Hasta La Motion!

Unity successfully concluded its Mumbai Roadshow on 9 May. Even though the climate was not at its pleasant best, it did not deter around 90 enthusiasts from various fields to take part in the event, defying the blistering heat of the city.

People started gathering at the Concord Hall of Juhu’s Ramada Plaza at the stipulated time and soon after the registrations were done and everyone settled down, AnimationXpress, founder, chairman and editor in chief, Anil Wanvari took to the dais and kick-started the event. After the initial welcome address, Unity, regional director South APAC, Quentin Staes-Polet, was invited upon stage to address the attendees. He spoke about how Unity is gaining ground and reaching more masses day by day.

Concluding his brief introductory address, it was time for the global evangelist, Matthew Muller to take on the stage. After introducing himself, he put light on how Unity came into being and how it is changing the way content is created, or more precisely, how Unity is making it easier for the creators.

It was Muller’s first time in India and he had already visited a few studios, he informed. Unity currently has around 1.5 million active users worldwide and Muller; field engineer for Unity notified the attendees on big projects that Unity was involved in – like the recently released movie ‘Passengers’.

The first section of the event revolved around the genre of film making and how real-time rendering through Unity has made the process much easier. Citing one of its own creations as an example, he showcased ‘Adam’ and gave an overview to the audience on how the feature came into being. With more than a quarter million dollars spent on the demo of Adam, around eight people worked on it for around a year, as no one was working full-time on it.

Muller focused on the fact that why Unity is becoming the go-to-name for people in the industry, as they received a huge number of positive responses and enquiries from big studios of the film industry after the demo of Adam was released.

The speaker also talked about the animated short titled ‘The Gift’ and how Unity assisted the creators while production. Apart from that, before concluding the ‘Cinematics with Unity’ section, the speaker also highlighted ‘Mr. Cartoon’ which is a 13×2 animated episodic series on France TV.

Matthew Muller

Now, the topic shifted to gaming and people from the industry present in the attendees were all ears to the speaker. He started off by briefing about the Look Dev Tool which can be used to balance the environment in real time, further focusing on Setup: Linear and Gamma imagery, and the differences between them, how all images are linear firsthand and are much more photo realistic. He also went on to mention on how Unity has 4 render loops.

Focusing on camera techniques, he demonstrated the ‘fly camera’ which can be controlled by right clicking and using the buttons W, S, A and D and also on how to work on free camera.

Soon the speaker decided to make the session even more interactive than it already was. It was a game where he would show effects on the screen and the audience had to guess which effect is being used and the list included lens flare, lens dirt, tone mapping, bloom, motion blur and more. He spoke about lighting, ambient, direct, indirect light and more, while also informing how to control volumetric lighting on fog and object independently. Finally, he talked about Sequencer, the Experimental build 5.6, which is currently in beta and will be officially released in 2017.

The fruitful event came to an end with Muller answering questions from the audience, however the event had completely been interactive, rather than one sided. There was also a VR headset (HTC Vive) present at the event for the audience to experience virtual reality. Attendees were treated with finger food and beverages interspersed with a networking session.

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