Saturday, May 19 | 15:30 – 16:20 | TRACK: ART

Behind The Portrait

Ian Spriggs, 3D Artist

My work is concerned with creating emotional connections with digital humans, and in my presentation I’ll talk about the techniques I use to achieve this. Many years ago, the masters created realistic portraits of their subjects using little more than a paintbrush. Today I use similar ideas with a new set of tools such as Maya, Mudbox, Photoshop and V-Ray to create my 3D portraits. I’ll also discuss how we can overcome the uncanny valley, and the new challenges we face in a digital age.

Saturday, May 19 | 11:00 – 11:50 | TRACK: CRAFT

Images of Glass, Handcrafted

Alessandro Cannava, Senior 3D Artist, Venini

The goal of my presentation is to show you how it is possible to combine the traditional skills of glass handicraft with cutting-edge CGI. I will exhibit the results of using both, and I'll cover everything from the designer's first sketch to the final render. Light is of vital importance in this process, so I'll demonstrate the techniques I use to render reflections and refractions. I'll also share some of the tips and tricks I've picked up during my career in this unique but wonderful field.

Friday, May 18 | 16:30 – 17:20 | TRACK: CRAFT

The Butterfly Effect: Applying Visualization Knowledge Beyond Your Professional Comfort Zone

Jan Kokol, CEO & Founder, IMAGO Design

My work covers a wide spectrum from large scale paintings, architectural design, virtual reality environments, hyper-realistic digital imagery, parametric jewelry design up to documentaries about classic sports cars. I’ll talk about how I’ve refused to let myself be defined by the idea of a profession, how leaving your comfort zone can reward you with fresh energy, and how the fear of failure can lead to new knowledge and experience.

Friday, May 18 | 14:00 – 14:50 | TRACK: CRAFT

Shed Some Light

Brendan McCaffrey, Bmcaff Studio

I’ll present an overview of my evolution as a digital artist of the past 22 years. I'll outline my approach to communication of form and surface value using light and materials, how my workflow has changed, and what has stayed the same. You’ll find out how I’ve used HDR Light Studio over the past 10 years in my work on videogame key art, virtual product photographs, and 600 illustrations for a book.

Presentation supported by Lightmap/HDR Light Studio

Friday, May 18 | 15:30 – 16:20 | TRACK: CRAFT

Let's Make it Happen!

Attila Cselovszki & Péter Sárhidai, Brick Visual

Architectural visualization as an industry is still in its infancy, and we’re still in the process of defining industry standards to make it easy for both our clients and ourselves. In 2017 Brick established a standalone research and development department. In this presentation, we’ll introduce their activity through some case study examples. We believe that all participants should be involved in the creative process, and we invite you to work with us!

Saturday, May 19 | 09:00 – 09:50 | TRACK: ART

Hardware, Software, Wetware, Wares

Lidija Grozdanic, Journalist & 3D Artist

A talk about the current state of the architectural visualization, trends, technology, and the ugly world of marketing. In the past few years, architectural visualization has been transformed by advanced new tools and trends, including immersive technologies which allow us to explore virtual worlds like never before. I'll discuss how the artist fits into this new digital landscape, and the role of marketing. You'll learn how these fields can seamlessly work together.

Saturday, May 19 | 13:00 – 15:00 | MASTERCLASS TRACK 2

Corona Academy: Optimizations tricks you didn't know about

Marcin Miodek, Technical Support Specialist & Corona Academy Lecturer, Corona Academy

Render Legion invites both beginner and advanced Corona Renderer users to a two-hour live training session, which will serve as a sneak peek of the Corona Academy courses in Prague. We’ll focus on the general Corona Renderer for 3ds Max workflow and optimization techniques. Specific topics include:

• Tips and tricks on working efficiently with Corona Renderer
• A step-by-step guide to fixing slow scenes
• Optimizations to make rendering even faster
• Creating realistic materials with SSS and volumetrics (clouds, god rays, skin, etc.)
• "Special effect" Corona materials and maps

As a bonus, attendees will get a chance to see the new features of Corona Renderer version 2, and the roadmap for the future of the project. Questions and discussions with the speaker are welcome at any time during the session, and we’ll finish with a live Q&A.

Friday, May 18 | 13:00 – 13:50 | TRACK: CRAFT

The Art of Marek Denko

Marek Denko, 3D Artist, NoEmotion

In this presentation, I’ll introduce some of my award-winning pieces of 3D art. I’ll give you a few insider tips on how to make your pieces look stunning, and where to find those vital sources of inspiration. You’ll find out about the pros and cons of being a full time 3D artist, the ideal career path to follow, and how to build a winning portfolio.

Friday, May 18 | 13:00 – 13:50 | TRACK: CODE

Three Years of Corona Renderer in Arch Viz: What Has Changed & What Has Not

Ondřej Karlík, CTO & Main Developer of Corona Renderer, Render Legion

Corona Renderer was commercially released little more than three years ago, but it's already made some big changes in the architecture visualization industry. We introduced some previously exotic workflows to the mainstream, such as interactive rendering, path tracing without irradiance caching, and denoising. In this talk, I will review our original vision of Corona, where we succeeded, where we didn't — and the problems we're yet to conquer.

Saturday, May 19 | 13:00 – 13:50 | TRACK: CODE

Embree Ray Tracing Kernels 3

Sven Woop, Graphics Software Engineer, Intel

Embree is an open source ray tracing library developed by Intel to provide high performance when integrated into photorealistic rendering tools. This talk will give an overview of the Embree framework, and teach you about various aspects of Embree 3, such as its new API, supported geometry types, and ray intersection methods. We will also focus on novel features, such as Embree's efficient approach to multi-segment motion blur, a grid primitive for handling displacement mapped geometry, and various advanced modes for curve geometries.

Saturday, May 19 | 10:00 – 10:50 | TRACK: CODE

High-Performance Rendering Using Compile-Time Specialization

Arsène Pérard-Gayot,Doctoral Researcher, Saarland University

The high-performance sections of a physically-based renderer are usually optimized for a particular use case. In particular, the ray traversal engine is typically vectorized for a specific instruction set (e.g. SSE, AVX, AVX512). For this reason, developers typically have to maintain several versions of the same algorithm.

In this talk, we present the architecture of a renderer in which the performance-critical parts have been implemented using the AnyDSL compiler framework. We show that, for a set of ray tracing kernels, this framework allows the programmer to separate the generic concept of the algorithm from its hardware mapping using specialization. The result is performance-portable code as fast as hand-tuned implementation from hardware vendors.

Saturday, May 19 | 14:00 – 14:50 | TRACK: CODE

Writing Kernels and Herding Cats

Blagovest Taskov, Lead Developer, Chaos Group

GPUs are a different beast to the traditional CPU architectures we’re used to working with, and they require different approaches to solving problems. Figuring out how to program for them can be challenging and (mostly) fun. We will share our experience with what worked and what didn't while developing the V-Ray GPU render engine. We might also give a few hints on what’s Next.

Friday, May 18 | 14:00 – 14:50 | TRACK: CODE

From Nuclear Reactors to Pretty Pictures & Good-looking 3D Prints

Jaroslav Křivánek, Lead of Research & Development at Render Legion & Associate Professor at Charles University

Computer generated images have become a natural part of our lives, and 3D printing technology is maturing and becoming more widespread. In this talk, I’ll show how these two seemingly unrelated topics share the same basis: accurate simulation of the behavior of light. The fascinating origins of this computational problem can be traced back to the development of first nuclear weapons in the Manhattan project, and to names like von Neumann, Fermi, and Ulam. I will even show how lessons learned from these atomic experiments have been used to boost the performance of production renderers, such as Corona and V-Ray.

Saturday, May 19 | 9:00 – 12:00 | MASTERCLASS TRACK 1

Building Poetry: Emotive Architectural Visualization 101

Karim Moussa, Art Director & Architect, Mozses

This theoretical and practical masterclass will be backed up with behind-the-scenes materials and analysis, and live demonstrations on creating fast-track sketches.

In addition to collaborative work, attendees will have a chance to put Karim’s ideas into practice with a team assignment. This will use fast-track concept sketches to utilize V-Ray RT’s power to achieve quick lighting setups with the best quality.

We'll cover:

• The initiation phase - working on projects with multinational design firms
• Design brief and core features
• Designing concepts
• Digital sketching
• The power of V-Ray
• Behind the scenes/breakdowns
• Analyzing challenges and building a relationship with the client
• Conceptual Approaches
• Understanding forms, lines, composition qualities
• Camera - lighting schemes - colors - scenarios
• 2d or 3D? How to strike the right balance
• The power of post-production
• Tips and tricks

3ds Max, V-Ray and Photoshop will be the main tools used through the masterclass.

This masterclass is aimed at intermediate and advanced trainees. Attendees are encouraged to bring a laptop, if possible, so they can follow Karim’s steps.

Saturday, May 19 | 11:00 – 11:50 | TRACK: CODE

Instruction Set Architectures - Do They Matter?

Martin Krastev, Senior Software Developer, Chaos Group

At the heart of every programmable computing system sits a programming interface known as an instruction set architecture (ISA). Every conceivable task that a system has to execute needs to be described in terms of the ISA. But, over the past decade, general-purpose computers may have reached a stage in their evolution where ISAs don't matter any more. Martin will give his take on this subject via a series of micro case studies across today’s dominant ISAs: x86-64 and ARMv8.

Saturday, May 19 | 09:00 – 09:50 | TRACK: CRAFT

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Build Time Reduction

Viktor Kirilov, Game Developer

The inability to iterate quickly in C++ is one of the biggest killers of productivity. This talk will provide insight into why compilation and linking take so long in the programming language, and show you how to mitigate these problems. I’ll cover tools and infrastructure such as hardware and build systems, techniques including unity builds and precompiled headers, source code modification, and modules.

Friday, May 18 | 11:00 – 11:50 | TRACK: CODE

Developing V-Ray Next: Challenges & Opportunities

Vladimir Koylazov, Co-Founder & CTO, Chaos Group

V-Ray Next is the hugely exciting upcoming version of V-Ray. It’s packed with new and improved features, and in the backend a supersmart engine renders faster than ever before. In this talk, you’ll hear some behind-the-scenes tales, and find out about the development of the Next iteration of one of the most popular renderers for 3ds Max.

Friday, May 18 | 17:30 – 18:20 | TRACK: ART

Telling Bigger Stories With the Help of Cloud Rendering

Will Cavanagh, Pipeline TD, Blur

Blur Studio, owned by "Deadpool" director Tim Miller, is widely known for creating some of the industry’s best game trailers and cinematics. As it moves into TV and film, the studio's technical infrastructure has expanded.

Will Cavanagh will reveal how the digital sausage gets made. He’ll discuess the evolution of Blur's proprietary render farm, movement into cloud rendering, and tools built to make a medium-sized studio competitive and flexible. Learn how Blur distributes rendering between a local farm and cloud instances while ensuring the availability of data. See some of the forecasting software developed to allow a dynamic production company to plan ahead for peaks and avoid backups.

But it's not all technical. To illustrate the product of all this backend infrastructure, Will plans to show some of Blur's latest work, and open the floor to questions.

Friday, May 18 | 15:30 – 16:20 | TRACK: CODE

Goodbye Portals, Hello V-Ray Adaptive Dome Light

Asen Atanasov, Senior Software Developer, Chaos Group

Take a look behind the scenes of V-Ray’s new Adaptive Dome Light. This portal-free, fast and memory efficient algorithm accounts for occlusion, and results in considerable speedup in production scenes. The presentation will also cover basic concepts such as image-based lighting, the scattering equation, Monte Carlo integration, importance sampling, and multiple importance sampling (MIS).

Saturday, May 19 | 13:00 – 15:00 | MASTERCLASS TRACK 1

Getting up to Speed: Building a GPU-based Pipeline for High-speed Production

Tomasz Wyszolmirski, Studio Director,Dabarti Studio

Join Tomasz to see how coupling Chaos Group’s V-Ray with NVIDIA GPUs can transform a studio workflow, cut costs, save time, and deliver high quality content. Using scenes and examples from Dabarti Studio’s completely GPU-based pipeline, his detailed step-by-step guide will cover approaches to optimization, and the challenges and benefits of GPU rendering.

Presentation topics include:

• An introduction to V-Ray GPU
• Tips on hardware and workstation setup
• A pipeline that works with high-speed rendering
• Assets and Scene creation for optimal results
• Case studies

Friday, May 18 | 11:00 – 11:50 | TRACK: CRAFT

Visualizing the Sounds of Nature

Andy Thomas, 3D Artist / Concept Artist

Inspired by the beauty of nature and extensive travel to some of the world’s most ancient rainforests, Thomas fuses together images of flora and fauna into evolved abstract forms. Intricately layered compositions of plants and animals make a strong statement of technology’s impact on planet earth and how advancements in society are affecting the natural systems of life. Andy Thomas will discuss fractal theories in nature, visualizing sound using 3D software, and what inspired him to become an artist including technology and rave parties in the early 90s.

Saturday, May 19 | 16:30 – 17:20 | TRACK: ART

Intergalactic Fur: Rendering a Space Raccoon

Nate Shaw, CG Supervisior, Method Studios

Wise-cracking trash panda Rocket Raccoon has become one of the Marvel cinematic universe’s most popular characters, often stealing the show in Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel. In his talk, Nate will discuss the development process behind the hairy hero, as well as general concepts for rendering furry creatures.

Saturday, May 19 | 10:00 – 10:50 | TRACK: ART

Mixing Media to Tell Powerful Stories

Camille Lymer, Lead 3D artist, Squint/Opera

Squint/Opera’s forte has always been finding the best way to tell a story. As all stories are different, so is the media used to depict them, from CG, live action, motion graphics, interviews, VR, music and even video games. By not defining itself as a CG company, Squint/Opera’s borders have expanded considerably, and it finds creative new ways to bring stories to life.

The audience will learn how the company approaches stories from the initial brief, and how it comes up with fresh, bespoke ideas.

Friday, May 18 | 15:30 – 16:20 | TRACK: ART

The Power of Immersion for Creators and Audiences

Kevin Margo, Director and VFX/CG supervisor

Kevin’s quest for interactive, immersive experiences focuses on the creative benefits for artists, and the resulting emotional impact on audiences. In his presentation, Kevin will discuss how rendering advances can facilitate new collaborations through virtual production, as demonstrated by his short film CONSTRUCT. He’ll also demonstrate how a desire for photorealistic visualization throughout the production process guided a recent investigation into VR.

Friday, May 18 | 11:00 – 12:00 | MASTERCLASS TRACK 1

Unwrapping Arch Viz and Design: A Step by Step Guide to UVW Unwrapping

Studio Niskota

UVW Unwrapping is usually neglected in arch viz, but it’s gaining importance with the advent of real-time visualization. Studio Niskota will cover various topics from core unwrapping logic, to the best practices to quickly achieve dependable results.

The presentation will explain the difference between unwrapping for game engine lightmaps and classic texturing, with two different approaches: 3ds Max, and a dedicated tool such as Unfold3D.

The masterclass is intended for arch viz artists and assumes no previous experience with unwrapping. Software used will be 3ds Max (2017+) and Unfold3D. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own machines, if possible, so they can follow along.

Saturday, May 19 | 13:00 – 13:50 | TRACK: CRAFT

2D3D: A History of Two Dudes in Three Dimensions

Studio Niskota

Niskota Studio’s follow-up to last year’s talk at the CG2 event will take the audience on a trip into the past. You’ll find out how Dean Niskota and Hrvoje Čop’s backgrounds let them to creating a successful arch viz studio, and how they use their differences to their advantage.

They’ll touch upon some of the personal and professional challenges they’ve faced along the way. Expect serious talk, motivational talk, business talk, client talk, and sporadic attempts at humor, mixed together with a spoonful of 3D and a pinch of inspiration.

Saturday, May 19 | 10:00 – 10:50 | TRACK: CRAFT

Dabarti + GPU: Road to Efficient Production

Tomasz Wyszolmirski, Dabarti Studio

Founded in 2009, Polish studio Dabarti has produced nearly 3,500 clips and turns around a massive amount of footage — from a team of just five people. To manage demand, Dabarti has optimized every element of its workflow, especially the time-intensive process of rendering.

During the presentation, director Tomasz Wyszołmirski will explain how Dabarti’s GPU-based pipeline ensures jobs are handled quickly and efficiently, and showcase the studio’s recent projects.

Friday, May 18 | 13:00 – 13:50 | TRACK: ART

IKEA VR/AR/MR and meatballs

Martin Enthed, IKEA

In this presentation, you’ll gain insights into how IKEA is embracing the future of virtual, augmented and mixed reality, and how new possibilities are explored in IKEA Digital Lab — a space to experiment, innovate, and build on these technologies. We’ll explain how photorealistic computer graphic renderings are created for IKEA's printed and online productions in large volumes. And you’ll even learn how our iconic meatballs fit into the equation.

Saturday, May 19 | 15:30 – 18:00 | MASTERCLASS TRACK 1

The journey of a Pixel that was once a Nurb

André Matos, Porsche

Have you ever wondered how a nurb becomes a pixel? This masterclass will teach you how to optimize your workflow and spend less time doing "boring monkey job". You'll also learn about the benefits V-Ray Next will bring.

At the end of the masterclass you´ll be able to replicate my A to Z process for small pipelines and avoid common mistakes that cost time. You'll learn:

• How to build a V-Ray friendly server structure with Xref´s objects.
• How to clean a model and unwrap the entire mesh in a few clicks using scripts.
• Why IBL is the answer for very dynamic workflow/fast renders.
• How to build your "Low-budget" render farm.
• Why V-Ray GPU is responsible for my progress as an artist.

Saturday, May 19 | 16:30 – 17:20 | TRACK: CODE

Behind Every Cloud There is Another Cloud: V-Ray Cloud Demystified

Boris Simandoff, Director of Engineering, V-Ray Integrations, Cloud & Business Services, Chaos Group

Chaos Group’s cloud rendering solution delivers massive scale rendering to thousands to users. In Boris’ presentation, he’ll explain the challenges Chaos Group’s cloud team faced, from fast and reliable uploads of huge amounts of data, to monitoring thousands of virtual machines while they render. You’ll find out about the key workflows, technologies and Google Cloud services used behind the scenes

Friday, May 18 | 11:00 – 11:50 | TRACK: ART

Reflections — and What’s Next

Phillip Miller, VP of Product Management, Chaos Group

This year is an excellent time to reflect on how the graphics industry has evolved, where it is set to go, and how Chaos Group’s offerings are evolving to exploit it. Using 3ds Max as an example, we’ll discuss the evolution of platforms, functionality, and hardware, while tying in the way V-Ray Next makes us of CPUs, GPUs, and cloud computing. Personal anecdotes will fill the talk as first-hand accounts and insights are shared.

Saturday, May 19 | 13:00 – 13:50 | TRACK: ART

Is V-Ray GPU Production Ready? (The Answer’s Yes)

André Matos, 3D Artist, Porsche

André’s decision to allocate rendering to the GPU won him a dedicated, detail-focused client: Porsche AG.

In his presentation, André will talk about his ideal GPU-farm back-up for projects which require him to provide mind-boggling image quality and last-minute changes to next-to-impossible deadlines. He’ll also offer his opinion on the stability on Next GPU Beta, the number of crashes that broke his heart (none), and the application of a new wave of photo-realistic scanned materials made possible by V-Ray RT’s effortless compatibility with Nvidia’s graphic cards.

At the end of the keynote, André will split the attendees into two categories: those who are considering Next GPU as a production ready solution, and those who need a deeper session of exorcism with his Total Chaos MasterClass "The Journey of a Pixel That Was Once a Nurb."

Friday, May 18 | 14:00 – 14:50 | TRACK: ART

The Curses and Blessings of VR in Architecture: A Three-Year Journey

Michał Baurycza & Mikołaj Bazaczek, Herzog & De Meuron

In the three years since VR was introduced at Herzog & de Meuron, it’s become a medium that can be authored by virtually anyone, and we’ve experienced the spectrum of curses and blessings that VR brings to architects and their clients. This will be a journey through time, different requirements and presentation flavors, various techniques and technologies. While the current state of VR tech is still not perfect, we’re on our way to the ultimate communication tool.

We'll cover:

• Overview of VR at HdM
• The Monkey Struggle / Inventing workflows
• Flavors of VR from quick design aid to high profile presentations
• Casual VR now (power to the people!) (V-Ray 3.x for Rhino)
• Project case: Badaievsky Brewery VR tour (pre-rendered + realtime)
• Interlude: Corona light mixer tricks
• Project case: Roche Bau 2 VR (pre-rendered high-fidelity reconstruction)
• New tech vs old people
• Project case: 418 sculpture placement simulator (realtime)
• End of Monkey Struggle: V-Ray 4 UE / Datasmith / Enscape…
• Future Frustrations: Lightfields and more

Saturday, May 19 | 11:00 – 11:50 | TRACK: ART

3D and VR in design development, decision making and communication

Knut Ramstad, Visualization Director, Nordic — Office of Architecture , Professor at NTNU

This talk will emphasize the embedding of advanced 3D tools in design development with fast evolving and constantly changing designs.

By relating to several real-world examples, Knut will demonstrate how VR and 3D can make a vital impact on how the design is growing, and how the project and the process is perceived and communicated.

Knut will explain some of the workflows and artistic and technical challenges of 3D visualization used in design, decision-making, quality control, user involvement, and communication in all project stages; from early sketch phases to construction and use.

Saturday, May 19 | 14:00 – 14:50 | TRACK: CRAFT

Automobiles for Real: Realistic Automotive Workflow Overview

Ivan Basso, 3D Photographer

In a rare stage appearance outside of his native Italy, Ivan Basso will take you through the steps, twists and turns of automotive virtual photography – a process he’s successfully applied to nimble Cinquecentos and roaring Quattroportes alike. From CAD data acquisition and preparation, through achieving realism and atmosphere via lighting and materials, to final retouching. Make sure you take advantage of this rare opportunity to look under the hood of Maserati’s catalogues!

Friday, May 18 | 16:30 – 17:20 | TRACK: ART

The Art of Independent Filmmaking

Miguel Ortega & Tran Ma, half M.T / Spy Films

Miguel will showcase the entire process of making a Hollywood-quality short film in his own home. He'll talk about initial conceptual designs, story influences, crowdfunding, story-boarding, set creation, filming, and VFX. He'll finish with an update on the status of the film today, and the doors it's opened for him.

Saturday, May 19 | 09:00 – 12:00 | MASTERCLASS TRACK 2

Incredible Beasts and How to Create Them

Miguel Ortega & Tran Ma, half M.T / Spy Films

Miguel Ortega Presentation:

In this essential presentation for aquatic animal fanatics, Miguel will break down an underwater creature shot from the Ningyo. He'll cover the design, modeling, texturing, shot modeling, lighting, rendering and compositing which helped generate realistic but otherworldly imagery.

Programs used:

• Maya
• World Machine
• Mudbox
• Chronosculpt
• Mari
• V-Ray

Tran Ma presentation: The Victorian Architecture of the Ningyo:

Tran will focus on creating the Ningyo's atmospheric and evocative environments, in particular the sets seen at the end of the short. She'll demonstrate how she approached the ornately detailed architectural detail, covering every stage from initial design to final lighting.

Programs used:

• Maya
• Mari
• V-Ray

Friday, May 18 | 13:00 – 15:00 | MASTERCLASS TRACK 1

Chasing the Great Beauty

Gianpiero Monopoli, SoA

CGI tools have never been simpler or more accessible — but how can artists make sure they stand out, and inject beauty into their creations? Attendees of Gianpiero’s masterclass will be taken on a journey through the history of arch viz, from the great masters of the past to today’s cutting-edge visualizers

Gianpiero will analyze traditional composition, and then show you how to break the pattern. He’ll also investigate our perception of the images that surround us every day and explain why some of them grab our attention. You’ll find out why it’s important to define your own style, and why technique is only a tiny part of this.

Friday, May 18 | 16:30 – 17:20 | TRACK: CODE

Vectorworks Digital Terrain Modeling and Surface Modifications

Bozhidar Stanchev, Nemetschek Bulgaria

…or how to improve your model and optimize the modeling process with the help of some simple ideas and solutions. Let Bozhidar explain the problems he and his team have faced with their digital terrain — and how they’ve solved them.

You’ll learn how to:

Work with an existing/proposed concept

Reshape TIN (Triangular Irregular Network) by modifying it to polygon

Use Edge Swapping and achieve better TIN quality by improving triangle ratios

Constrain pure Delone triangulation

Improve triangulation of contours with the Flats Resolver method

Interpolate TIN to contour change

Saturday, May 19 | 15:30 - 16:20 | TRACK: CRAFT

Flow, blow, render: Fluids, Particles and GPU's

Hristo Velev, Bottleship VFX

In this presentation, Hristo Velev will take you on the thrill ride of forming Bottleship. You’ll find out about the ups and downs, joys and hardships, and hard work and harder parties Hristo has experienced while setting up his world-renowned company. And he’ll go into detail on the explosions, destruction, water and magic he’s created for recent projects.

Friday, May 18 | 11:00 - 12:00 & 13:00 - 15:00 | MASTERCLASS TRACK 2

Crafting the Elements: How to Make Interesting Fluid Sims

Hristo Velev, Bottleship VFX

Dive into the amazing possibilities of elemental simulations with Bottleship founder Hristo Velev, and learn how to create effects which look like nothing you’ve ever seen before. He’ll also cover new tools and tech, including Phoenix and V-Ray GPU.

Hristo’s presentation will cover:

• Base Phoenix simulation
• V-Ray instancing with Frost
• Rendering with V-Ray GPU
• Orientation channel from Velocity
• Magma for transferring simulation features and scene relationships
• To Frost channels - radius, shape index
• To material channels - diffuse, self-illumination
• OSL
• Using Velocity data
• Using Distance to objects
• Using Raycasting
• Using the Phoenix mapper
• Displacing simulation postcache
• Removal of unwanted particles

Saturday, May 19 | 09:00 - 09:50 | TRACK: CODE

Predicting Render Resources with Machine Learning

Adrian Graham, Google Cloud

The process of rendering generates data. Useful data. And LOTS of it. Matter of fact, I have a stack of unread render logs sitting on my desk right now!

What can we learn from this data? How can we extract useful information from it? Can we use it to build a machine learning model to predict future resource usage? Can we build a model to solve for X, X being time, quality, or speed? This talk will explore the potential for using Convolutional Neural Networks to solve some very difficult problems related to resource usage, management, and artist expectations.

Saturday, May 19 | 14:00 - 14:50 | TRACK: ART

Studios in the Cloud: How Virtual Workstations are Making Global Production Possible

Adrian Graham, Google Cloud

Content creation has to be able to move around. VFX facilities have to operate where production tax credits are offered, artists need to work remotely, and collaboration needs to be done across time zones. There is an entire industry built around keeping multiple facilities synchronized, their data concurrent, so assets match, no matter where the data is used. Building out a pipeline to do this is expensive, time-consuming, and prone to errors.

What if you didn't have to synchronize data? What if data generated by an artist in Los Angeles was immediately available to another artist in London? What if 40 TB of fluid simulation data was instantly available to any lighting artist, regardless of location? What if the data only existed on the cloud?

This talk examines the benefits, strategies, and challenges of building a production studio in the cloud. Whether you're a freelancer working from home, or a 1,000-artist visual effects facility, the cloud offers benefits above and beyond traditional workflows.

Friday, May 18 | 17:30 - 18:20 | TRACK: CRAFT

GeoTracker: How we Created an Object Tracker Which does Track

Roman Belov, CEO, KeenTools

As compositing artists, we usually have to use instruments based on papers and methods that were state-of-the-art 10 or more years ago. GeoTracker brought modern approaches to tracking into a real commercial product, developed by compositors for compositors.

We'll discuss the problems and best practices when starting R&D in VFX shops, and the algorithms and approaches which solve the technical challenges of tracking tasks.

Friday, May 18 | 11:00 - 11:50 | TRACK: ART

HP Project Mars

Barbara Marshall, Global Industry Manager, HP Workstations & Albena Ivanova, Education Specialist, Chaos Group

Mars Home Planet is a programme from HP and NASA aimed at imagining life on Mars for one million humans. Anyone can participate in a number of projects involving designing buildings, transportation, clothing and robotics which will be used to create a complete virtual experience of the red planet of tomorrow. Chaos Group and HP are joining forces to support the Rendering stage of the competition. By using V-Ray in their submissions, entrants will achieve amazing results — and be in with a chance of winning some great prizes.

Friday, May 18 | 15:15 - 16:15 & 16:30 - 18:30 | MASTERCLASS TRACK 1

Creating Large-Scale Environments with Forest Pack and RailClone

Paul Roberts, Training Manager, iToo Software

Using real-world projects by Studio Niskota, Bertrand Benoit, LUXX Studios, Screenscene VFX and more, this masterclass will explore tips and tricks for creating and optimizing large-scale scenes.

Along the way, we’ll learn techniques around some of the lesser-known features, including several that are unique to Forest Pack 6 and RailClone 3. These tips will improve your day-to-day workflow, and illustrate the plugins’ boundless versatility for VFX, VR, real-time and architectural visualisation.

Whether you’re new to RailClone and Forest Pack, or a seasoned veteran, this masterclass will help you get more from our plugins.

In addition to core principles, topics will include:

• Creating scenes with nearly limitless polycounts
• Preparing scenes and geometry for use with Forest Pack and RailClone
• Creating large areas of ground cover
• Why you should adopt a layer-based approach to lawns and ground cover
• Several techniques for optimizing large scenes
• Controlling animated source geometry and adding crowds
• Optimizing scenes for VR renders
• Creative uses for falloff
• Scattering lights
• Refining compositions using item editor mode
• Refining workflows using Forest Pack 6’s new features
• Using Forest Effects
• Mastering RailClone generators
• Creating modular facades
• Creative uses for the compose operator
• Mastering randomization
• Creating condition-based styles
• Understanding clipping
• Mastering spacing modes
• Making life easier with Macros

And more!

Friday, May 18 | 15:15 - 16:15 | MASTERCLASS TRACK 2

V-Ray & Unreal Advanced Workflows - Part 1

Enea Le Fons, Artist & 3D Expert

During this intensive masterclass, Enea will showcase the new possibilities and workflows in V-Ray for Unreal.

Real-World challenge: One hour to get from scattered data and a moodboard, to real-world deliverable outputs and magazine-quality imagery.

During this Masterclass you'll witness:

• Importing data from multiple types of DCC software via .vrscene format
• Working with V-Ray for Unreal's unique lighting solutions and material system
• Unreal Engine tricks in order to achieve final pixel quality, fast

This is a true live working session on beta software and emerging workflows, part live performance, part live tech experiment. Get ready for a fast-paced working session with a massive amount of information

Saturday, May 19 | 15:30 - 18:00 | MASTERCLASS TRACK 2

V-Ray & Unreal Advanced Workflows - Part 2

Enea Le Fons, Artist & 3D Expert

During this masterclass, Enea will challenge himself to create a basic configurator and a VR application leveraging Unreal and V-Ray's unique features.

The Challenge: Two and a half hours to get from day one's scene to:

• A Blueprint-based interactive configurator
• A VR-optimized experience, with a deployable executable
• A dissection the Unreal + V-Ray workflow with insights and tricks

Beware: This is a true live working session on beta software, emerging workflows and freshly-released, experimental hardware.

Saturday, May 19 | 16:30 - 17:20 | TRACK: CRAFT

The Challenges of Bringing Realistic VFX into VR

Martin Georgiev, Co-Founder & Studio Supervisor, NU Boyana FX

As VR grows in popularity, we at Nu Boyana FX delve into the challenges that a modern day VFX facility faces while working with 360° footage. You’ll find out about the tools and techniques which help you keep to deadlines – and keep your grasp on reality.

Friday, May 18 | 16:30 - 18:30 | MASTERCLASS TRACK 2

Highlights & Hacks: INK’s 3D Tips and Tricks from Our Favourite Projects

INK Team

INK presents a masterclass jam packed with practical lessons, quick tips and hacks to ease your everyday workflow. The team will offer insight from behind the scenes of their latest and greatest projects. Touching on the studio’s 9 year experience in CGI and animation, ‘Highlights & Hacks’ will ensure that everyone has something workable to take away.