Vertex – the ultimate event for 2D and 3D artists – is returning for its second year in March. This year, the lineup and event look set to be better than ever, and includes talks and workshops from a roster of industry experts in the fields of VFX, arch viz, VR, digital design, gaming and animation.
Vertex 2019 takes place on Friday 8 March at Olympia, London. Get your ticket here and discover more about Vertex's speakers here.
In the meantime, we're looking back on last year's event, which was a runaway success. The event brought together experts of all kinds from the CG industry to offer insights and advice to help hone your 3D skills. Included in the lineup were talks from event partners Notch, Maxon and Insydium.
Matt Swoboda, real-time graphics pioneer and founder of Notch, explored the history of real-time graphics and why now is the right time to dive in; Jonas Pilz from MAXON explained how to create eye-catching motion graphics setups inside Cinema 4D; and Bob Walmsley, a technical trainer at INSYDIUM LTD, demonstrated the latest X-Particles features and hyper-realistic rendering in Cycles 4D. Scroll down to watch videos of their talks.
01. Adventures in real-time
Matt Swoboda is a pioneer of real-time graphics at companies such as Sony. His software, Notch, has been used to create visual experiences for some of the world’s most memorable events, including Beyoncé and U2 world tours.
In this talk, Swoboda explains why now is a really exciting time for motion graphics artists. Designing in real time, without a having to pause to wait for your work to render, brings you closer than ever before to the thing you’re creating. Watch now to discover how Notch can help you rediscover the joy of problem solving, experimenting and improvising on the fly.
02. Cinema 4D MoGraph
In this presentation, Jonas Pilz introduces the powerful MoGraph tools and explains how they can be used to quickly create eye-catching motion graphics in Cinema 4D. You’ll learn how easy it is to set up any kind of graphic 3D animation, from abstract animations to moving fonts and breaking objects.
Pilz will also show you how to use MoGraph setups for VFX and visualisation purposes. In short, you might fall in love with Cinema 4D while watching this talk.
03. X-Particles and Cycles 4D
In this talk, Bob Walmsley demonstrates the latest versions of INSYDIUM LTD’s Cinema 4D plugins X-Particles and Cycles 4D. Using the major new features xpClothFX, xpExplosiaFX and xpFluidFX, Walmsley explains how designers can can switch effortlessly between motion graphics and VFX, within a unified system built on the intuitive particle software.
Discover how X-Particles and Cycles 4D integrates seamlessly into the Cinema 4D workflow, enabling artists to immerse themselves in design, rather than getting bogged down in the technical process.
04. Adventures in procedural design
As 3D designers, we have a tremendous amount of control over the scenes we create. But what happens when the very goal of a project is to hand over some of the design process to external forces like data streams or end users? How do we keep it beautiful? How do we make it unique?
In his talk, The Mill’s CG Design Director, Will MacNeil, talks through a series of recent projects where Mill artists used procedural design techniques, along with SideFX Houdini, to craft one-of-a-kind procedural animation systems.
05. Sébastien Deguy talks augmented artistry at Vertex
In this 30-minute talk, Sébastien Deguy talks about how procedural techniques have a role to play in the creation and evolution of tools for creating 3D art. These tools and the techniques arising from them can augment creativity, helping artists reach their goals by feeling liberated via means such as data amplification, consistency spreading thanks to shared physically-based parameters, procedural yet human-readable parameter-based generation and alteration techniques, non-destructive workflows, and algorithmic hallucinations – and the mix between all of these techniques.
06. Creating a character concept with Oculus Medium
Glen runs SouthernGFX, a small Cheshire based studio specialising in character and creature design and look development with clients including SKY, Nike, Sainsbury's, Adidas, ATI, Screen Scene, Disney, Lego, Pixologic and Wacom. He's been using and training ZBrush in the UK for over 15 years and is a Wacom Ambassador for the UK and Ireland.
Within the workshop at Vertex, Glen will show the process of concepting a character, using tools such as Oculus Medium. This highlights the ease and immediacy of getting results in a workspace which is so close to the way the end user experiences them. This workshop will cover initial setup, learning the UI and setting good practice rules for working in this space, then will look at sculpting in 3D, using stamps and navigating with your body and hands, as well as texturing and output for other formats, including 3D printing.
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