🔮 My Favorite 3 AI/3D Use Cases at Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco + My 3D Creator Journey 👨🏽🎨👨🏽💻
🔮 My Favorite 3 AI/3D Use Cases at Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco + My 3D Creator Journey 👨🏽🎨👨🏽💻
How I Turned My Passion for 3D & VFX Into A Career: My Creator Journey
The CGI bug bit me early, and it has taken me on quite an adventure. I self-taught my way to using 3D creation tools and have been making VFX videos which got over 170+ million views on YouTube and even more on TikTok. I did this while building amazing products, experiences and a career in Silicon Valley. In both worlds, the themes remain the same — blending realities and building bridges. Here’s my creator journey, sponsored by Autodesk:
🧠 My Favorite 3 Examples of 3D/AI Innovation @ Autodesk Gallery San Francisco
Autodesk also invited me to take a guided tour of their Gallery space in San Francisco — a sweet spot by the Embarcadero which showcases all the cool stuff Autodesk creators are doing with both bits and atoms. People tend to know Autodesk for one or the other, but not both. What do I mean by that?
Watching creator journey above, you’ll see that I grew up on 3dsmax and Maya as my staples for digital 3D creation in the digital domain i.e. bits. Many people think Maya and Max and thus Media & Entertainment — making amazing visual creations for movies, commercials, games in the digital world.
The other side is atoms and the more temporal world we live in. Autodesk is first and foremost a CAD software company, providing the most widely used software for Architecture, Engineering & Construction. Think AutoCAD, Fusion360, Revit — tools like it are used to build real world stuff — from household appliances to vehicles to entire cities.
Needless to say, I was the proverbial kid in a candy store. Here are my three favorite case studies, with links to short videos — so that you can decide to watch, read or do both :)
1/ The Art of Stop Motion Meets The Science Of 3D Animation & 3D Printing Breathing New Life Into An Old Craft
You probably know that stop motion animation is super expensive and time consuming to create. But what if it didn't have to be?
Thanks to 3D design and 3D printing studios like Laika are breathing new life into this age old art form. They start by making all the characters inside 3D tools like Autodesk Maya, but then they 3D print them — which not only brings them to life, but it allows animators to be hands-on in a way that is still difficult to do with computer.
So say you want to animate a character talking you simply 3D model and 3D prints every possible expression your character needs and easily swap out the face on set. I was extremely impressed with the level of creativity stop motion creators are bringing to this age old art form. Check it out:
2/ Architects & Construction Pros Use 3D Digital Twins To Build Structures At Scale While Reducing Waste
I love how robotics and AI are changing construction. We all know building designs are made with computers, but turning those designs into reality is still manual. This means humans can make mistakes to solve this problem.
Companies like Scaled Robotics make these tiny 3D scanning robots that digitize a construction site and automatically compare it to the architect's design, catching error early on in the construction process. This is important because 30% of the waste and landfill actually comes from construction.
But that's not all architects also use tools like Autodesk Insight to simulate energy use before a building is even created. Modeling, sun exposure, heating and cooling to create more sustainable buildings. Sustainability is key for our environments, and Autodesk tools are well positioned to make an immediate real world impact with these workflows.
3/ Designers and Engineers Used Generative AI To Make The World’s Fastest Bike
Finally, my favorite. Now generative AI isn't just for making cool images — You can use it to make incredibly strong and lightweight bikes that crush it in real world tests.
The AI cranks out thousands, if not a million different design options, and then engineers work collaboratively with the AI to refine the final design. What's wild to me is that these AI creations don't look mechanical. They look organic, sometimes even alien like this one that looks like a ribcage or something you'd find inside a human.
What's amazing is you can even have the AI make recommendations for what would be easy to manufacture, like this self-driving car with legs that looks like a futuristic Uber you'd find in Westworld, or designing a hydrogen fuel cell that’d be super difficult to design manually. You really have to see both in the video below — so darn cool.
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Closing Thoughts & Teaser For The Next Edition
All of these case studies are great examples of how AI is being used to augment human creativity and realize our creations — using both bits and atoms — populating the digital and physical worlds we live in every day.
Next weekend, I’ll see you with something a little different — light hearted holiday meme-ing with DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT.
If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with your fellow creatives and technologists. Want to connect? Hit me up @ your favorite spot in cyberspace: https://beacons.ai/billyfx