LucasArts and ILM: a course in film and game convergence

In this course, senior members of ILM and Lucasarts describe the motivation, experiences, and lessons learned in integrating film and game technologies at the Lucas companies. The presentation starts with a quick overview of the two companies, their new combined facility in the Presidio, and some of their goals and challenges for building a unified base of technology. The discussion then turns to Zeno - the shared digital studio software framework - and the speakers present a series of case studies on topics such as level editing, effects authoring, animation blending, rendering, likeness capture, and mocap. The session closes with a diagnosis of what worked and what didn't, plus discussion of some of the cultural, procedural, and communication hurdles encountered along the way.