Autodesk at NAB 2014
April 6, 2014, NAB, Las Vegas—Various managers from Autodesk talked about their products and visions for the future. The company is in the process of changing their business practices in the midst of fairly large technological turmoil.
Chris Bradshaw described the context for some trends in their business. Some of the animation tools like Maya and 3DS Max started shipping this month. These tools have new capabilities for particle simulations and shader effects. The Flame and Smoke tools will follow with new capabilities next year.
Some of the trends affecting the tools include increases in virtual production, reality capture, mobility, and size doesn’t matter. The advent of films like “Avatar ” and “Gravity” needed tools like Maya and Motion Blender to become realistic. For “Gravity”, the filmmakers used the tools out of the box with no customization. The tools are available for use in film, games, and ads.
There is more use of lidar for scanning 3-D images and moving the data into photos and video. The combination of lidar and 3-D printers allows detailed, near real-time images and models to be available for production purposes. For example, in the Harry Potter films, they burned a scale model by capturing a 3-D image and using the digitized model for experiments. In another example, a wrapped mummy is reverse imaged with MRI to allow a full skeletal view.
Mobility is encroaching into the computer space. Desktop computers comprise 8 percent of shipments by units last year. Laptop computers were 12 percent, tablets 15 percent, and the balance of 65 percent were smart phones. Last year, 1.5 B smart phones shipped, and the combination of smart phone and network compute just speeds up the migration to mobile. This movement for consumers of content provides many opportunities to create for those mobile users.
The technology for both big films and small shorts is now the same. As a sponsor for visual effects student awards, they have seen a greatly increased quality of work in this area. The technology is now much more democratized to the point where anyone can have the tools for creation. The tools are available to create, modify, produce, and distribute content for all platforms and at all levels of user needs.
Marcus Schaler talked about the creative finishing products like Flame. These tools are for finishing and for visual effects, allowing fast-turn, high-quality projects. New features include native 4k workflow, color management, color optimization, and a new creative tool—replica. Replica allows for a cascade of objects.
The timeline now includes a matchbox and shader code generators that protect the shader and share 3-D shapes. A 3-D model tool allows relighting and projections. New color grading is possible from a screen grab as are angle of view functions and optimization functions. The tools allow batch timeline context and can save the desktop with one click. The tool includes a library model view and can perform multi-GPU background render.
An ancillary tool helps with deadlines. Flair provides timeline assist and addresses conform, archive, store, etc. on the MAC. More importantly, they are changing the total package to be subscription only. Claiming to increase collaboration, the subscriptions are available as quarterly and annual for Flame and Flame Premium starting this month.
Marc Hamaker described the latest release of Smoke. This effects tool now includes timeline integration, and 3-D tracking is integrated into the apps. The tool fits into the MAC ecosystem—MAC Pro hardware, and uses an XML workflow, allowing more metadata into the tool from various sources.
Changes in the tool improve usability, easier adoption, and shorter learning curve, as seen by the statistic that 3 out of 4 users are new to Autodesk. Smoke is also moving to a full subscription model with a monthly rate of $195, quarterly at $595, and annual at $1750. subscriptions will start in May.
