Whe r e Belg rade m eets globa l talen ts in VFX, Ga m i ng, VR and Dig ital A rts

NOVEMBER 24-25, 2017 Museum of Science and Technology Skender Begova 51, Belgrade

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Conference Programme FRIDAY, November 24th Museum of Science and Technology Skender Begova 51, Belgrade

12:00h - VR Demystified 13:15h Panel: Milica Zec (New Reality Company), Aleksandar Rodić, Ivan Pribićević (DigitalKraft) Moderator: Ninoslav Adžibaba, VRLabs Language: Serbian Adoption of VR technology, informal user base and distribution of content represent challenges and opportunities of the new media. Panel will present three VR projects and their authors in discussion on how to encourage proactive exploration of VR by CG community, models currently dominate industry and pace of development.

13:30h – When renders make the difference: multiplatform rendering workflows with V-Ray 14.30h Chaos Group Presentation by Yavor Stoykov, CG Specialist Language: English For the last almost two decades V-Ray has been the renderer of choice for companies and professionals across multiple industries – from architecture, through automotive, to film and VFX; in projects from high-resolution stills to mind-blowing VFX. Keeping in constant contact with them has brought Chaos Group’s team a unique point of view and huge amount of insight into rendering optimizations and approaches to workflows, involving multiple plugins and software platforms. Yavor Stoykov is no stranger to this, consulting and working with the teams of many companies in the field of animation, film and VFX as part of Chaos Group’s CG Specialist team. He is well acquainted by the pitfalls of rendering on any scales, and he’s worked on numerous approaches which can save time, resources and even complete projects. In this practical session Yavor will summarize some of the most interesting examples, focusing on tips and optimal use cases of V-Ray’s 3.6 most advanced features between 3ds Max and Maya, GPU and hybrid rendering, crossplatform scene transfer, the little-known, yet very convenient approaches to working with third-party assets, and will touch on the optimal way of employing Chaos Group’s own simulation secret weapon – Phoenix FD.

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15:15h – 16:30h

Education in Computer Graphics: Future Challenges Panel Following the increasing demand for talents and creatives that successfully combine art and tech knowledge this session is dedicated to discussing challenges it brings to the schooling system. Representatives of Metropolitan University, Belgrade; Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Belgrade; Faculty of Applied Arts, Belgrade; Faculty of Technical Sciences, Novi Sad; Academy of Arts, Novi Sad and Faculty of Electronic Engineering, Niš will discuss on how to push forward the formal education curriculums into direction of jobs for the future.

Moderator: Aleksandra Jovanić, University of Arts Language: Serbian

16:45h - Maya Modern Rendering workflows 18:00h Presentation by Nikola Milošević, Principal Product Designer & Product Owner – Maya Rendering Autodesk Language: English

Autodesk Maya overhauled more than few toolsets and added Arnold in her arsenal. Let’s go through Color Management Workflows, lean on ACES and Studio Monitor Setups. After we will go through New Render Setup features in conjunction with Arnold for Maya. Lastly, we will identify where Maya future will set a trace by introducing Procedural world building in Maya. Nikola is Principal PD/PO based in Toronto, working with multiple teams and projects in Autodesk. He is responsible for Maya Color Management, Hypershade, Render Setup, directly working with Arnold Team and designing Maya future workflows like MaterialX – LookDevX and Procedural world building. He was previously working on various positions with smaller and large studios as Sony Imageworks and Framestore.

18:15h – 19:15h

ARt Directing in Games Panel Nordeus art directors Daryl Clewlow, Rasmus Hansen, Harvey Parker and Carsten Biernat come together for the first time in a panel discussion to talk through their careers, art direction process and thoughts on the games industry. This is a great opportunity for those interested in becoming art directors or hearing more about the industry from the perspective of creative leaders.

Moderator: Daryl Clewlow, Head of Art, Nordeus Language: English

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WORKSHOP 13:30h – 16:00h Skin shading with Arnold 5 Workshop will cover basics of skin shading in Arnold 5 using scanned head of Emily O'Brien, also known as Digital Emily from Wikihuman project.

Workshop led by Dušan Ković Language: Serbian or English Crater VFX Training Center, Knićaninova 3

VR AREA 11h – 20h TREE by Milica Zec

SATURDAY, November 25th Museum of Science and Technology Skender Begova 51, Belgrade 12:00h - Visual Effects of 12.45h "Attraction" motion picture Presentation by Mikhail Lesin, Chief Technical Officer, Main Road Post Language: English Mikhail will provide in-depth details of VFX production for Attraction. We will go right from the early stage of pre-production through all fascinating effects. How we generate an authentic city and then destroy it, develop design of alien exoskeleton and spaceship, create alien world, make genuine clouds and atmosphere, and why do we need to make a CG fighter pilot. At the end you will hear how we adjusted our work principles to accomplish all this with a relatively small team of 50 people in just 1 year. Mikhail Lesin began his career as a 3D generalist in an advertising agency in 2000, and a few years later he became fascinated by the world of visual effects in motion pictures. In 2006 he became a co-founder and chief technical officer of Main Road Post studio. Mikhail determines pipeline process and technologies in the studio. He is constantly on the brink of state of the art technologies, and eager to find the way to produce better images and cut down the process. With years Main Road Post transformed into the most known Russian studio in the world working on the large-scale projects in the Russian market.

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13:00h - MARI 4 - The Ideal Tool for 13.45h 3D Texturing and Painting Presentation by Richi Paramo, Foundry Creative Specialist, Foundry Language: English A brand new and upgraded version of Mari 4 will showcase why it is ideal tool for 3D texturing and paining. Richi will guide you through quicker Startup, export manager, navigation, improved UI, improved workflows that sumarise in core increased efficiency. Richi Paramo is one of the Creative Specialist with long experience in the VFX and postproduction industry. Now inside The Foundry he is currently in the development team of VR future technology.

14:00h - Managing complexity Rendering cinematics at 15:00h Digic Pictures Presentation by Szabolcs Horvátth, Lead Technical Director, Digic Pictures Language: English The evolution of game cinematics requires new workflows, tools and technologies. Recently Digic Pictures worked on projects like Final Fantasy, Assassins Creed, Call of Duty and Digic’s Lead Technical Director Szabolcs Horvátth will talk about some of the production and rendering challenges behind the work. Szabolcs' background is in feature film VFX, commercials and high-end game cinematics. He joined Digic Pictures in 2004 where he holds the position of Lead Technical Director. His areas of expertise include character and effect setups, hair modeling and simulation, writing and designing shaders, plugins and pipeline tools.

16:00h – Digital Humans- extracting digital DNA 16:45h Presentation by Vladimir Mastilović, CEO, 3Lateral Language: English 3Lateral is developing a powerful framework for analysis of 3D and 4D data of people. This presentation will be showing some of the exciting new features of this framework and how it can be used for research, production pipelines and cloud based solutions. Vladimir is founder and CEO of 3Lateral, a multidisciplinary company built around passion for creation of an appearance of life in digital medium. Vladimir’s focus in career are high fidelity digital humans starting from capture systems (3D and 4D scanning, appearance capture) to modeling and articulation systems to data bases, statistical modeling and engine integration. He received several prestigious awards including Most Innovative Entrepreneur by EY (2014) and Best Real Time Graphics and Interactivity (SIGGRAPH 2016, as part of team of companies Epic Games, Ninja Theory, Cubic Motion and 3Lateral). His portfolio includes many AAA game titles including Grand Theft Auto IV and V, Red Dead Redemption, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Star Citizen, Until Dawn, Battlefield 1 and The Order:1886. [email protected] • www.cgabelgrade.com

17:00h - What's new in Arnold 5 18.00h Presentation by Frederic Servant, Software Development Manager, Autodesk Arnold Language: English Arnold 5 is major release of the core introducing new features, performance improvements, workflow simplifications and deep internal re-design to pave the way for future developments. We’ll go through these changes, focusing on what they mean for the user and seeing them used in production. We'll also offer a sneak peek at the new features of the upcoming Arnold 5.1 release. Frederic is Software Development Manager at Solid Angle and is based in London, where he looks over the Arnold core and plugins teams scattered around the globe. He was previously the main developer of the Arnold integration in Houdini. Prior to Solid Angle, Frederic worked as an R&D Engineer at The Mill in London and La Maison in Paris.

18.15h19.30h

Future of VFX in Serbia Panel Leading Serbian VFX studios Bunker, Crater Studio, Digital Kraft, Open Studio, and Primer discuss the future of VFX – whether it is Cloud, VR or Real-Time Render. How to recruit, develop and maintain talents in a fast-paced industry? They will look at some of the joint cooperation models existing worldwide and what is the potential applicable to Serbia to give the industry a critical boost.

Moderator Miloš Milošević, co-founder of VFX Serbia Language: Serbian

WORKSHOP 12:00h – 14:30h Maya for Teenagers The new Star Wars movie: The last Jedi is coming out in December and to celebrate that, the students will model Luke Skywalker’s original lightsaber while learning the basics of Maya modeling.

Workshop led by Stefan Plavšić Language: Serbian or English Crater VFX Training Center, Knićaninova 3

VR AREA 11h – 20h TREE by Milica Zec

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P R E-Confe rence Events SATURDAY, November 11th 17:00h - Open Maste r class by And rew Lowel l 18.00h Fundamentals in FX Production Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Theater “Mata Milosevic” , Bulevar umetnosti 20 Language: English The lecture will highlight the uniqueness of FX and its role in feature film (or other fields). These areas include reference gathering of natural phenomenon, proceduralism / low level software methodologies, and motion through simulation. Time tested FX setups from onstage work will be paralleled in modern workflows and digital FX setups, and short explanations will be given. A question and answer session is also welcome for the audience to connect with the lecturer's experience in the area. Andrew’s CG experience includes Houdini film effects at studios such as Rhythm and Hues, Ring of Fire, CIS Vancouver, Animal Logic and Digital Domain. Andrew’s teaching credentials include teaching college classes in 3D graphics, teaching classes for Sidefx, FXPHD, CG Masters. He is now FX Department Head and Lead Instructor at Lost Boys School of Visual Effects in Vancouver. He is also the author of a book on music and animation with Houdini. Andrew’s personal interests deal with the interaction of visual and sonic perception. Houdini is his primary application because of its audio features and unique abilities with visual effects.

November 13th-17th From Rigid Bodies to FX and Fluids Houdini Course Crater VFX Training Center, Knićaninova 3 Course lecturer Andrew Lowell Language: English Course price: 800 EUR From Rigid Bodies to FX and Fluids is a five-day intensive course for fx artists in Houdini software. As one of the biggest challenges in the VFX industry is creation of dynamic simulations, we have designed this course with aim to assist VFX artists in advancing their skills in Houdini software, the most powerful program for dynamic effects. We are also partnering with SideFX to ensure the training content is in accordance with latest industry developments and standards. The total of 30 hours of training will answer variety of aspects, protocols, workflows and real time examples.

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Post Confe rence Event FRIDAY, December 1st 16:00h 17.30h

HR in Creative Industries in Serbia Roundtable Crater VFX Training Center, Knićaninova 3 Language: Serbian Human Resources in IT and Creative Industries is a rather new discipline and environment that requires different techniques and approach to recruiting scarce talents, development of employees in a fast-paced industry. This will be the first open session of the group composed of HR managers, academic and business associations to discuss formal strategies on the industry level and how to influence better education of talents, production of senior management and retention of employees. The high demands in the industry place significant challenges on HR role itself where standard strategies have to be adapted.

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