This Thursday, Autodesk and MotionMedia (local reseller on the West Side in LA) is hosting a live event to kick off the release of the 2011 line of Media & Entertainment products.

Agenda from the website:

10am-12:30pm – Games
12:30pm-2pm – Lunch with Pixelactive (CityScape), Matrox, Axceleon & more TBA…
2pm-4:30pm – Post Production

>> Register HERE <<

Digital Entertainment Creation for Games

Steven Roselle, Mark Schoennagel, and Mark Noland show off the new 2011 versions of new 2011 versions of Maya, 3ds Max, Mudbox and Softimage in a session targeted on new features and enhancements benefiting game development pipelines.

3ds Max 2011 for Games
3ds Max 2011 has just shipped and it has already received strong positive vibes from the 3D community. Game Developer’s Best 3D Creation Tool is now better than ever with new advanced productive and creative tools. In this demonstration, you’ll see new tools such as the Slate material editor, Quicksilver Hardware Rendering, Objects and Textures 3D Paint modules as well as CAT and CAT Muscle for fast rigging and animation of all sorts of characters.

• Slate Material Editor – Node-based alternative for material editing
• Quicksilver – New hardware rendering option
• Viewport Canvas – 2D and 3D painting with PSD layer support
• Object Paint – Use 3D models as ‘brushes’ on other scene geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT) – Fast rigging and layered animation system
• New OpenEXR workflow – Rendering and Compositing updates
• Autodesk Composite

Maya 2011 for Games
Come see how Maya 2011 can enhance your 3d workflow in practically any area of the application. A new revitalized UI allows a consistent and improved experience regardless of platform. New skinning tools and capabilities allow faster skinning process with better results. The addition of non-destructive retargeting lets you reuse and enhance animation through the use of Human IK and animation layers.

• General UI updates
• Using QT and QT designer for creating custom UI
• Script Editor updates and PyMEL integration
• Viewport 2.0 for working with large data sets
• Assets and referencing enhancements
• Modeling and general workflow improvements
• BonusTools2011: New UV unwrapping tool
• Skinning overhaul
• Animation and Graph Editor Updates
• New HumanIK Retargeting workflow
• Sequencer for cinematics

Mudbox 2011 for Games
Softimage 2011 has some new and never before seen capabilities like ICE kinematics which allow a character’s movement to be driven in new unrestrictive ways. Face Robot now has Lip Synching functionality enabling the instant generation of facial animation based on an audio file. This in addition to new ICE compounds and Mental Ray shaders. Come see it in action.

Softimage 2011 for Games
Softimage 2011 has some new and never before seen capabilities like ICE kinematics which allow a character’s movement to be driven in new unrestrictive ways. Face Robot now has Lip Synching functionality enabling the instant generation of facial animation based on an audio file. This in addition to new ICE compounds and Mental Ray shaders. Come see it in action.

• Face Robot– Lip sync from Audio
• ICE- ICE kinematics

Digital Entertainment Creation for Post Production

Steven Roselle, Mark Schoennagel, and Mark Noland show off the new 2011 versions of new 2011 versions of Maya, 3ds Max, and Softimage in a session targeted on new features and enhancements benefiting post production pipelines. In addition we will be giving a live demonstration of the all new Smoke for Mac!

3ds Max 2011 for Post Production & Film
3ds Max 2011 has just shipped and it has already received strong positive vibes from the 3D community. Game Developer’s Best 3D Creation Tool is now better than ever with new advanced productive and creative tools. In this demonstration, you’ll see new tools such as the Slate material editor, Quicksilver Hardware Rendering, Objects and Textures 3D Paint modules as well as CAT and CAT Muscle for fast rigging and animation of all sorts of characters.

• Slate Material Editor – Node-based alternative for material editing
• Quicksilver – New hardware rendering option
• Viewport Canvas – 2D and 3D painting with PSD layer support
• Object Paint – Use 3D models as ‘brushes’ on other scene geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT) – Fast rigging and layered animation system
• New OpenEXR workflow – Rendering and Compositing updates
• Autodesk Composite

Maya 2011 for Post Production & Film
Come see how Maya 2011 can enhance your 3d workflow in practically any area of the application. A new revitalized UI allows a consistent and improved experience regardless of platform. New skinning tools and capabilities allow faster skinning process with better results. The addition of non-destructive retargeting lets you reuse and enhance animation through the use of Human IK and animation layers.

• UI and Viewport 2.0
• Qt and scripting enhancements (PyMel etc.)
• Modeling updates and new tools
• Time warps and animation updates
• Show assets with the aircraft demo
• Rigging and skinning
• Dual quaternions and blended weighting
• Retargeting the mocap as well as adding animation Layers
• Nucleus (fire, jet trails on aircraft, bombs, explosion)
• Stereo camera rigs
• Storyboards laid out in Camera Sequencer and 3d layout
• Rendering with color management

Smoke 2011 for Mac OS X
In this session, we will show you how to unleash your creative potential and grow your business by adding Smokes powerful toolset to your workflow.

We will demonstrate Smokes end –to-end workflow and the advantages of an integrated finishing suite. Moving easily between conform and visual effects in a single application we will show how Smoke enables artists by leveraging industry leading tools. You will also see Smokes true 3-D compositing environment and how it allows you to build on your existing creative cut.

• Keep more of your creative in-house
• All-in-one tools for editorial finishing
• Native support for industry standard formats
• Powerful 3D visual effects toolset built-in ‘Don’t Just Edit. Finish.’

>> Register HERE <<