Jennifer

The next meeting of the Northern Illinois chapter of the Autodesk Animation User's Group Association is this Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at the MasterGraphics offices in Rolling Meadows.

Map: http://www.masterg.com/map-rolling-med.html

Pizza and networking begins at approximately 5:30PM, and the meeting will start around 6pm; please feel free to come at any time. The meeting concludes at 9pm.

Pizza, and the meeting space, will be provided by our friends at MasterGraphics.

Huge SWAG Update

SWAG, or 'door prizes', are going to be exceptional at this next meeting, so you'll not want to miss this one!

Autodesk has provided some great prizes:

• The outstanding book "Elemental 2: The World's Best Autodesk art". We'll make it available before the drawing so everyone can get a look. Clean fingers only.
• CG Academy "Intermediate Rigging Set" training for 3ds max, covering 14+ hours of instruction on four DVDs.
• "Full Body IK" introductory training DVD for Maya from Autodesk.
• "The Aesthetics of Cameras" introductory training DVD for Maya from Autodesk.
• Awesome new max/Maya/MotionBuilder long-sleeve tee-shirts (small and medium)

But yet, there is more!

Another bonus door prize will be two tickets to Six Flags Great America, good for any day of the 2007 season including Fright Fest, courtesy of 4D Artists.

We will have the drawing for prizes around 7pm, starting with the book then letting each winner choose their prize from the tee-shirts and DVDs. We'll have a separate drawing for the tickets, so that all people interested in going have a separate chance at those.

The Meeting

We have two new members that will be presenting at the meeting this Thursday evening: Phillip Miller of Larson & Darby Group in Rockford will be talking about the development and history of 3ds max. Although Phil is new to this incarnation of the User’s Group, he has deeps roots in the history of 3ds max. Phil worked at Autodesk and had 3ds max, as he says, “under his wing” from before R1 through R5. He was eventually VP of Products for Discreet and also managed Discreet's Software and Animation Business Units which covered VIZ, Character Studio, GMax, Reactor, Plasma, mental ray, Combustion, the foundations of Impression, and even Flame and Inferno.

In his spare time he co-wrote the book "Inside 3d Studio, Release 3" and "...Release 4", and wrote the book “Inside 3D Studio MAX Release 3”, along with contributing to others.

After leaving Discreet he headed a start-up company, then ran North American business development for mental images, then was lead for Macromedia products in the merger with Adobe and the introduction of CS3 Web Suite. He is now back to his in the Midwest and back to his architectural roots as a principal architect at Larson & Darby Group in Rockford.

Phil has offered to donate a vintage tee-shirt from the 1995 SIGGRAPH 3ds max Release 1 launch! We’ll add that to the SWAG prizes and everyone will have a shot at that.

Stephen Gabriel, M&E Application Engineer from MasterGraphics, will be telling us about some of the things he saw at SIGGRAPH a few weeks ago in San Diego, where he had to suffer through the clear skies and 70-degree weather, and had to sit through Master Classes and endure the amazing new products and technologies bombarding his senses. Hopefully sharing his experiences will be healing.

And then, of course, there is you! Please bring in demo images and animations, work-in-progress, and so on. Have a tip or technique? Share it with the group. Too shy to get up front, then post it on www.the-area.com.

As always we’ll take questions from the group. I also have some things prepared on mental ray and the daylight system, exposure control and Arch & Design materials.

Max, Maya and MotionBuilder 2008 Launch

Join other users in Chicago on September 11th for the Autodesk 3D Launch Tour. To find out more and to register, visit http://www.autodesk.com/mini-sites/melaunchtour2007/

Share and Share Alike

Do you have a recent book, magazine or training materials you would like to share with someone else? Bring them in and give them to others that can use them! DVDs and CDs need to be the originals, not copies. I’ll be brining in some recent issues of 3D World magazine, free to a good home.

Missed SIGGRAPH?

In addition to what is on the Autodesk site, you can download videos of the SIGGRAPH User's Group meeting at http://www.retrostylegames.com/temp/vids/

September Meeting

We already have a date and location for the September meeting in Chicago (insert amazement here). The meeting will be Thursday September 27th at the IMAGINiT office in Chicago. Their address is 55 E. Jackson Blvd, near 290 Expressway and the Art Institute.

August Meeting

Again, this next meeting will be in Rolling Meadows at MasterGraphics:

Map: http://www.masterg.com/map-rolling-med.html

If you have any subject you would like to present to the group, or just talk about a project, please let me know! Please feel free to bring any modeling / animation / rendering problems, and images or animations you would like to share with the group; you can also put images in the photo Gallery at www.max3ds.com, and attach reasonable-sized animations as message attachments in the forums.

Be certain to RSVP to jenni @ max3ds.com if you are coming!

Thanks, have a terrific week, and we'll see you Thursday!

__________________
Jenni
www.4DA-inc.com
Chicago 3ds Max / Maya UG www.max3ds.com
Render UG www.Render-Art.com