Continue reading »]]> This year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC), held during early March in San Francisco, saw a healthy attendance: More than 19,000 gaming professionals reportedly attended the conference and exhibition. In fact, if those figures are correct, that is a record attendance for the show—and an excellent turnout during a time when interest in large trade shows is on the decline.

So, what awaited this crowd? There were a number of tutorials and summits, hundreds of lectures, and, of course, the annual Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards. Augmenting the conference and co-located events was the expo floor. This year, the exposition seemed to be divided into two nearly equal segments: those vendors offering video game development tools, and studios either showcasing their new titles and/or recruiting talent (schools also shared this area, pitching their programs to would-be students). Encompassing all these areas were the “world showcase” pavilions featuring vendors from a common state or country—from Germany, Canada, and Scotland, to Georgia and other regional and national locales.

While the number of vendors showing off their digital content creation software and hardware seemed to be lower this year than in the past, that does not mean the quality of those tools was lacking. In fact, some of the products—either making their initial debut or having recently been released—are quite impressive and have the potential to make a positive impact on game development.

With that said, Computer Graphics World has named its selections for the magazine’s Silver Edge Awards at GDC 2011. The newly unveiled Edge Awards are presented to companies whose product represents the best of show at the CG industry’s leading conferences and exhibitions, including GDC.

“There are a number of products—software, hardware, or possibly something that falls into a totally different category—that cause excitement and buzz at a trade show, or have the potential to greatly impact the industry. We wanted to formally recognize these cutting-edge offerings following the industry’s most important exhibitions,” says CGW chief editor Karen Moltenbrey.

Autodesk’s 2012 Entertainment Creation Suites. The various software releases that are part of the suites—the 2012 versions of 3ds Max, Maya, Mudbox, Softimage, and MotionBuilder—are impressive on their own, leveraging the latest advances in hardware. But when bundled together within the new suites, they are unmatched in terms of giving users advanced tools for advanced graphics creation in games.

Image Metric’s FaceWare 3.0. The company has been providing amazing facial animation for many triple-A game studios for years, and recently the company began offering this markerless analysis technology to animators, giving a studio’s artists creative control over the content. To this end, Version 3.0 contains some new key features, such as auto-pose, a shared pose database, and curve refinement.

Dassault’s 3DVIA tools. This  product continues to intrigue. The purpose of 3DVIA is to make 3D content creation easier, and it does just that. There are a number of tools under the 3DVIA umbrella, and they all serve in helping to democratize 3D development, including 3DVIA Studio for building high-quality 3D games on the Web.

Unity’s game engine. It is the game engine that could, a development platform for games and interactive 3D on the Web, iOS, Android, consoles, and more. Introduced in 2005, the Unity game engine’s popularity has soared. At the show, the company released Unity Android, enabling developers to easily port Unity-based games to the Android platform.

Autodesk’s Project Skyline. Unlike the other offerings here, Project Skyline—discussed openly at GDC—is best described as a concept technology than an actual product at this time. Nevertheless, it is quite intriguing and could have a radical effect on future game development. Skyline proposes to open up the current closed development pipeline to give content creators the ability to do live content authoring within a game engine. In short, it would put more control in the hands of the animators rather than code writers.

Adobe’s Molehill. While not yet a shipping product, Molehill (code name) is a new set of low-level, GPU-accelerated 3D APIs targeted at experienced 3D developers for delivering sophisticated 3D experiences. Using the new 3D APIs in Adobe Flash Player and AIR will make it possible to deliver sophisticated 3D experiences across almost every computer and device connected to the Internet.

Continue reading »]]> Autodesk, Inc., a leader of design and engineering software, will host the opening of the Autodesk Gallery at One Market in San Francisco, an interactive environment that highlights the impact of software and technology on the process of innovative design.

The 16,500-square-foot Gallery, located at One Market Street, is the first space in the San Francisco Bay Area dedicated to the spirit of design innovation, with 20 exhibits including the California Academy of Sciences, Ford Shelby GT500, Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland, Calif., and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge seismic retrofit. The space is intended as a location where designers can discuss the latest in technology and be inspired by others’ work.

“The Autodesk Gallery showcases the work of our customers from across a number of industries, including architects, engineers, manufacturers, film makers, video game developers and artists,” said Carl Bass, Autodesk president and CEO. “The exhibits encourage rich conversations about the latest design software and provide an ideal environment for industry collaboration.”

The Gallery is also intended to become a meeting space for the design industry. “The Autodesk Gallery is an inspiring space where we can also interact with the community-schools, industry groups and local and visiting designers,” said Bass. The Autodesk Gallery will be open to the public on the first Wednesday of each month from 1 to 5 p.m. beginning October 1st, 2008.

Designed to achieve a LEED-Commercial Interiors Platinum certification rating, the space takes green interior design to the highest level and includes daylight and views, recycled material, certified renewable lumber, local manufacturing and renewable energy.

Design News – Autodesk Gallery at One Market Opens in San Francisco – TAXI Design Network