'll be able to bring value back to your employer and gain the knowledge to help you excel within your field.

Join us for an insightful session on how Ayelet Studio, with just three artists and an 18-member team, created the narrative-driven game Unsung Empires: The Cholas using Maya software as a pivotal tool. Discover how we harnessed Maya software's powerful features for prototyping, modeling, and animation to streamline workflows and bring the game to life. Learn how the immersive experience—enriched by captivating storytelling, unique artistic styles, memorable characters, engaging dialogues, and evocative music—resonated deeply within the gaming community, fostering a sense of pride among players. Explore the secrets behind the success of Unsung Empires: The Cholas and gain valuable insights into using Maya for game development.

This class is filled with all the tips and tricks you'll need to create many different types of macros in AutoCAD design and documentation software. Macros are small groups of commands and routines that can be any length, without requiring any special characters at the end of the line. In this sequel to the popular 2013 class, you will gain knowledge to create custom macros that apply to your business needs and enhance your productivity on designs. You will develop a custom tool palette where you can place all of your new macros for quick access. Most importantly, you’ll be able to bring value back to your employer and you’ll gain the knowledge to help you excel within your field. This session features AutoCAD and AutoCAD Civil 3D.

In this session, we’ll explore the fundamentals of creating expressive facial animation in Maya software, with a strong focus on design and appeal. From understanding key facial shapes to enhancing emotions with nuanced details, we’ll break down essential techniques that bring characters to life. We’ll also discuss how strong posing, clear silhouettes, and exaggeration contribute to readability and charm, ensuring that every expression feels intentional and engaging. This lecture will provide insights to elevate your facial animation with both technical precision and artistic appeal.

All tech managers, CAD or BIM or IT, need to have a baseline of character and skills that drive their progress forward. We will discuss 19 key character traits that a manager needs and 7 crucial skills that with propel you to success. Learn about how your approach and demeanor can energize others. Find practical skills that you need to hone so that your team is working at peak speed. Identify and build on your strengths.

This class will cover the basics of the SketchBook Pro painting and drawing software for desktop computers. Learn how to create painterly effects that mimic real mediums and textures. Learn about the new brushes in SketchBook Pro software and how to customize them to create your own. Techniques are taught through the lens of character creation and creature design.

This is an intensive class about animating a human face. You learn how to see a face: its form and structure and its features when a person talks, feels, and expresses. We cover anatomy and muscle behavior, and we explore what's really going on underneath a face when that face is showing emotion. We show examples of great facial acting and the psychology behind this acting in making human characters come alive. Although this is a class that specializes in faces, the subject matter is a very large part of how a CG artist can become a master animator and actor. This class is also software agnostic. Although we demonstrate with Maya® software, we are focusing on the art and techniques of character facial animation that work whether your platform is Maya, 3ds Max®, or Autodesk® Softimage® software.

In this class, we will cover using Autodesk SketchBook Designer to create a product design. We will discuss the research phase of design and design ideation. Then we will talk about using SketchBook Designer to refine the concept design. Finally, we will examine design rendering. The class will focus on styling and creative conceptual designs, especially early design phases. We will bring a design into final rendering.

The traditional approach to vehicle design in industry departs from a defined technical package and research about vehicle users, brand character, and aesthetics. This process has responded to stable vehicle configurations for decades, enabling creative design to focus significantly on visual and tactile aesthetics. But future megatrends are disrupting this outlook. This new state of the art widens the influence of design, requires new types of creatives, and demands new, more effective creative design workflows. The Transportation Design program at the University of Cincinnati has tackled these challenges by creating the Future Mobility Center, a vision of future-vehicle creative design spaces, with virtual reality applications from early creative development to final design validation, in tandem with rapid physical validation. This Autodesk University class will describe how the space was developed, and will provide examples of projects that have come out of it.

This class is about understanding human and animal anatomy and how that internal structure relates to external movement. Increasing demands for realism place a greater emphasis on accurately recreating the subtle details of motion and skin deformation. To recreate anything accurately, we first need to understand it. In this class, we explore foundation concepts of movement from an anatomical perspective. What are the different tissue types that are involved in movement and what are their properties? What forces are involved in moving and how do anatomical structures relate to these forces? What are the limitations of different parts of the body and how does all of this relate to what the viewer accepts as feeling real? Though mainly conceptual, this class also goes into specifics about creature design, topology layout, joint placement, and more. This class is not specific to any software package but is designed to be directly relevant to those who have an interest in animation, modeling, and rigging.

Good old-fashioned paper drawings have a wealth of information that can complement the lifecycle of a design, and when they are scanned into a digital format, they offer potentially more than any modern data capture method. Image data is pervasive and is more often than not a prerequisite for a project, but how can you make sense of a dirty, warped scanned document? Is it the correct location, and does it have the correct geography? How can you extract intelligence from the image, thus extending the value of this existing information? AutoCAD® Raster Design software helps you to easily clean, edit, enhance, and maintain scanned drawings and plans in a familiar AutoCAD® environment. This class explores the tools that are available with AutoCAD Raster Design and how to get the most from your imagery using powerful raster editing and raster-to-vector conversion tools.

3ds Max Design software is a great tool for generating high quality visuals, but today's audience expects more. This class introduces the art of storytelling as a means to create compelling experiences that communicate (and sell) design intent and meaning. In our increasingly competitive and visually-oriented society, sophisticated presentations are more important than ever before. Learn how to reconcile the persuasive goals of a presentation with the indulgent demands of the modern audience. Starting with an understanding of the language and repertoire of storytelling techniques, this class guides you through a basic knowledge of rendering and animation features to more complex workflows with characters and real-time ready assets within a narrative framework. Discover the storytelling secrets of Hollywood and Madison Avenue to sell your designs using 3ds Max Design.

This class is filled with all the tips and tricks you'll need to create macros in AutoCAD® software. Macros are small groups of commands and routines that can be any length, without requiring any special characters at the end of the line. In this class, you learn to create custom macros that apply to your business needs and enhance your productivity on designs. You develop a custom tool palette placing over 50 of your new macros on the palette for quick access during project design. Most importantly, what you learn will bring value to your employer and give you knowledge that can help you excel within your field.

Learn techniques for rigging mechanical objects, vehicles, machines, and other inanimate objects in 3ds Max software. Many people normally use 3ds Max software's rigging tools for characters, but you can also use them to rig things such as vehicles, motors, pistons, assemblies, conveyor belts, and more. This course will demonstrate practical applications of 3ds Max software's extensive rigging tools to automate the animation of a variety of mechanical objects and systems.