The next decade of physical product design will be defined by what teams choose to automate. Modern design tools should not just make things happen faster. They should free teams to focus on taste-making, creation, and human intuition, while quietly handling the repetitive work no one wants to do. This session explores how end-to-end product workflows, powered by AI and human collaboration, are enabling teams to design faster, more efficiently, and better for the world. See how Autodesk Fusion and Naya complement each other across the full design process, from first concept to manufacturing, and walk away with a strategic view of how Fusion and Naya enable a better design process, and where the next year of AI and workflow is heading.

Construction companies are navigating more workforce challenges than ever and those staying ahead are doing it with a powerful combination of technology, data, and AI. But the game's changing. A new era of AI agents is shifting workforce planning from reactive to strategic giving contractors instant command of their people data, smarter staffing decisions, and a clearer view of what's on the horizon. Join David Pimiskern, Bridgit's VP of strategy and operations, for an in-depth look at how North America's leading contractors are building their workforce planning strategies for the agent era and what it means to put AI to work without losing the human expertise at the center of it all. You'll leave with a fresh perspective on where construction workforce planning is headed, and what forward-thinking leaders are doing today to stay ahead of the curve.

Autodesk Flow Studio software is a generative solution in the Autodesk Media & Entertainment Collection. This software helps artists produce layout, create content, and drive home visuals across film, television, and games. This solution can also be used in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) space to help standup Revit content and aid with visuals to maximize customer impact.

Few characters in modern horror are as unpredictable as Pennywise, whose terrifying transformations lie at the heart of IT: Welcome to Derry. In this session, Rodeo FX Animation Supervisor Scott Holmes will reveal how the team used Maya software to design rigs and craft performances for Pennywise's many monstrous forms. Through production examples and animation breakdowns, the talk will explore the creative process behind building creatures that can shift from subtle unease to full nightmare, while remaining believable, expressive, and terrifying on screen.

Modeling is no longer just about clean quads and edge loops it's about data integrity for a global pipeline. As studios transition to OpenUSD, Maya artists must evolve their workflows to ensure assets are portable and performant. In this technical deep dive, we'll move beyond basic topology to explore the authoring of "smart" USD assets. We'll cover the latest Maya 2026 USD modeling tools, demonstrating how to manage complex hierarchies, variants, and metadata within a single file. You will learn how to optimize meshes for seamless deformation across platforms and avoid common pitfalls in a multisoftware environment. Stop modeling for a single scene start building assets that thrive in a universal production ecosystem.

Rendering Autodesk VRED scenes can result in Open EXR sequences that require manual handling before they can be used in Autodesk Flame. This creates delays, inconsistencies, and avoidable errors in high-end commercial finishing workflows. This session will discuss example pipelines using both VRED and Flame Python tools to render Open EXR sequences from VRED and ingest them into Flame as clips. We will cover render jobs, structuring output, managing naming, and simplifying Flame imports. You should leave with a repeatable, production-ready workflow that reduces manual ingest and connects visualization to finishing with speed and reliability.

This class will present an intermediate-to-advanced workflow integrating Maya software and Unreal Engine software to create more-complex and exciting game cinematics including characters animated with motion capture, manually animated vehicles, particles, and dynamics. This class will show you how to create and layout an advanced game cinematic in Maya, preparing it for export to Unreal Engine. Then we will show you how to import and set up the exported Maya scene in Unreal Engine, setting up materials, cameras, mocap, particles, and dynamics. Finally, we'll implement industry-standard best practices while working between Maya and Unreal Engine, and rendering the final cinematic in Unreal Engine. This hands-on class has the indie game dev and 3D artist in mind.

Through innovative case studies, learn how to use BIM 360 Docs software, Forge software, and Forge software’s Ecosystem with Data Soluce. The class will enable attendees to onboard a building project and retrieve a comprehensive and fully merged intelligent model ready to use for maintenance. You will learn how to eliminate double data entry, inaccuracy, and silos between different actors during the design and construction phase, which complicate today’s intelligent models for facility management. You will discover how a fully merged intelligent model on Forge, with a seamless and accurate data flow, can be a game changer for all actors involved in a building project, from preliminary design to the design phase to construction and maintenance. Whether you are an owner, a project manager, or a BIM manager, you will gain understanding about how Forge can bring transparency and accuracy on a building project, eliminate additional costs, and save time.

On every type of project, the adoption of a transparent and easy-to-apply Building Information Modeling (BIM) workflow is the key to success. This also helps reduce the risk of errors and it provides huge productivity ratio improvements while making the design and engineering processes more efficient. To reach this objective, the engineer and the technicians, using Revit Structure software, need tools capable of automating 3D rebar generation (including semi-automated detailed drawings and schedules), but with the ability to make design-driven decisions for the reinforced concrete members in real time. In this class you will learn how GRAITEC’s Revit-software-based 3D rebar design tools deliver real benefits by consolidating design decisions based on local codes to accurately create 3D rebar in Revit software on the fly with localized families. These tools also produce automatic reinforcement drawings and schedules, published to the cloud or through Autodesk 360 cloud-computing platform ready for fabrication by the rebar manufacturer.

This session will take a look at the future of surfacing and digital design tools as used by automotive and industrial design. We will focus on key drivers and changes, trends, and observations from the field, as well as customer stories of best practices. The goal is to enable attendees to learn from best practices elsewhere and prepare for the future.

After this class attendees will be able to exploit virtual reality in the realm of construction—particularly, the way and flow of utilizing Samsung Gear VR. Exploring virtual worlds through this device at the construction site or during meetings without other machines is a forte. This drove me to make a deep study of how to utilize it. There are 2 approaches to accomplish virtual reality by utilizing Gear VR during construction phases and facility management purposes. Two paths—Building Information Modeling (BIM) model and construction site picture based—can be technically considered. First, when you use Gear VR with your BIM model, you need to be familiar with software such as Revit software and 3ds Max software for visualizing and rendering. If you intend to navigate your BIM model in virtual worlds, you will also need game engines like Unity3D with Android Studio. Also, regarding exploring panorama pictures, equipment for panoramic photographs and editing tools that will help convert those photos to the 3D world will be required as well.

In this intermediary class I will build upon the theory presented in my class, Shading And Texturing Workflow, with a practical example that involves shading and texturing a high-resolution photoreal robot. The techniques presented can be used to texture any high-resolution hard-surface object, whether for visual effects, animated films, video game cinematics, or even architectural work. We will focus on how to efficiently shade thousands of individual objects without having to spend a lot of time UV shading everything. Blended box maps, projection paint, curvature maps, occlusion maps, and the building of a library of materials are just some of the topic that we will cover. I will use 3ds Max software, Chaos Group's V-Ray rendering engine, and Adobe Photoshop for this example, but you can apply the principals discussed to the 3D app, paint application, and renderer of your choice.

Creating Contents using Autodesk Media and Entertainment Collection for ECommerce Sector, to Bring in Efficiencies and setting up an Optimized pipeline.

3D visualization has become a very important part of the practice in today's design industry; it is no longer limited to just the film and game studios who have long-established pipelines that deal with rendering and compositing. These critical techniques are little known by other design industries, or they are typically practiced to a very limited degree, utilizing available software such as Adobe Photoshop. There exists a common misconception that the Hollywood-like compositing workflow is too expensive or beyond reach. Design companies that have 3ds Max software or Maya software can get help from the Composite program from Autodesk, Inc. From 3ds Max software, you will learn how to render by element, separating important layers that can be used in a compositing workflow. From Composite software, you will learn how to assemble your rendered layers and make post-production changes that impact the look and feel of your final rendered image or animation.

ShotGrid was always considered as a collaborative tool used in the Animation & VFX industries but recently we have managed to pitch ShotGrid in newer industries which includes E-Learning & E-commerce. Also industries like games also have started showing interest in ShotGrid to manage production. This session will have success stories of ShotGrid in industries other than just Animation & VFX to manage production.

This class is based on FATHOM’s experience using Fusion 360 software to design a complex, functional, 3D-printable piece of lab equipment—a cloud-connected microbiological culture incubator called Crucible that’s capable of simulating extremophile environments. After a brief introduction to the project and its challenging requirements, we’ll dive into structuring designs that have powerful timelines, yet are conducive to successive design revisions by a large distributed engineering team. We will also explore how the final look of the product relates to the constraints of 3D printing and the importance of self-supporting geometry. Finally, we’ll discuss why and how we created a slicer for fused deposition modeling (FDM) printers inside of Fusion 360 software. This session features Fusion 360.

Learn how, through the use of the Autodesk Fusion Lifecycle platform, manufacturing companies are able to manage their BoM in a single, secure environment. Hear how this will help you to collaborate more effectively within your own organisation and with external third parties. Starting with the Inventor BoM we will demonstrate how it can be quickly and accurately published to Fusion Lifecycle and how we can then review or modify the BoM, compare it with previous versions, and submit it for approval before release to your ERP system. We will demonstrate how, through the use of third party tools, you can create a fully connected end-to-end solution and eliminate the errors and cost associated with manual data entry. This session features Autodesk’s Fusion Lifecycle (formerly PLM 360) solution.

We’d like to share our journey of how we integrated Universal Scene Description (USD) in Maya into our production pipeline. We’ll set the stage by describing life in Maya prior to USD, when we used a generative scene building framework called Shotsetup. This tool had its strengths and weaknesses, and led us to adopt USD for its promised functionality. We’ll share a technical description of the choices we made, presenting the main artist front-facing tools fueled by AL_USDMaya (EnvironmentStudio2, Forge2). We then made the decision to open source the plugin, and will share the reasons why and the lessons learned. Finally, we will describe the collaboration with Autodesk around the unifying goal: from 3 to 1 plugin.

Weta Digital has a proud history of bringing groundbreaking films to the big screen. We’re known for performance-driven animated characters such as Gollum, Kong, Neytiri, and Caesar as well as well-known fantasy worlds like Middle-earth in Lord of the Rings and Avatar’s Pandora. Along the way, our work has earned six visual effects Academy Awards®, twelve Academy Sci-Tech Awards, and six visual effects BAFTA Awards, in addition to the 34 Visual Effects Society Awards awarded to us by our peers. In this talk, we’ll explore the innovation behind the magic and share an inside look at the proprietary pipeline we’ve built on top of Autodesk Maya that enables our artists to create their best work.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, being able to work remotely has become essential for VFX artists. In this class, learn how Flame on the cloud will break hardware barriers, giving artists across the globe the opportunity to collaborate like never before.