This week in Las Vegas, Autodesk holds a yearly event titled “Autodesk University” which brings together users, partners and all the Autodesk divisions at one venue to learn, network and get a glimpse into Autodesk’s vision of the future. Each division offers it’s share of courses, talks and presentations to showcase their solutions, technology and of course, their own unique vision into their future direction. This year, our division Media and Entertainment is poised for its biggest presence to date at AU (Autodesk University), in effect, signaling its reinvigorated commitment to the Design Visualization space.

This is a new space for me personally, having spent little time in non-entertainment markets, which makes it quite an exciting market to discover and learn more about. How on earth could DesignViz (Design Visualization) be more exciting than working with the biggest entertainment companies on earth you ask? Well, to be clear, there is not much that I know of that is more exciting and engaging the working with our entertainment clients. But what is exciting about the DesignViz space is the aspect of convergence that is particularly apparent when we look high level market requirements and direction.

Let’s take at an example of this convergence to illustrate my point: Visual Concept Development (VCD – yes, I made up this acronym and intend to use it with vigor!). The notion of rapid creation and iteration of a visual concept, product, story or idea is becoming more and more important, not just to movie studios or game companies, but to the design community as well, whether they are working on a new consumer product (read: shampoo bottle), the new series of sports cars or an office building that must conform to strict city code. All of these projects share the need to create visual concepts – rough renditions or outlines, which depict the essence or vision of the desired end product. This step of visualizing the concept prior to producing it in the entertainment industry is called “pre-visualization”, for obvious reasons. The step of visualizing your concept or product before you apply production level resources to it has helped avoid many a disaster in hiding (One that slipped through the cracks: the GM Avalanche with the square wheel wells – ugly).

But visual concept development is not just limited to visualization; it is also an enabling process for exploration and refinement of your concept. Creative’s require the ability to test ideas, experiment with alternative settings, situations, setups, and configurations, all in the vein of refining and perfecting their concept.

With that, I can admit that yes indeed, DesignViz is a very exciting domain, one in which I intend to explore in the coming week. And being as how I’m surrounded by some of the best in the industry, I’m sure to get the exposure I’m seeking.

Stay tuned – more to come later in the week!

CG