Community spirit
3D World looks at the studios, developers and organisations helping the CG community through the current global health crisis
How developers are supporting CG artists during this hard time
From established studios and top artists, to industry veterans and aspiring students, the entire CG community is facing unprecedented challenges in the wake of the current COVID-19 crisis. From the safety of their own homes, team
3D World has rounded up some of the best ways that studios, developers and organisations are helping the community through these strange times.
Among the developers lending a hand to the community during this global health crisis is Unity. The creator of the real-time development platform has committed to supporting artists and creators with free access to Unity Learn Premium for a period of three months, from 19 March to 20 June 2020. The educational platform helps individuals to enhance their realtime 3D development skills, with learning resources for specialisations across different industries, all created by Unity experts. Users can get exclusive access to these experts, live interactive sessions, on-demand learning resources, and much more. More information can be found at unity.com/ products/learn-premium.
In light of the health risks associated with COVID-19, many of the industry events scheduled for 2020 have been postponed or cancelled. As a response to the cancellation of April’s NAB 2020 Show, Maxon decided to host a virtual NAB 2020 on C4dlive. com. The artists originally slated to appear at the Las Vegas event shared production tips, techniques and inspiration for Maxon’s Cinema 4D, Red Giant and Redshift products.
The exciting roster featured Mike Winkelmann, perhaps better known to the 3D art community as Beeple, the man behind those incredible everyday renders and a number of other projects. Elsewhere there were talks from the likes of E.J. Hassenfratz, Chris Schmidt, Veronica Falconieri Hays, Seth Worley, and loads more. The range of live-streamed presentations can be watched over at C4dlive.com.
This period of change has done nothing to stop Escape Studios from developing raw talent and harnessing big career aspirations across the VFX, video game, animation, and motion graphics industries. In an effort to help aspiring creatives decide on their chosen career path, Escape Studios is offering a free careers quiz at pearsoncollegelondon.ac.uk/escapestudios/careers/quiz.html. The quiz takes less than five minutes and reveals whether the participant is more suited for a career in film, TV or video games, before they receive a copy of the 2020 edition of Escape’s Careers Guide.
Elsewhere in the world of industry events, Sidefx brought their GDC Houdini HIVE presentations online from 25-27 March, via their official Youtube channel. The first two days of streaming featured a host of educational and inspiring presentations by Sidefx’s own technical experts and a variety of industry professionals. The final day saw Sidefx live-play a selection of games on Twitch, all of which were made using Houdini. All the online presentations and game streams can be found at sidefx.com/community/ houdini-hive-gamedev.
Creators of video effects, motion graphics tools and VFX software Red Giant have also made some changes to benefit certain members of the CG community. Last year the developer introduced Red Giant Complete, a complete set of tools available for one low annual subscription price. Now, in answer to high demand, they have announced Red Giant Complete Monthly, the same products available as a flexible monthly subscription. What’s more, Red Giant have made Red Giant Complete free of charge for students and faculty members of a university, college, or high school. More information can be found at redgiant. com/blog.