Kevin Vandecar, Principal Developer at Autodesk

Kevin Vandecar is an Autodesk Forge developer advocate and the manager for the Media & Entertainment and Manufacturing Autodesk Developer Network Workgroups. His specialty is 3ds Max software customization and programming, including the new Forge Design Automation for 3ds Max service.

Marcus Nordenstam, Senior Product Manager at Autodesk

Marcus Nordenstam is the product manager for Bifrost in Maya at Autodesk. Prior to venturing into the software world, he worked at studios including Double Negative, Activision, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and ILM.

Todd Akita, VFX Supervisor at The Mill

Todd Akita is an FX Supervisor and a lead member of the The Mill’s 3D team. Based out of The Mill’s New York studio, Todd manages a team of specialists who focus on simulation related effects such as smoke, fire and water. Todd’s vast experience in the FX field ensures he always delivers the highest quality work, helping bring creatives and director’s visions to life. Todd’s expertise have led him to collaborate with big name brands such as Coca-Cola, Adidas and Mercedes among others. His recent creative highlights include Gillette ‘Bond Moments’, Schick ‘Hydro Robot’ and PlayStation ‘The King’. As a member of the highly regarded VFX industry bodies ACM Siggraph and the Visual Effects Society, Todd is often looked to a source of learning and advice within the VFX industry.

Frederic Servant, Senior Software Development Manager at Autodesk

Frederic Servant is based in London and leads the diverse team of experts that develop and support the Arnold renderer. He was previously the main developer of the Arnold integration in Houdini. Prior to working on Arnold, Frederic worked as an R&D Engineer at The Mill in London and La Maison in Paris.

Will Harris, Product Manager at Autodesk

Will is the Autodesk Flame Family product line manager, serving as interface between customers’ needs and the software development team in Montreal, recently architecting the latest Flame releases – including tools such as 3d Selective - AI Depth and Normal extraction, Flame’s Image node and Effects environment, Connected Conform workflow and Matchbox GLSL Post processing FX. Flame family products do non-linear video editing, shot based VFX compositing and Color grading & finishing - for Advertising, Episodic TV shows and feature films. Will’s background is as an artist on Flame and Lustre, an Autodesk Applications Engineer, and a Flame Family Product line manager for 4 years.

Evan Atherton, Senior Research Engineer at Autodesk

Evan Atherton is a Senior Research Engineer for the Autodesk Robotics Lab. He is currently focused on developing intuitive methods for controlling industrial robots to democratize their use in film and media production. Evan received both his Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and has been with Autodesk ever since.

Sebastian Casallas, Sr. Software Engineer at Autodesk

Sebastian Casallas, PhD, is a Sr. Software Engineer at Autodesk, leading a team with the mission of empowering 3D artists to focus on their creativity by providing them AI-based tools. During his tenure at Autodesk he has also worked on collaborative, real-time, and immersive workflows for visualization and content creation.

David MacDonald, Sr. Principal Research Engineer at Autodesk

For over 14 years at Autodesk, David has been involved in research and development of software for a variety of rendering, image-processing, graphics, and extended reality applications. Currently, one of his research interests is how AI might be used to simplify and streamline content-creation workflows.

Mathieu Muller, Technical Product Manager, Media & Entertainment at Unity

Mathieu Muller has 17 years of experience in real-time engines, as a software programmer and field engineer. After spending a few years on the ground helping film, animation, and broadcast studios to use real-time technologies in their production pipelines, he is now in charge of making Unity a better product for Media & Entertainment studios.

TJ Galda, Senior Product Line Manager at Autodesk

TJ has worked in film VFX and games for over 20 years. From DreamWorks, Technicolor, the Vancouver Film School, and later as Development Director at EA is currently the Senior Product Line Manager at Autodesk for the Entertainment Collection at Autodesk managing software like Maya, MotionBuilder and more.

TJ Galda, Senior Product Line Manager at Autodesk

TJ has worked in film VFX and games for over 20 years. From DreamWorks, Technicolor, the Vancouver Film School, and later as Development Director at EA, TJ has managed projects with big expectations. He is currently the Senior Product Line Manager at Autodesk for the Entertainment Collection at Autodesk managing software like Maya, MotionBuilder and more.

Wes McDermott, Integrations Product Manager, Substance, Adobe

Wes McDermott is a technical artist and strives to improve his work by finding a key balance between his technical knowledge and artistic skill set. He works for Substance as an Integrations Product Manager, but most know him as an expert Substance teacher, and the voice behind many Substance tutorials. Wes is also the author of The PBR Guide: A Handbook for Physically-Based Rendering, Real Word MODO and Creating 3D Game Art for the iPhone with Unity.

Christopher Moore, Technical Program Manager at Blue Sky Studios

Christopher is a Technical Program Manager at Blue Sky Studios as part of the Production Technology Group. Joining Blue Sky Studios in 2007, he has worked in several capacities, including : Materials TD, Senior Pipeline Engineer, Set Supervisor and Technical Supervisor - Production Pipeline. He has always worked closely between Technical and Production, shepherding and implementing many new technologies for environments and crowds (on Rio and Epic ). More recently, engaging in improving strategic vendor relations for a studio-backed Animation Performance Initiative for the studio's

Troy Wuelfing, Senior Post Producer at IKEA

Dawn Fidrick, Producer at The Griffith Observatory

Eli Rarey, Shotgun SME at Autodesk

Marcus Nordenstam, Senior Product Manager at Autodesk

Marcus Nordenstam is the product manager for Bifrost in Maya at Autodesk. Prior to venturing into the software world, he worked at studios including Double Negative, Activision, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and ILM.

Eloi Andaluz Fulla, VFX Artist at Scanline

Eloi Andaluz Fulla is a self-taught VFX artist who started on 3ds Max back in 2002. With a past in architectural visualization, he transitioned to motion graphics and advertising and later, mapping for Operas across the globe. Eloi worked for Moment Factory, working on interactive installations and mappings. Today, he works at Scanline and is an active beta tester for Thinking Particles, 3ds max, Bifrost, Arnold and Storm.

Nicolas Fonta, Product Manager at Autodesk

Nicolas Fonta is a software engineer by training and worked in real-time, rendering and content creation as a developer, an engineering manager and a product manager. He is now responsible for the product direction and strategy as the head of the 3ds Max product management team in Montreal.

Eloi Andaluz Fulla, VFX Artist at Scanline

Eloi Andaluz Fulla is a self-taught VFX artist who started on 3ds Max back in 2002. With a past in architectural visualization, he transitioned to motion graphics and advertising and later, mapping for Operas across the globe. Eloi worked for Moment Factory, working on interactive installations and mappings. Today, he works at Scanline and is an active beta tester for Thinking Particles, 3ds max, Bifrost, Arnold and Storm.

Will Telford, Senior Product Owner at Autodesk

Will Telford is an alumnus of Rhythm & Hues Studios, Blackthorn Media, and Blizzard Entertainment. As a former Visual Effects Supervisor, Digital Effects Supervisor, Creature Supervisor, Rigging Supervisor, and Rigging TD he has worked on dozens of films, commercials, VR experiences and cinematic shorts. Currently he is the Product Owner of USD and Rigging technology for Maya at Autodesk.

Aidan Sarsfield, Head of Production Technology at Animal Logic

In his career at Award-winning visual effects and animation studio Animal Logic, Aidan Sarsfield has spent almost 20 years manipulating cutting edge technology to meet the creative needs of large-scale CGI pipelines. Having joined the company's film division in 1999 following a successful career as a freelance industrial designer, his credits include The LEGO® Batman Movie, The LEGO® Movie, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, Happy Feet, Matrix: Reloaded and Moulin Rouge! As Head of Production Technology, Aidan’s key focus is on the ongoing evolution of the Animal Logic VFX and Animation pipelines.

Edward Luong, Software Engineer at Pixar Animation Studios

Edward Luong has been a software engineer at Pixar Animation Studios for 9 years. He has worked on developing tools for sets/environment artists as well as integrating USD into various third-party packages in the pipeline.

Frank DeLise, Director of Product Management at NVIDIA

Frank DeLise is based in California and a Director of Product Management at NVIDIA. Prior to joining NVIDIA, Frank worked at Autodesk for over 7 years. Frank has a proven record of accomplishment at identifying, developing, and executing highly profitable software, mobile, AR|VR and cloud products.

Frederic Servant, Senior Software Development Manager at Autodesk

Frederic Servant is based in London and leads the diverse team of experts that develops and support the Arnold renderer. He was previously the main developer of the Arnold integration in Houdini. Prior to working on Arnold, Frederic worked as an R&D Engineer at The Mill in London and La Maison in Paris.

Suraj "Sid" Harrington-Odedra, VFX Supervisor at The Mill

Suraj "Sid" Harrington-Odedra has worked at The Mill London for 13 years where he is now a VFX Supervisor and avid HtoA/MtoA user.

Adrien Herubel, Principal Software Engineer at Autodesk

Adrien Herubel is a principal software engineer at Autodesk. He currently works on the Arnold renderer team and leads the GPU project. He has over a decade of experience working in animation and VFX studios, specializing in rendering.

Eric Bourque, Director of Engineering at Autodesk

Eric Bourque is a director of engineering in Autodesk’s Entertainment Creation Products group. He has a Ph.D. in computer science from McGill University, and has been actively involved in Autodesk’s commitment to open source. He leads the CG Spotlight event series in Montreal, co-presented by Montreal ACM SIGGRAPH and Autodesk, where local studios and universities meet to present their latest results

Jonathan Stone, Senior Software Developer at Lucasfilm Advanced Development Group

Jonathan Stone is a senior engineer at the Lucasfilm ADG and the lead developer of MaterialX. He has developed real-time rendering technology for Lucasfilm since 2010, and his work has been leveraged in films including Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Pacific Rim.

David Larsson, Senior Software Engineer at Adobe (Allegorithmic)

David is an experienced developer having worked with rendering and materials at Illuminate Labs, Autodesk, Simplygon and Allegorithmic. At Adobe, he is part of the Substance Labs group as a Senior Software Engineer.

Will Harris, Product Manager at Autodesk

Will is the Autodesk Flame Family product line manager, serving as interface between customers’ needs and the software development team in Montreal, recently architecting the latest Flame releases – including tools such as 3d Selective - AI Depth and Normal extraction, Flame’s Image node and Effects environment, Connected Conform workflow and Matchbox GLSL Post processing FX. Flame family products do non-linear video editing, shot based VFX compositing and Color grading & finishing - for Advertising, Episodic TV shows and feature films. Will’s background is as an artist on Flame and Lustre, an Autodesk Applications Engineer, and a Flame Family Product line manager for 4 years.

Stefan Gaillot, VFX Supervisor and Flame Technical Director at a52

Stefan Gaillot is a VFX Supervisor and Flame Technical Director at a52 and Elastic Studio in Santa Monica, California.