The GFX Café kicks off 2008 with a special presentation on digital hair and fur at noon on Friday, Jan. 18 in the ARTS Lab Garage. Thursday, Jan. 24, ARTS Lab hosts the N.M. Adobe Users Group and Adobe’s AIR | Flex 3 Pre-release Tour.
Armin Bruderlin, senior software engineer and 3D-tools lead at Sony Pictures Imageworks, will present “Advanced Digital Hair/Fur Pipeline.” A practical animal fur and human hair pipeline for digital characters has been in development at Imageworks since its initial implementation in 1998.
To date, Imageworks’ hair/fur pipeline has been successfully utilized in 14 motion pictures, both live-action and computer animated. The system has proven capable of producing a wide range of looks, from short animal fur to long human hair, and, most challengingly, the accurate reproduction of the hair of real actors. In this talk, Bruderlin will introduce the core building blocks that make up the pipeline and present some of the more recent features.
Bruderlin’s work has supported the production of movies such as “Surf’s Up,” “Open Season,” the “Spiderman” movies and “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.” He received a B.Sc. in informatik from the Fachhochschule Furtwagen in Germany, and a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in computer science from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.
ARTS Lab will also welcome Kevin Hoyt of the Adobe Flex/AIR product team, who is traveling to select cities across the country to show off the new features of Flex 3 and AIR in anticipation of its release.
The tour stop on Thursday, Jan. 24, 6-8 p.m. presents a chance to:
· learn about new technologies before they are released,
· meet and talk with Adobe pro Kevin Hoyt,
· discover how these tools will increase productivity,
· learn about new income opportunities that will exist,
· enjoy a wine and cheese reception with colleagues, and
· be entered in a drawing to win more than $3,000 in software, including Flex Builder 3 Professional and Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Web Premium.
Both events will be held at the ARTS Lab Garage, located at 131 Pine St. NE, just north of Central Avenue and one block west of University Boulevard. Registration is required for the AIR | Flex 3 Pre-release Tour. Free tickets are available at: AIR | Flex 3 Pre-release Tour free tickets.