News: Autodesk at the 2008 Game Developers Conference

(San Rafael, California--February 20, 2008) From Feb.18 to 22 Autodesk, Inc. will participate in the 2008 Game Developers Conference and Exposition (GDC) in San Francisco. GDC is the world's largest professionals-only game industry event.

At its booth (#5939 in the North Hall) Autodesk will showcase the latest releases of its games solutions. The company will also offer six different training sessions throughout the week. Winners of the Autodesk Mudbox contest will be announced in conjunction with the show on Autodesk's 3D Community Portal AREA (http://www.the-area.com). All entries are posted on AREA for viewing.

Product Showcase
Autodesk offers a broad set of solutions, development resources and streamlined workflows for game developers. Visitors to the Autodesk booth can view the company's latest offerings for game developers, including Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya animation modeling and rendering software, Autodesk MotionBuilder character animation software and Autodesk Mudbox brush-based modeling software.

Also at the booth, some of the industry's top artists will present work they have completed with Autodesk games solutions. These presentations will include:

• Phil Shenk, art director and co-founder of Flagship Studios, showing how 3ds Max was used in the creation of Hellgate: London
  
  
• Ryan Lesser, art director at Harmonix Systems Music demonstrating how 3ds Max was used in the development of Rock Band
  
  
• Andrey Grigoyev, technical lead artist at Saber Interactive, showcasing the use of Maya for TimeShift
  
  
• Francois Levesque, character technical director at Ubisoft highlighting how 3ds Max was used on Assassin's Creed
  
  
• Joel Emslie, lead character artist at Infinity Ward, discussing the use of Maya on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Autodesk Events and Sponsorships
Autodesk's six training sessions at GDC will provide attendees with tips and tricks for 3ds Max, Maya, MotionBuilder, and Mudbox. The company will also offer a session on Autodesk HumanIK middleware.

• Session: Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya: Integrating High-Level Shading Effects
  
  Date: Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008 2:30p.m. ­ 3:30 p.m. PST
  
  Description: Autodesk's Neil Hazzard, software engineer, and Bernard Kwok, senior software developer, will offer this technical talk for shader writers. Hazzard and Kwok will describe the range of high-level shading effects that can be integrated into the latest versions of Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya applications.
  
  
• Session: Autodesk 3ds Max Tips and Tricks
  
  Date: Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008 12:00 p.m. ­ 1:00 p.m. PST
  
  Description: Adrien Cho, BioWare Corp.'s lead character artist on Mass Effect, and Mike Trottier, BioWare Corp.'s lead environmental artist on Mass Effect will offer this session. Attendees will learn to harness significant power from the new features in Autodesk 3ds Max software.
  
  
• Session: Autodesk HumanIK Middleware Introduction: Complementing your Forward Kinematic Animation
  
  Date: Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008 2:30 p.m. ­ 3:30 p.m. PST
  
  Description: In this session, Eric Bibeau of Ubisoft will talk about why Ubisoft chose to use HumanIK for Assassin's Creed, describe how it was implemented, and provide a postmortem of the process. He will be joined by Jason Walter, from Autodesk Consulting, who will provide a detailed breakdown of the technology and provide more insight into how artists can incorporate HumanIK into their game engine.
  
  
• Session: Autodesk MotionBuilder: Cross Product Integration with Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya Animation Assets to Develop Workable Motion Libraries
  
  Date: Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008 5:30 p.m. ­ 6:30 p.m. PST
  
  Description: Justin Muir from Midway Games will break down one of the facility's production pipelines. He will focus primarily on a pipeline for assembling cinematic rendered scenes in Maya using a library of motion being worked on and edited directly from MotionBuilder. Real-world examples, challenges and production techniques will be discussed.
  
  
• Session: Autodesk Mudbox: Integration and Use with Autodesk 3ds Max & Autodesk Maya
  
  Date: Friday, Feb. 22, 2008 10:30a.m. ­ 11:30 a.m. PST
  
  Description: Rich Diamant will go over how Naughty Dog used Autodesk Mudbox and Autodesk Maya in its pipeline for the creation of characters in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, as well as different approaches and techniques for using Mudbox in any production environment. Louis Marcoux will also talk about how to best integrate Mudbox with 3ds Max.
  
  
• Session: Autodesk Maya Tips and Tricks
  
  Date: Friday, Feb. 22, 2008 12:00 p.m. ­ 1:00 p.m. PST
  
  Description: In this session Sam Sharit, Insomniac Games' senior character artist on Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction and Autodesk's Steve Roselle, application engineer, will offer valuable tips and tricks that artists can use everyday to improve their efficiency in working with Autodesk Maya. The session will focus on the needs of next-generation developers with complex data sets.

For more information about Autodesk at GDC 2008, visit http://www.autodesk.com/gdc2008. Autodesk thanks DELL, Intel and NVIDIA, its core technology partners for the show.

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