Speakers & Talks - 2024
Stay tuned for this year’s speaker lineup.
Talks are split between pub-floor sessions which are for the entire event audience to see, and individual room sessions which will go in parallel, so participants can choose their preferred content. Talk topics vary, but the underlying idea is to have world-class experts share insight into their processes, latest technology achievements, unique and important projects and similar.
Speakers & Talks - 2023
These are the speakers from EUE ReConnect 2023, which took place June 22-23.
Dalai Felinto
BLENDER
Dalai graduated in Architecture and Urban Studies, and has been using Blender since 2003. He started contributing to the code of blender since version 2.47. At the moment he works as a Blender development coordinator and product manager for a few projects such as geometry nodes.
Geometry Nodes Development Process
In his talk Dalai will share an insight on how artists participate in the development of Blender.
Dave Wortley
INDUSTRIAL LIGHT & MAGIC
Dave is a highly skilled Generalist Pipeline Technical Director based in Vancouver. With expertise in VFX Supervision, studio workflows, pipeline development, software development, and more, he excels in solving problems and finding innovative solutions. He has worked with top clients worldwide, spoken at industry events, and holds a First Class Honours Degree in Computer Animation.
Outside of work, Dave is a passionate photographer, filmmaker, and outdoor enthusiast. His film “FUSE” was recognized at the esteemed Banff Mountain Film & Book Festival. With a strong commitment to continuous improvement, Dave constantly pushes the boundaries in his field and enjoys engaging in various creative endeavors.
This is the V-Ray
How the generalist team at ILM use 3ds max, Houdini and V- ray for StageCraft and post production.
Boyo Frederix & Tom Schuyt
POSTOFFICE
Postoffice create VFX for the international ad market. They have vast experience in many forms of visual effects and specialize in CGI creatures and animals.
VFX for Advertising / CGI Characters
The talk will focus on integrating CGI into live action footage. They will give an in-depth look into how they create CGI characters and animals using several past projects as examples.
Paul Esteves
Paul is a freelance 3d designer. He mostly works in the motion design space, working in advertising and branding. He loves Houdini, but also enjoys playing guitar and woodworking. He lives in Munich, Germany, but is originally from a sunny little town in South Africa called Durban.
Unleashing your Creative Side
My talk ‘Unleashing your Creative Side’ is focused on a collection of client projects I’ve completed in the past. We’ll be taking a look at how starting with a blank canvas we can use Houdini to explore ideas unhindered and really just enjoy the process rather than getting bogged down. I’ll walk through different steps of each project and how Houdini really let me have fun creating and making art.
ANATOLII IUDANOV
XAPKOHHEH
The man who animated THE cube in Houdini. Yes, you know which one. He goes by the alias XAPKOHHEH, and the damn cube has been following him ever since.
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I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for a presentation, I can tell you I don’t have it. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare to listen to for people like you. If you let me go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will bore you to death.
Tim van Helsdingen
After being born and subsequently, a couple of years of learning basic human skills, Tim discovered the wonderful world of CG. His first memory of making anything move on a computer was making ASCII characters move using BASIC on his old computer when he was 9 years old. Later, he progressed to making shitty flash animations and posting them on newgrounds in his teens, and then getting more into 3D as the years progressed.
Fast forward a couple of years to 2013, he graduated and was working fulltime, making branded content with Cinema 4D and After Effects. “This is not the way” he thought. So he quit his job, started freelancing and taught himself Houdini to learn how to destroy things in 3D. Luckily, destroying things in 3D didn’t also destroy his career. So here we are in 2023, still going strong at making cool simulations in Houdini as a freelance artist for clients all around the world, in both VFX and motion design and, whatever else seems interesting. He likes to do it all.
Figure out USD in Solaris as a solo artist
Aside from making stuff for clients, he also tries to put plenty of time in hobby projects and make tutorials out of them to teach others the wonderful ways of CG wizardry. He does this on his YouTube channel and various other places… like the Florin in Utrecht during the upcoming EUE Reconnect, where you can enjoy his presentation about trying to figure out USD in Solaris as a solo artist.
Vladimir “Vlado” Koylazov
Chaos
Vladimir “Vlado” Koylazov is a co-founder of Chaos and is the co-author of the globally acclaimed rendering software V-Ray. He developed V-Ray in 2002, a few years after the launch of Chaos in Sofia, Bulgaria. Today, the physically based renderer is used daily by top design studios, architectural firms, advertising agencies, and visual effects companies around the globe. V-Ray has been honored with Emmy® and Academy Awards® for its role in the widespread adoption of ray-traced rendering for motion pictures and television.
In his role as Chief Technical Officer, Vlado has been the driving force behind the software development, R&D and innovations at Chaos for more than 20 years, while being an active member of the global CG community. Following Chaos’ merger with Enscape in early 2022, Vlado takes over the leadership of the company’s newly established Innovation Lab which will continuously research ways to perfect technologies in the field of ray tracing and 3D visualization. Chaos Innovation Lab is inspired by Chaos’ global vision to create an end-to-end platform for visualization, 3D commerce and beyond which will serve everyone – from artists, to retailers, to end users.
What’s new in Chaos’ Innovation Lab
Vlado will present some of the projects being developed at Chaos’ Innovation Lab related to rendering technology, artificial intelligence and virtual production.
Štefan Lopušný & Sofia Zourelli
Fat Tony Studio
Štefan Lopušný is an architect by education, B-boy by passion, Baseballer by heart and AoE2 player by Steam. And OK, also a co-founder of Fat Tony studio, a “?creative agency?” based in The Hague. He is responsible for projects to run as smoothly as possible and directing the creative approach trying to maintain constant thirst for exciting projects. In the production pipeline, 3D and Animation is his area of expertise, but he likes to think of him as a generalist (even though that is probaly more of a wish than reality). He doesn’t know where he sees himself in 5 or 10 years from now.
Sofia Zourelli is a forever student of architecture. As a co-founder of Fat Tony she has great experience being successfully lost and not knowing what to do while panic ensues, however a sense of responsibility forces her to take some action. She is responsible for intercepting a smoothly running project and changing all possible aspects till it turns to madness. And also for all the IT infrastructure, Administration/HR/studio’s parties and post production & compositing. Her spirit animal is a very silly goose and in 5-10 years she will still have no master’s degree.
Recipe for Success
The recipe to a successful creative agency is very similar to a Beef Wellington.
Ingredients:
- beef fillets – studio founders
- olive oil – clients
- seasoning – timeline
- mushrooms – projects
- Parma ham – studio’s team
- puff pastry – office space
- egg yolks – content
- red wine sauce – imposter syndrome
- thyme, vinegar, shallots – need for improvement
- Take 3 large co-founders out of the fridge and put them in a room together for 2 years to temper.
- After uninspiring work on fast projects, pour them with international clients in a big pan, and sear from all sides until crispy, then let cool for half a year.
- Finely chop frustration and stress and fry in a hot pan with projects from 4 continents. When the projects start to brown, take out one piece of co-founder out and put it in the freezer for later use (while still piping hot).
- Prepare new office space, spread it thin with schedule and creative input and wrap the remaining co-founders with added fresh team tightly.
- Change your mind and open the pastry wrapping, to add more projects and time, so it’s nice and uninspriring, and then wrap back again into tight solid evently exhaused log.
- Leave to rest like that for 2-3 years.
- Brush the wrapped logs with nice images all over to maintain the good feeling of progress for as long as possible.
- While the wrapped, tense founders are resting, you can prepare a red wine doubt-based sauce of selfawareness. All you need is to ask all of the questions, add insecurity, thinly sliced outlook for more creative projects, thyme for a nice scent, and finally mix in passion and constant need to improve.
- Before placing remaining 2 founder wraps into the oven, brush it one more time with good financial numbers, to keep as much moisture of discomforting situation as possible inside the wrapping.
- Place the dish in the over and burn the living hell out of it.
- Order double-cheese burger with the side order of fries.
Bon Appétit
Lucian Stanculescu
Clavicula
I lift this clavicle to worlds without number: Developing a multi-platform 3D modelling software driven by personal art projects
Lucian will go through the motivations, the challenges and the wins in developing Clavicula over the last 9 years. He’ll focus on the two central ideas that led to the variety of techniques and models implemented in this software and more importantly on how they fused together into a whole, rather than become just a collection of tools. He will navigate through the more interesting technical details using visual examples: from traditional techniques of modeling and sculpting to the recent SDF modeler and integrating computation, simulations and visual effects into the workflow using Layer and Object Shaders and also share a little glimpse into what’s coming next.
THomas Grimes
Chaos
Corona 10
Tom will be doing a talk about the upcoming Corona 10, officially releasing at EUE.
Exciting stuff, but we won’t spoil anything here.
Peter Sarhidai & Mihály Paseczki
Lead Developer & Product Designer, Founders at Pulze
From R&D daydream to self-sufficient business: The journey of growing a 3D software business, navigating unexpected hurdles and lessons learned.
Peter and Mihály will share the story of Pulze, from its roots as an R&D project to a thriving business that develops cutting-edge tools for the 3D industry. Discover the challenges they faced in bringing their software idea to life and the strategies they used to overcome them. They will share their insights into various topics such as development, intellectual property, software licensing, payment processing, cloud infrastructure, marketing, and customer support. Gain insights from their experiences and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. Get a sneak peek into Pulze’s future plans, including their work with Cloud and AI technologies.
Cris Robson
Unleashing the Power of Unreal Engine 5
Streaming Levels and Your World
