Great Eastern Technology

On Saturday, April 14th Great Eastern will hold our fourth annual 3D Stimulus Day!

Lunch will be provided.

Location: Microsoft NERD Center, Cambridge, MA

Time: 9:00am  - 4:00pm

Schedule:

Creative Mobile Multiplayer: Design and Tech of Gimbal Cop
Jono Forbes & Matt Schoen, Defective Studios

Gimbal Cop (And the Case of Objectionable Hypercorrection) is a new multiplayer creative mobile game from Defective Studios: Runner players race to catch the rogue Architect player, who is leaving a crazy highway of tripped-out visuals in his wake. This project has presented Defective with a load of new challenges, including asymmetric creative multiplayer, mobile flying and racing controls, an innovative user interface, and an artist-driven method to procedurally create visually striking and varied tracks -- all of this running across multiple mobile devices. In this talk, we'll discuss both the high-level design and nitty-gritty tech of these challenges.

Broken Rigging for Games
Raf Anzovin, President, Anzovin Studios

Company president Raf Anzovin started drawing when he was 3 and animating when he was 8 and has never looked back. You’ll find him on the animation credits of Blue Sky’sRobots. He was also supervising animator for Hasbro’s G.I.Joe Valor vs. Venom andAction Man: X Missions. Anzovin does it all: vivid game cinematics, kids’ specials on PBS, made-for-TV action flicks, commercials for TV and cellphones. If a project needs lively and expressive character animation or eye-catching imagery, they can provide it.  Anzovin Studios also designs and produces Maya plug-ins that make life easier for themselves and their fellow animators. The Setup Machine, automatically rigs bipeds and quadrupeds, which cuts down on production time while giving animators superb control over their characters.

Social Media and Networking for Artists
Elliott Mitchell, Founder of Vermont Digital Arts and Technical Director at Infrared5

Elliott has worked as a 3D and visual effects artist for games and film for over 12 years, and has taught digital art and game design at the collegiate level for almost 10. After retiring from full-time teaching, Elliott founded Vermont Digital Arts, a 3D game studio that creates Unity iOS games. He is active in the Boston-area game development scene, co-founding both the Boston Unity Group and the North East Digital Artists Group. "Creating art that functions elegantly, blurring the line between artistic film and video games -- these are my passions," he says.

UNITY: Creating A Game
Russ Morris, Unity 3D Product Evangelist therussmorris.tumblr.com

Having worked as a game designer and developer in the games industry, coupled with a background in education, Russ has an understanding of how to use Unity in a professional environment, as well as the understanding of how to communicate with Unity developers with a wide range of experiences. Prior to joining Unity Technologies Russ taught Unity and game design at London South Bank University, as well as co-organising the London Unity User Group. When he's not making, playing or talking about games, he's probably talking about rugby.

Here's a link to last year's recap and photos!

On Tuesday, June 14th we are hosting event that should knock your socks off...  Make Your Ideas a Reality with a Max and Maya workflow that works with Unity - there will be an in-depth look at Unity and the workflow with Max and Maya - then Carl will demonstrate how to make a game and build it for the web, iOS and Android.

Defective Studios will be presenting their Unity-based world-builder, Platformer, working with their Maya plug-in for full modeling of terrain, and the ease in which it lets you move back and forth between Maya and Unity.

Carl Callewaert has 10 years experience working in motion capture, 3d animation and game development. His professional experience includes working as a liaison between artists, programmers and sales department on software/hardware development, motion capture pipelines and (mobile) game development. As an Autodesk Certified Instructor and Unity expert, Carl has taught specialized courses and workshops on game engines, key framing, motion capture, photo-realistic rendering, visual effects, modelling, level editing at companies and education institutes. Currently, Carl is Unity evangelist at the award wining company Unity Technologies . He also runs Fundi 3D where he is involved in the production of games. At The Gaming and Animation Institute of Fredericton Carl oversees the 3D gaming programs and runs the eMentorship program.

When: Tuesday, June 14th, 6pm - 10pm
Where: Bunker Hill Community College

How Much?: Free.  But registration is required.

Refreshments will be served from 6 - 7 pm.  There is free parking in student lots 1 & 2, and there is a Bunker Hill T stop. :)

New York Event Just Added:  http://www.meetup.com/Unity-Developers-NYC/events/17245236/ Monday, June 13th!!

The Autodesk virtual event had some technical problems, so they have posted all of the presentations to watch on-demand...

You can get there by this link, then use the username and password you received from Autodesk to access the on-demand content.

If you don't have a username and password, use this link to register: http://experience.autodesk.com/go/2164

On Saturday, April 9th Great Eastern will hold our third annual 3D Stimulus Day!

Lunch will be provided.

Location: Mt. Ida, Newton, MA

Time: 9:00am  - 5:00pm

Schedule:

Presentations this year include:

• Chad Moore of Turbine and Rigging Dojo, with Job Hunting Tips for 3D Artists
• Alex Schwartz and Yilmaz Kiymaz of Owlchemy Labs, presenting Mixing 2D and 3D in Unity
• A panel-discussion with various tech artists from local game companies, mediated by Chad Moore
  • Ryan Griffin, Senior Character TD, Turbine
  • Elliott Mitchell, Vermont Digital Arts
  • Brandon Bateman, Senior Tech Artist, Turbine
  • Farley Chery, Instructor, ITT Institute and Bunker Hill Community College
  • Justin Woodard, Technical Artist, Turbine
• Willem Van Der Schyf, Tencent Boston, presenting his Workflow for Character Creation using Max & ZBrush
• Afternoon networking session upstairs with demos from local individuals and companies including Brass Monkey, Vermont Digital Arts, Owlchemy Labs, 3d Camera Technology, Mocap with Kinect and Motion Builder and lots more!!!

Please send any questions you would like addressed by the tech art panel to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it - anything you've wanted to know about tech art but haven't had six pros on a panel to answer your question?   Well, here's your chance!

Here's a link to last year's recap and photos!