Mundos Digitales 2008 Trip Review

Mundos Digitales 2008                    
By Jeff Mottle

A few weeks ago I got back from the Mundos Digitales conference in La Coruna, Spain. For those of you who were not able to attend this event in person, this article will cover the highlights. This was my second time attending this event and once again it was a fantastic conference. Hands down this is one of my favorite events to attend in the industry. Last year I attended as a speaker, and this year I moderated several panels and hosted the CGarchitect Industry awards ceremony.

What separates this conference from many of the larger events is the more palatable size, attention to detail, diverse programming and ability to network with people from entertainment, gaming and architecture industries. Although it’s almost impossible to believe that this event, with approximately 60 speakers across all of the disciplines, is the handywork of a single person, Manuel Meijide seems to be able to pull this event off to rave reviews every time. As a conference organizer myself, there are some things you can never fully appreciate until you have tried to organize an event of this size, but take my word, this conference is nothing short of a miraculous undertaking.

Mundos Digitales 2008 was a five day conference with tracks covering animation, VFX and Video games. The Architecture day, on July 1, featured six speakers including: Ximo Peris from Smoothe London, Gustavo Capote from Neoscape in Boston, Jakub Gabriel from Poland, Luís García Rivero , Fabián Méndez González from Urban Simulations in La Coruna, Kim Baumann Larsen from PLACEBO EFFECTS in Norway, and  Robert Graves from GMJ in London.

Gustavo Capote

The morning sessions included: Ximo Peris who spoke about the use of creative composition in Architectural Visualization with references to film and advertising industries. Gustavo, whose session was entitled “No Light Without Shadow”, expanded upon the careful planning of lighting in high quality images. He explained the link between lighting and subject matter and how important it is to use lighting to properly define the subject matter of the scene using color and qualities of light.  Jakub Gabriel, the winner of this year’s CGarchitect Architectural Visualization Competition, spoke about the inspiration  for his competition design which can be seen here. In the last session for the morning Luis and Fabien shared the stage to present their work for a recent project they did in Prague.  The session outlined how they camera matched and color graded CG animation footage over a boom operated live action camera move.

Ximo Peris and Urban Simulations Sessions (Left to Right)


Speaker/Award Winners Dinner following the awards ceremony

After a break for lunch, the afternoon session started again with Kim’s session entitled “Possibilities Arena”, which was a opening ident for the sports division of the Norwegian  broadcast company. Kim walked attendees through the production process from storyboard and animatics and greenscreen shoots to the final 3d set design and post production processes.  The day ended with Robert Graves who spoke about GMJ’s creation and use of 3D/4D city models and how they could be shared within a larger community or city context to create new market opportunities for the design visualization community.

Following the speaker sessions, CGarchitect hosted the Architectural Visualization Industry awards where the winner for the Architectural Visualization Competition and 3D awards were announced. This year’s awards received enormous press within Europe and Spain and were featured in several local and national newspapers and television stations due the Tower of Hercules theme for our AVC competition.  The Tower has been short listed as a nominee for a UNESCO world heritage site. Guest award presenters included: Javier Losada (Major of A Coruña), Fernando Prieto (Director of Fundación Caixa Galicia), Luis Barral (Vicedecano University of A Coruña) and Segundo Pardo (President of Institute of Tower of Hercules).
 
Transparent House, based in San Francisco, USA were this year’s winners for the Best Image category and German based Pure, took top honors in the 3D Awards Best Animation category.  As mentioned earlier, Jakub Gabriel a freelancer from Poland, was the winner of this year’s AVC competition.  For those who might not be aware of the notoriety and exposure that winners of these competitions receive, Jakub received two job offers while he was at the conference!  This year, we also announced a special award for Outstanding Achievement, which was awarded to industry leader Uniform for their excellent work in the industry. This award is given to a company or individual who has helped advance the art of architectural visualization to new levels, and who has received worldwide recognition by their peers. To see the nominees and winners for the 2008 3D awards click here. To view the AVC nominees and winner, click here.

Jakub Gabriel, winner of the 2008 AVC standing in front of his work on display in the gallery.


Uniform accepting the award for Outstanding Achievement, during the CGarchitect.com Industry awards ceremony.

After the awards attendees were shuttled by bus to a special art gallery exhibit showcasing top entries and winners for the CGarchitect.com Industry awards.  This exhibit will stay up for the summer and is open to the public for free.

Window wall at the CGarchitect 3D awards gallery exhibit, showcasing the entries for the 2008 AVC competition.


Winners from the 2008 CGarchitect Industry Awards.


Gallery Exhibit Opening Event.

If you have never been to this conference, I highly recommend attending next year as it is one of the premier European architectural visualization events. Stay tuned to the Mundos Digitales website here for more information on next year’s event.

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