Autodesk partnering with Epic Games with Unreal Engine 5!

[Hunteil]

Summary

 Autodesk University 2022 (a Conference with news for the engineering/design world) was held in new Orleans this year to share industry talks. See below links for keynote speeches. These were quite eye opening to see the mega giant CAD company has really pushed themselves into other industries than just CAD. They barely talked about anything traditional engineering CAD and instead really pushed the entertainment sector to the forefront with how their products are being used for new movies and shows like The Lord of the Rings show Rings of Power by Amazon and a dozen plus other franchises. They also announced they are now partnering with EPIC GAMES and Unreal Engine and pushing their Cloud data solutions!

 

My thoughts

   I could barely contain myself as I heard this news. From what it sounds like, they are going to bring the engineering CAD tools we all love to entertainment world. Assets will be accessible between studios & companies? I emphasis the ? mark because as usual, Autodesk is being vague about the potential this news can have. 

   The Unreal news very Interesting news for the engineering world. But currently it only covers a small portion of the Autodesk platform. I wish to hear more details on the matter to see if they plan to push it further into other applications. I personally went to a few events where expert users were using Unreal, opening files in Maya, then exporting to 3D Studio Max and exporting again to be used in Inventor and other CAD like programs... Then use the same path in reverse to export back for color scaling and testing in the game environments. One event discussed how they could use the Unreal tools to make online virtual meetings with notes on how to design the games with web platforms in mind and how to help ensure non-game users are able navigate the environments.

 

Sources

• https://www.autodesk.com/autodesk-university/conference/overview <-attended
• https://events-platform.autodesk.com/event/au-2022-digital-experience/planning/UGxhbm5pbmdfOTg5MTg0 <-Still viewable General Keynote speeches 1
• https://events-platform.autodesk.com/event/au-2022-digital-experience/planning/UGxhbm5pbmdfOTg5NDQx <-Still viewable General Keynote speeches 2
• https://events-platform.autodesk.com/event/au-2022-digital-experience/planning/UGxhbm5pbmdfOTg5MjYx

[jaslion]

Finally no longer having tonuse external plugins, tools,... to have an efficient workflow.

[tim0901]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post - I've not watched any of the keynote stuff - but Autodesk being involved in the entertainment industry is nothing new. Blender may get the attention in the YouTube space, but Maya and 3DS Max are the industry standards for pretty much every 3D animation/VFX studio out there and have been for years. It's been the go-to for many game dev studios for a long time as well and as such has supported Unity and Unreal 4 pretty much since their inception.

 

Again - maybe I'm missing something - but it sounds to me like they're just introducing support for moving assets to and from Unreal 5, which would allow you to upload them to the Unreal asset store (or whatever it's called).

[Hunteil]

1 hour ago, tim0901 said:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post - I've not watched any of the keynote stuff - but Autodesk being involved in the entertainment industry is nothing new. Blender may get the attention in the YouTube space, but Maya and 3DS Max are the industry standards for pretty much every 3D animation/VFX studio out there and have been for years. It's been the go-to for many game dev studios for a long time as well and as such has supported Unity and Unreal 4 pretty much since their inception.

 

Again - maybe I'm missing something - but it sounds to me like they're just introducing support for moving assets to and from Unreal 5, which would allow you to upload them to the Unreal asset store (or whatever it's called).

You're right. It's a lot of mostly vague talk. But they announced it as new features and ways to accomplish things. I think the big take here is that you can now import/export with keeping dependencies more in check. One of the most annoying things in the past is trying to share models between 2 different pieces of software and having to export to a middle ground format and losing all the features or steps used to make it in the name of protecting potential proprietary information. Now they're saying it'll retain that info for a standardized workflow. I'm really curious myself b/c I can 3D model like an expert in some of these platforms but not in others... If I can transfer my modeling skills over without all the extra work of re-training myself. The better. Door WILL open with that type of change. Oh and btw, rendering in some of this apps are just a downright pain. The fact Unreal can now REALTIME synchronize models from Inventor or Revit and render that with affects is a game changer. Digital Twin workflows now seem more possible than ever.

[Quackers101]

"partnering for the metaverse and digital twin"

ouch. also meta having troubles and freezing to other stuff to keep their value up.

So much for the "metaverse", but its also a bit nice when big giants come together and make a standard.

although bringing with some... nasty surprises too. Also unity, unreal and Nvidias omniverse tries to have this realtime workflow, all three having their pros and cons.

[Dabombinable]

Considering the high school I went to only used Autodesk programs for CAD, and Halo 1 as an example was modelled in 3DS Max - not really a big deal.

[Kisai]

11 hours ago, tim0901 said:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post - I've not watched any of the keynote stuff - but Autodesk being involved in the entertainment industry is nothing new.

You could already use Revit with Unreal Engine via twinmotion. So I'm not sure why this is "new"

 

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/epic-and-autodesk-join-forces-to-accelerate-real-time-experiences

Quote

“The integration between Autodesk Revit and Twinmotion promises to deliver a truly seamless, real-time 3D experience for design professionals,” said Marc Petit, Epic Games’ Vice President, Unreal Engine Ecosystem. "We share a common goal with Autodesk, giving customers more time to be innovative. By tapping into Epic’s ecosystem of real-time 3D tools and libraries, creatives can spend more time bringing their designs to life and less time stumbling over complex data and technical workflows."

 

Perhaps this is just bringing it to the games side of the engine and not just using the engine as a way to visualize it.

[Doobeedoo]

This would make better workflow integration.

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to General Discussion

 

@Hunteil, this thread does not comply with guidelines for Tech News. The main problem is that this is first-party news. As in you are the one reporting on it. We do allow threads discussing live events where all can watch or read material given out. But for Tech News section, the purpose is to summarize news articles that have been published by established news outlets, in tech realm or other.

 

So the issues in you thread:

• No quote from article you would be summarizing
• No source site that your quote would be from and that would have done same as you with your summary.

Thread can be moved back if the criteria is met.

[TVwazhere]

This isnt a surprise or shock at all. Autodesk software has already been used for UE4 games like Borderlands 3. 

Quote

We currently have an opening for a motion capture technician. That mentions requirements with Vicon Blade and Autodesk motion builder software for capturing animations. We also use 3D StudioMax, Maya and other software for rigging and animating.

 

[SprinkledDount]

On 9/30/2022 at 9:46 AM, Hunteil said:

From what it sounds like, they are going to bring the engineering CAD tools we all love to entertainment world.

 

On 9/30/2022 at 10:46 AM, tim0901 said:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post - I've not watched any of the keynote stuff - but Autodesk being involved in the entertainment industry is nothing new. Blender may get the attention in the YouTube space, but Maya and 3DS Max are the industry standards for pretty much every 3D animation/VFX studio out there and have been for years. It's been the go-to for many game dev studios for a long time as well and as such has supported Unity and Unreal 4 pretty much since their inception.

 

Again - maybe I'm missing something - but it sounds to me like they're just introducing support for moving assets to and from Unreal 5, which would allow you to upload them to the Unreal asset store (or whatever it's called).

Aside from what @tim0901 has mentioned the entertainment industry has been using CAD for all sorts of things since there was viable software. Today sets for film and theatre are designed in CAD, lighting work for theatre is done in CAD, and there are definitely other areas that use it that I can't think of. CAD has been apart of the entertainment world its just hard to see.

[Thaldor]

-edit-

[IPD]

*Rant*

 

Epic needs to DIAF.  Everyone that plays Fortnite needs to DIAF.  Gears of War and everyone that played it needs to DIAF.  Balance will not be returned to the force until Unreal Tournament 5 debuts and is actually better than UT 2004.  Disagree with me?  That's fine; I will stab you in the face with a soldering iron.

 

/Rant