Three evenings, three tracks, one calendar

The three track themes are set as Physics Simulations for Day I, Physical Sets and Stages for Day II, and Gaussian Splatting for Day III. Registration is free of charge, with sign-up routed through a GoTo Webinar registration page.

Each day is structured around an intro block, multiple presentation slots, a panel discussion, and a wrap-up. The agenda also includes a prize lottery segment and a communal chat slot to hang out after the formal outro. Some presentation slots are still to be determined, so full session titles and speaker names are not complete currently.

The topics

Day I carries the Physics Simulations theme. One listed session title for this day is “Artdirecting Physics Simulations for Hollywood Blockbusters,” with Goran Pavles from Stormborn Studios.

If your work lives in fx heavy shots, large-scale destruction, or the fine art of making a solver behave on a deadline, this day looks designed to scratch that itch while staying in the orbit of environment craft.

Day II is themed Physical Sets and Stages. Even without the speaker list, the track theme is clear: this is the part of the conference aimed at the reality-capture-to-digital handoff, the on-set-to-post handshake, and the practical constraints that keep virtual worlds grounded in physical ones.

Day III is themed Gaussian Splatting. One session is Geospatial Gaussian Splats: Reality Mapping in ArcGIS, with the speaker Tobias Hauck from an Esri R&D Centre in Stuttgart.

How to attend?

The event is delivered as a webinar series with three scheduled sessions. The attendee email for the event includes a unique join link or a webinar ID for joining. Audio can be taken through computer audio or by telephone as an alternative option (Follow the Event there if you want to make it an apparently enormous phone call, to give you some space from your coworkers, family, whatever. We are not judging).

Attend via Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/events/ice-art3denvironmentconference27437804320210702336

Register via GoTo Webinar: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/96699203094794328

Join the Discord!

Pricing and availability

Registration is free of charge on the conference website. No paid ticket tiers, upgrades, or pricing options beyond that free registration statement. You will join via GoTo Webinar, and registration is open now. The event is positioned as the conference for anything related to creating 3D environments, plus there are prizes to win (including free Digital Production Subscriptions), which is the most elegant way to justify watching another talk when your to-do list starts to stare back. Save the dates, tell your favorite env nerd, and warm up your question asking fingers.

Register: https://www.ice.art/
Questions: conference@ice.art

The post Save the date: ICE.ART 2026.I is in two weeks first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Update: The Event came, was great, and if you want to know who said what, here is the Recording:

Beyond VFX returns on Wednesday, 26 November 2025, as part of the ICE.ART conference series, in partnership with the Visual Effects Society’s Megabrain Masterclasses. This time, the focus turns to AI ethics in visual effects, a topic increasingly relevant as generative and assistive AI tools actually enter production pipelines (Hell, it’s difficult to avoid it when updating any part of your pipeline). Registration is free of charge via linktr.ee/VESxICE.

The panel

A heavyweight panel will unpack how AI reshapes artistic authorship, production safety, and creative control in VFX.

• Dr Jana Sedlakova, philosopher and ethicist from the University of Zurich and soon Oxford, examines how human-AI interaction affects responsibility and legitimacy in digital systems.
• Ben Lock, BAFTA-winning producer and Director of Production Strategy at Moonvalley, brings decades of production experience from ILM, Framestore and Aardman and insights into building artist-centric AI workflows.
• Victor Perez, award-winning VFX supervisor and director, adds his well-known compositing precision and long-running interest in the intersection of science, technology and art.
• Frank Govaere, filmmaker and creative technologist, contributes his perspective on storytelling in an era of machine-assisted imagination.

Familiar faces at the helm

Moderation comes from Agon Ushaku, Chair of VES Germany, curator of VES Megabrain Masterclasses and a long-time friend of Digital Production together with Matthias Buehler, founder of vrbn group AG and Head of ICE. Both are known for connecting the VFX community through ICE.ART and FMX partner events.

Free, open, and worth your calendar

The Beyond VFX series has built a reputation for clear-eyed discussions and genuinely open exchange between artists, researchers, and studios. This upcoming session promises the same mix of practical production insight and critical reflection as Ice.Art.

Attendance is free, but registration is required at linktr.ee/VESxICE. The organisers encourage professionals, students, and studios alike to join the debate on how AI tools can serve, rather than steer, creative work.

The post Beyond VFX dives into AI Ethics first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

ICE.Art returns on 1–2 October 2025. The event runs as an online-only conference, with sessions scheduled between 5 pm and 8 pm CET. That places it outside of most production hours, designed so professionals can join after work or catch up from different time zones without losing project time.

Organiser vrbn positions ICE as a conference “for everybody working directly or indirectly on fictional or real-world 3D worlds.” Unlike broad-spectrum industry fairs, ICE focuses tightly on environments and their technical and artistic context.

Digital environments in film, TV, games, and visualisation are rarely just scenery. They anchor storytelling, guide interaction in games, and stress-test rendering pipelines. ICE’s agenda covers the full stack: from concept art and visual direction to game level layout, pipeline efficiency, and the legal or personal aspects of working life in production. The mix makes ICE relevant not only for environment artists but also for TDs, compositors, shader developers, and realtime specialists whose work intersects with large-scale 3D datasets.

Michael Shelton: VFX Supervisor and Director

Michael Shelton (M. Shelton Supervision) is a Los Angeles–based VFX supervisor and second unit director. He started in creature workshops and practical effects before moving into 2D and 3D digital work. His credits include Game of Thrones, Winning Time, Westworld, The Mandalorian, Mary Poppins Returns and many others.

Shelton also worked on game cinematics, music videos and commercials for Bungie, Activision, Apple, Porsche, Mercedes Benz, and more. Known for a hands-on approach across matte painting, compositing, realtime workflows and practical effects, he combines broad craft skills with a measured view on industry shifts. His FMX 2024 talk on Westworld drew attention for its humour and technical scope.

Jay H. Patel: Unreal Specialist

Jay H. Patel (Jay-H) is a senior Unreal Engine artist and Unreal Engine Fellow. Self-taught, he has 14+ years of experience in realtime technology, focusing on cinematics. Patel’s work spans film production, automotive and architectural visualisation, VR, and realtime cinematics, with a focus on pushing Unreal Engine into cinematic territory.

Faruk Heplevent: CGI Photography Pioneer

Faruk Heplevent (The Scope) is founder, CEO and creative director of the Hamburg-based CGI studio The Scope. Starting as a photographer in the 1990s, he founded The Scope in 2007, coining the term “CG Photography” to describe fully computer-generated, camera-grade imagery.

The studio is a key player in automotive visualisation, delivering campaigns for Audi, BMW, Tesla, NIO, Genesis, Volkswagen and Toyota. Heplevent’s R&D work led to Scope City, a procedural city generator for photoreal customisable urban environments. His talks often highlight the convergence of CGI, realtime engines, and AI.

Sam Martino: Games and Preservation

Sam Martino (Dogwood Gaming) founded his indie studio in 2016, releasing four games on Steam since. Beyond game development, Dogwood Gaming expanded into digital historic preservation. Since 2024, Martino also teaches at Bristol Community College, focusing on entry pathways into the game industry for students.

Why ICE Matters

For environment specialists, ICE provides direct relevance. For others, the value lies in seeing how environment work shapes pipelines across departments. Examples include architectural realism that affects lighting and compositing, or streaming technologies that enable new delivery formats for interactive 3D. The evening schedule also reduces friction. Attendees do not lose production hours to sit through sponsor pitches or expo halls. ICE positions itself as a compact alternative to the large-scale conference calendar.

Community Focus

Since its start, ICE has prioritised access over spectacle. There is no expo floor and fewer marketing launches. Instead, the content leans on production stories, workflows, and first-hand lessons. Talks that discuss dead ends or tool limitations are part of the appeal: they reflect the daily reality of artists, TDs, and supervisors working under pressure.t a mix of visual showcases, pipeline talks, and the usual dose of production survival advice. vrbn highlights that talks will again touch on career development. Given the current state of VFX labour discussions worldwide, that may be as relevant as the technical sessions.

The post ICE.Art 2025: Virtual Worlds Meet After Hours first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The latest version of CityEngine, 2024.0, is now available and offers a host of new features and improvements for VFX artists. This version brings significant updates that simplify workflows and improve integration with other tools and platforms.

Visual CGA Editor

The Visual CGA Editor has left the beta phase and is now available to all users. This tool significantly simplifies workflows and allows users – especially those without programming skills – to edit models more easily. The integrated content library also offers new components for terrain division and mass modelling.

Integration with ArcGIS Urban

Integration with ArcGIS Urban has been improved so that CityEngine users can now edit the elevation or terrain of a plan directly in ArcGIS Urban. When importing an ArcGIS Urban plan into CityEngine, these layers are automatically imported as separate terrain layers. The intuitive terrain editing makes it possible to perfectly adapt the terrain to the scenario and upload the changes back to ArcGIS Urban.

Share web scenes

With the new “Share as Web Scenes” feature, users can export their 3D scenes directly from CityEngine to ArcGIS Online and view them in the Scene Viewer. This feature makes sharing, exploring and organising multiple scenes much easier.

Material collection and browser

CityEngine 2024.0 offers an extensive collection of high-quality materials that can be used to texture buildings and open spaces. Users can browse and apply these materials via a dedicated browser.

Supported file formats

CityEngine 2024.0 supports a variety of file formats, including .obj, .dae, .fbx, .gdb and .shp, allowing for flexible and versatile use. It is recommended to carefully review all new features before using them in current projects.

Links to

CityEngine documentation

ArcGIS Blog about the new features

The post Here comes the new Cityengine first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Jürgen Firsching.