The 3D Seminar Post

Today George, Bruce and I met up with Greg and headed to the Double Tree by Universal to attend a 3D production seminar. The whole thing was hosted by a local retailer specializing in 3D suites and rigs, and was hosted in the convention center under the hotel. There was a nice spread of grub to chow on and drinks, plus a raffle. George won a copy of Bioshock and Bruce snagged some 3D-Game Production books. I of course didn’t win anything, but still had a good time. The star of the night in my eye was Joe Gunn, a graphic artist from New York who was responsible for doing all the animation and modeling for the Bioshock television ads. He was showing off cool things you can do with various programs and walked us through some of the techniques he utilized to make the TV spot for the game. He was working with in-game models of Big Daddy and game environments which as very cool, and basically spent a good hour just talking about working on the project. His firm was actually responsible for the art used on the cover of the game (see below) which I think is pretty awesome. There was another speaker from Autodesk, showing of the latest upgrades to Maya, but it was too over my head to really enjoy. Though he did use official PS3 models from Insomniac to show all his tricks on, which was pretty cool. Afterwards we headed over to the Ale House to throw back a few pitchers and chow on some questionable appetizers.