Autodesk in Games: Empowering Artists and Developers

Those who are already immersed in the (electronic) interactive arts industry would know Autodesk. Who in this field has not heard of Maya, AutoCAD and 3Ds Max? Last year, I attended an event at Greenbelt 5, also by Challenge Systems Inc., and they demonstrated Mudbox, a sculpting and texture painting software that was Autodesk’s answer to Zbrush. Its capabilities gave me goosebumps.

This time around, Challenge Systems Inc. speaker, Clifford Gabriel, talked about licensing and distribution. Very useful information, especially for those who do not know the scope and limitations of the licenses they bought.

At the end of the session, everyone was free to ask the speaker additional questions regarding their software, particularly Kynapse and HumanIK game middleware. I’m actually more interested in their creative tools, since I’m in the multimedia ARTS industry (even though my core educational background is IT).

Let me just quote from their press kit:

At Autodesk, we understand that personal preference is important to artists. That’s why we are continuing to develop the unique qualities of the three most popular full-featured 3D animation packages…Each of these technologies excels at particular aspects of the game art creation process — either because of the breadth of its creative tools, the depth of those tools or the efficiency of its workflow.

Bottom line is, Autodesk took care of the technology so creative people can focus on their art.

This event was held at Outback Steakhouse in Glorietta 4. And because I’m addicted to food photography, I couldn’t help but take photos of the food. The chicken is dry but the fish is yuuuuummmm!

 Left: Brownie with cream? That certainly was not ice cream.
Top right: Some creamy soup with shoe-string and cubed potatoes for starters.
Bottom right: Quesadilla, fish, chicken and rice.


Sorry for the weird coloring. I have a bit of a problem with fine-tuning my camera settings. I have serious issues when dealing with extremely red or yellow light. All the photos here were taken in a dark and very red function room.

4 Comments

  1. Jeiel Aranal

    July 23, 2010 at 7:30 pm

    Monopolies aren't very good for developing innovative software though.

  2. skysenshi

    July 23, 2010 at 9:49 pm

    That's true. But they drive a good bargain. Like APC has bought Maya+Mudbox in bulk for a good price.

    We're still keeping Blender and Unity though.

  3. Melvin

    July 24, 2010 at 10:58 am

    It was only last June when I found out that Autodesk actually offers students free licenses for their software.

    http://students.autodesk.com/

    astig din po yung student support ng autodesk kasi meron pa silang free online learning programs for students 😀

    I now have 1 year student licenses for Maya 2011, Sketchbook Pro, and 3DSMax at idadownload ko pa ang iba 😀

    ABMA students should grab this opportunity para mafeel nila ang paggamit ng hindi cracked na software at di na sila makipagsapalaran sa paghahanap ng mga gumaganang installers 😀

  4. skysenshi

    July 25, 2010 at 2:34 am

    Really? I didn't know they offer free licenses for students. I thought they didn't have educational licenses. If this is true, then it's good!

    The talent pool left in this country is really small and it's been our responsibility in the academia to meet this demand. If art students are granted free licenses, that would be great.

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