Join us for an epic digital panel dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusion in the gaming industry. This event unites game developers, designers, storytellers, and enthusiasts to tackle the challenges and unlock the opportunities to create a more inclusive gaming landscape. Power up your network by connecting with industry leaders, dive into an insightful panel discussion, and level up your strategies for breaking down barriers and championing representation in games. Whether you're a veteran player or a newbie to the field, this digital panel is your ultimate chance to connect, learn, and contribute to a more inclusive future in gaming.

This class will focus on basic workflows in Stingray game engine to get your project into Stingray game engine for visualization. We will focus on what you need to do to prep your data and convert your design data to a Stingray project. You will discover the pitfalls to avoid, and you’ll get to an interactive model quickly. And we will cover basic interaction. The class will assume you have familiarity with 3ds Max software and either InfraWorks 360 software or AutoCAD Civil 3D software. Both are preferred. This session features Autodesk Stingray, 3ds Max, and InfraWorks 360. AIA Approved

In a well-set-up workflow, it gets harder to find those incremental improvements that we can use to shave seconds off of each task. What if we could shave seconds off of lots of tasks with one tool? Computer gamers and mechanical-keyboard enthusiasts have a few tools that the CAD community has not yet widely embraced. Gaming peripherals are designed to send multiple keystrokes or commands to a computer in one key press. This class will look at how input devices such as game pads, gaming mice, and customized keyboards can improve a design professional’s workflow. We’ll look at several types of individually customizable input tools, and discuss how we can implement tools that were not designed for a corporate environment in that environment. We’ll examine where these tools have shortcomings, and how to dial in their utility versus the potential for them to be a distraction. The speaker has been using the tools we’ll discuss for more than a decade in Revit software and AutoCAD software—find out why.

Join us for the first-ever “Research Reveals!” Design & Make game show. It's the designers versus the makers: architects versus engineers; product designers versus manufacturers; creatives versus producers. Based on the classic game show “Family Feud,” this fast-paced theater session brings industry experts together to test their knowledge of the latest State of Design & Make report. They’ll need to be fast on the buzzer to compete. Who will win this ultimate, live throwdown? Find out when we play “Research Reveals!”

Learn to procedurally create any kind of physically based rendering (PBR) material with Substance Designer. This will enable you to create physically based materials that not only look believable, but also materials that tile perfectly when rendered. In this class you'll learn how to create some basic materials, and how to translate them into the major rendering applications including: mental ray rendering machine, NVIDIA’s Iray rendering engine, Chaos Group's V-Ray rendering engine, and A360 cloud-based collaboration service. We will also touch on creating material definition language (MDL) materials by using Iray directly inside Substance Designer. With Substance Designer at the center of your material pipeline, you’ll be able to create materials that will look relatively the same across any rendering engine you end up using for visualization. They will even translate into the major gaming engines, such as Stingray game engine, Unreal, and Unity. The industry use case for Substance Designer is unlimited. Anyone doing product design, automotive, architecture, film, and gaming can benefit from adding Substance Designer to his or her pipeline. This session features 3ds Max and A360. AIA Approved

Game engines are known for their innovative graphics and physics. That would make it seem like game engines are only beneficial to architects. This is just not the case. Game engines provide a wide range of benefits to engineering firms, and this class will explain how to get started using them in a way that is easy, fun, and affordable. Game engines could be used to help QA/QC a project, or to help visualize engineering analysis 3D models, or for real-time interactivity using virtual reality (VR), or even as an interactive game that shows construction sequencing animations, and much, much more. The possibilities are endless. Game engines are fun to use, so it’s time to use them in your engineering firm!

Games and applications, especially those on continually evolving mobile devices, now occupy an increasing percentage of a student's day. At the same time, performance in math and engineering for that same demographic is dwindling at an alarming rate. To compete in the future and secure promising opportunities, the latter (but not necessarily the former) must change. This class will offer ways to increase class engagement while using—and building—the types of games and applications almost certainly found in nearly every student's pocket.

In this class, students will learn how to use Revit software, the Live add-in, and Stingray game engine to create high-quality, interactive visualizations from 3D models. First, you will learn how to use the Live add-in to convert 3D Revit models to the game engine, Stingray. Once in Stingray engine, you will learn how to create immersive environments for your clients. In these environments, owners can explore, interact, and even edit their own projects. They can choose from various design options and view the costs associated with them. Students will learn a workflow that is simple, repeatable, and teachable, even for those unfamiliar with video games or programming. The benefits of using gaming in construction include increasing owner involvement, reducing the time and effort it takes to produce an attractive proposal, and facilitating bidding on smaller projects with a quality offering only affordable by larger projects today. Visualizations through Stingray game engine ultimately lead to winning more work. This session features Autodesk Stingray and Revit. AIA Approved

In this hands-on lab, you'll use AutoCAD software to create a basic 3D game environment and a side-scrolling 3D game environment. Learn how to create and import street furniture, buildings, vehicles, and other 3D objects using AutoCAD software's Solid, Surface, and Mesh tools. Export the 3D environment to an FBX file format for the Stingray gaming engine. Import the AutoCAD 3D model into Stingray to see the model in real time. This class is designed to expand your AutoCAD 3D modeling knowledge.

If you want to learn more about how to use visual, generative, artificial intelligence (AI) tools in your workflows, then this class is for you. Regardless of their industry, artists and designers are discovering the advantages of an AI-powered workflow, making their processes faster, and allowing them to iterate over their products in ways that wouldn't have been possible or cost-effective before. We'll examine and cover the strengths and weaknesses of different tools, such as Midjourney, Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, and some plug-ins for Revit software. Most importantly, we'll go over use cases for different industries that go beyond simple text prompting to give artists and designers more control over finished products. We'll showcase how we can use generative AI as a powerful visualization tool for creating images and even videos, and how it can help unleash creativity in game design, media, and building design.

Intended for intermediate to advanced AutoCAD Civil 3D software users, this class is designed to show land development professionals techniques and nuances for creating renderings and movies of their proposed projects. Utilizing many of the programs provided in Infrastructure Design Suite software (AutoCAD Civil 3D software, InfraWorks software, Revit software, and 3ds Max software), this class will consist of a live demonstration showing how to create compelling and grade accurate visualizations of your site designs. By treating InfraWorks 360 software as a “level builder” we will explore how to composite existing and proposed ground surfaces, build and apply coverages for pavement and pavement markings, and prepare tree surveys for 3D placement. Finally, we will explore the use of InfraWorks software models in real-time game rendering engines. By capitalizing on real-time engines, we can shortcut long rendering times to create accurate visualizations quickly.

In this class, we will cover the workflows to create a game from your InfraWorks 360 software designs. The workflow will cover exporting your InfraWorks 360 model, harnessing 3ds Max software, and then using Stingray game engine to create the game. This session features Autodesk Stingray, 3ds Max, and InfraWorks 360.

As architects and designers we are always looking for more advanced ways to share and explore our designs with the client. With the introduction of gaming engines into the architecture industry it has allowed architects more flexibility in how they design and create a more unified collaborative approach with the client. The success of adopting gaming engines into the industry relies heavily on adoption of the software in an already challenging design workflow, from allowing for maximum adaptability as the design changes to creating an optimized experience within the software for client integration and understanding. In this class we will look at CallisonRTKL as a case study, in how we have approached the software and identified the key challenges that are faced in the industry across multiple disciplines, from hospitality, urban planning and Retail, how to overcome them, and how to create seamless integration from BIM models to Unreal for maximum flexibility for the design team.

Designing a virtual reality (VR) environment for the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry depends greatly on content building groups. It leads to designing time consumption for the areas that are not the focus of AEC. Correlating with some level generator aspect of the gaming industry, the expense of environment generation could be reduced with highly varied environment design options. Using the algorithms of procedural generation and VR rendering options, a combination of human-generated assets using Maya software or 3ds Max software and algorithms can render an autogenerated and assorted range of VR environments in Revit software or related AEC tools. We will discuss a study of how procedural generated levels in a Spelunky game can be related to the VR environment generation for AEC, as well as how construction and building design can benefit from existing methodologies in the gaming industry.

In this course you will study and implement techniques for modeling and rendering high-resolution tiling textures in 3ds Max software for design visualization, simulation, and games. Starting with a highly detailed model, you will set up a camera and lighting rig using mental ray software for rendering. Additionally, we will set up the rig to produce a tiling texture without perspective using the mental ray software Production Shaders. Then using render passes and render layers, you will produce albedo, diffuse, normal, specular, mask, and ambient occlusion images suitable for a physically based rendering workflow used in modern rendering and game engines.

Do you want to add game engines like Unreal Engine or Stingray to your toolkit, but you're not sure what you're getting yourself into? Then this class is for you. In this session, you'll hear from a 20-plus-year 3D expert about his transition from the rendered world to the real-time world. You'll hear about how to make sure your data is relevant to the context of a real-time environment, how to create proper geometry, and what transfers and what doesn't. This class will reveal the realities of the on-ramp to using real-time engines. And you'll gain direction as to where you should and shouldn't be spending your time to make your projects successful and visually appealing.

With the introduction of Stingray 3D game engine, multitudes of new workflows are now possible. This class will explore and demystify the material workflows from 3ds Max software and Maya software to Stingray software. Simple materials are easy, but if you really want to capitalize on all Stingray has to offer you need to understand the basics of Shader FX and the new Stingray/PBR (physically based rendering). Much of this material will also be applicable in Unity and Unreal workflows.

Why continue to struggle with outdated design tools when a more efficient approach is within reach? Embracing fabrication tools—like Fabrication Parts in Revit software—P&ID Modeler for Revit allows engineers to focus on engineering rather than spending excessive time on modeling. By starting with fabrication, designers can model faster and seamlessly transfer design intent Mechanical systems that actually work! This “backward” process significantly enhances efficiency, enabling engineers to dedicate more time to engineering rather than laborious modeling. The approach also accelerates the design-to-construction workflow and proactively resolves MEP coordination challenges—even before trade partners are onboarded. As its adoption grows, this strategy is proving to be a game-changer for speeding up the engineering design process and optimizing project delivery.