i lead
our global academic and non-profit team
within our social impact organization
and i'm
really excited to talk to you guys today
i'm the chairperson
of transportation design at the
undergraduate level
at the college for creative studies i
was working in the industry
as car designer mostly for ford and for
honda i'm a an associate professor with
entertainment arts here at ccs i'm also
the director of
game i've worked uh quite extensively
with film production
motion graphics animation and some
programming as well
for folks who don't know very much about
ccs can maybe one of you tell us what
kind of sets you apart from some of the
other schools that are out there
it's really a unique school we're
located in detroit michigan
we have a lot of creative talent located
near and around
our campus we also have you know a
tremendous amount of
influence with the the automotive
industry a lot of our students
you know choose ccs because we do have a
smaller student body that allows us to
focus directly
on individualized attention great it
sounds like your students have an
amazing
opportunity can you tell us a little bit
about how you tend to work with industry
partners
and what particularly has been exciting
about working with unity
typically what we get is the automotive
industry
they come to us looking for future
talent they normally would give us
you know a brief such as what do you
think the next corvette might be so the
briefs can be really broad ranging
but this one was very unique in the
sense that we were
we were not working with an oem
manufacturer working with unity so
it gave us the opportunity to
collaborate with entertainment arts
using the unity platform because virtual
reality
and all the sort of advanced graphics
that unity enables
is really becoming a standard uh within
the industry very very quickly
not only for for developing interactive
ui ux experiences for actual vehicles
but also for advertising promoting
and even internally selling ideas with a
specific storyline
to senior management the story behind
the vehicle can really make or break
whether or not that vehicle is going to
go to production
when the designers have the opportunity
to really visualize
their ideas in real time in an animation
working with visualization designers to
tell the stories it really has a huge
impact
non-designers you know that hold purse
strings
in these really large companies because
it's really billions and billions of
dollars of investment in order to launch
a new vehicle
can you tell us a little bit more about
the program specifically
and about the vehicles of the future
project when you open something up to
the extent that you're asking students
well what will the future look like what
will people be like and what
sort of vehicles will they need then
they really have to open their
imaginations and
think forward and extrapolate okay here
i am now and what is going to be
a potential speculative reality
in 10 15 or 20 years we look at the
process of developing the designing
we do you know absolutely start with a
traditional kind of concept
of sketching and actually ideating out
on paper first
but our students really quickly move
into the
actual 3d modeling process and one of
the awesome things about
using unity is that they can get into
the process and id8 quicker
so the more that they're able to kind of
get into the into the software into the
game engine
they're able to design develop see that
end product really quickly and then turn
it around and go through that ideation
process all over again if something is
clicking or something is working towards
you know the desired outcome
they're able to see that really fast and
i think that's changed a lot of the way
that our students
look at the ideation process they're no
longer so worried about oh i have to
have the perfect idea right now
they can get in and see what it looks
like through various methods within
unity to kind of get a sense of
color material process what materials
are being applied
how the simple things like game
mechanics even if they're working on you
know some type
of game uh application so they're able
to ideate a lot faster and it leads to a
better end product in the long run
as you think about real-time 3d
technology being a part of this process
can you talk a little bit how that's
impacted the way that you teach and the
way the students are learning
we have four tracks four emphasis within
our department we have film
animation game and concept design one of
the really interesting things is that
across all of those tracks we see that
iterative process we see real time 3d
really starting to become something
that is taking a forefront in the way
that our students are starting to
develop
not only from an ideation standpoint but
a storytelling standpoint as well
we look at animators and the way that
they're able to do real-time
motion capture you know actually see the
end result within minutes or
actually real time as they're actually
capturing their motion
the idea of real time and just being
able to see these things
process as you're creating is really
really exciting for students
it's amazing to me as an instructor to
see the process over the last five years
just
powerful these tools have gotten without
really knowing it the industry had been
preparing itself
for copic 19. how do you see the
curriculum then
given this connection with industry and
what you're seeing with real-time
technologies and industry
sort of helping students in terms of
their future careers and
getting those jobs my philosophy is to
offer a lot of different possibilities
students that are more inclined to the
storytelling aspect
were offering you know real-time
animation software for them
and other students you know they might
just be much more of the artist
and while they're skilled with the
digital modeling software and things
like that what they really want to do is
you know massage the clay surfaces in
the studio you know in the traditional
way
and that's good because we need more
diversity in multiple different
you know ways diversity can occur in the
industry because it
everybody's got their own interests and
skill sets and it really creates a
vibrant
workplace now everything happens on this
one kind of pipeline
it's really because of the uh the speed
and power of what we can what we can do
with the
game engine software so that for us is
really exciting too
for us at unity we really believe in
empowering
creators and knowing that the world is
going to be a better place with more
creators in it how do you see the next
generation of creators
really transforming industries as they
graduate you know
gaming as well as industrial or
animation or film industries
like how do you see that future it's
going to become
very apparent how quickly they can get
the job done
uh versus the length of time that has
been
sort of traditional which is like three
to five years to do a car from a blank
piece of paper to a vehicle on the road
so if you can iterate and evaluate
and select you know you can you can
shrink the design
part of the part of that which is you
know normally two and a half
years down to a much shorter period and
i think that's already having an impact
so
there's definitely that and then with
the ease
with which students can explore ideas
you may see some really creative
proposals as well
just because where one idea might have
been too wild too risky
too radical to take it you know to a
another level of investment as one of
two or three themes
now it's nothing you know you're really
not costing the company any money to
instead of have three
themes you know teams of clay modelers
and digital modelers now the designer
can do it himself
and you can have 10 themes to choose
from or 15 depending on how many
designers you have
so we could see some really creative
unexpected
uh solutions i think and more quickly to
market
so i think one of the great things that
we have is that our students
are able to start looking at the process
of innovation early on
while they're in school and through
tools that they have
available there's just a tremendous
amount of
educational options available through
the unity community which is really
awesome
we can see these students kind of
gaining that technical knowledge before
they leave
and then as soon as they get into the
industry we're just starting to see that
you know snowball they're learning how
to learn early on
and they're taking that technical
prowess to the next level as soon as
they get out there
and i think especially for emerging
technologies like augmented reality
virtual reality
those things are just going to start to
pile as well as they move into the
industry
do you see ccs continuing to teach with
real time
3d in the future from my point of view
absolutely it's
become a new standard like i say we're
always going to want
ultimately transportation design people
will
interact with a physical artifact
of some kind and so the world is going
to remain physical right but
the extent to which we can explore new
ideas
at a rapid pace is really unbeatable
looking at what we can accomplish
just from a four-year kind of
exploration of unity with our students
it's something that our students are
expecting there's
really no alternative when a student
comes to ccs to start looking at
developing a career in the game industry
they have to be versed in the game
engines they have to understand
the pipeline and they have to understand
the process
so for us just the fact that that unit
is such a powerful tool for us
it's such an easy tool for our students
to jump into
gain the knowledge quickly understand
the backbone and the pipeline of how
the game engine works it's something
that we could not possibly do without
at this point in our curriculum and in
fact that's something that we're
working on every semester we look at our
curriculum and and try to
figure out the best ways to move forward
and just the ability to look at
real-time 3d
across the board not only for classes
that are specific within
game development or game design but also
as i mentioned before film animation
concept design
all of those tracks all those emphasis
absolutely would be looking at real-time
3d
things like the unity platform that
would give us the ability to
have that quick iteration have the
ability to create powerful
end products and really uh work through
the storytelling in a just a completely
different way
than we ever have in the past so
100 the the curriculum will include
real-time 3d especially through the
the unity platforms it's amazing the
talent that
they're able to cultivate and grow
through your programs thank you
paul and david for spending today with
me i really appreciate your time
thank you a pleasure absolutely thank
you so much