Jennifer

The next meeting if the Autodesk Animation User's Group for the Chicago/Northern Illinois area is this Thursday September 27th, at IMAGINiT in Chicago. The office is at 55 E. Jackson Blvd, near 290 Expressway and the Art Institute.

The August Meeting

I want to thank everyone that made it to the August User's Group meeting at MasterGraphics. It was certainly our liveliest, and most swag-a-rific (registered tm) of the year - so far.

We had an overview of SIGGRAPH and the Master Classes with Steve Gabriel from Master Graphics, and got a lot of insider information from Phil Miller, formerly of Autodesk, mental images, and Adobe, and currently of Larson & Darby Group in Rockford. Did you know that if they tried to render the Pixar movie "Cars" on the renderfarm from "Toy Story" (1995) that it would take over two Thousand years? This is an amazing industry, isn't it?

Some of the SIGGRAPH demos of the latest 3ds max and Maya 2008 versions are available on the Autodesk site if you want to see some of the cool new features.

For more SIGGRAPH information, Mark Gerhard of IMAGINiT Technologies wrote an excellent entry in his "Visual Solutions Blog" , a detailed feature on SIGGRAPH and also the Vismasters conference, in which he gave a presentation on mental ray.

http://rand.com/imaginit/1/rss/visua...OGS_VISUAL_ALL

September meeting

The date and location for the September meeting in Chicago is Thursday September 27th at the IMAGINiT office in Chicago. Their address is 55 E. Jackson Blvd, near 290 Expressway and the Art Institute.

Pizza, refreshments and networking starts at 5:30pm, and the meeting begins at 6pm. SWAG giveaway begins at 7pm. meeting ends at 9pm, and please feel free to come any time from 5:30 to the end, even just to say hello.

For this next meeting:

* George Matos of Avatech will talk about an exciting new Technical Support option he is providing to our members
* We will have an open Question-and-(hopefully) Answer forum,
Discuss modeling techniques and the myPod Challenge, and
Delve into more with mental ray.

And our special guest Mark Gerhard will be joining us from San Francisco to demonstrate max 2008!

For prizes we have more of those cool chromed max/Maya/MotionBuilder tee-shirts, a copy of the Maya training DVD "The Aesthetics of Cameras", and a copy of the book and Photoshop plugin for Autodesk Paint F/X.

Please feel free to bring in any work, work in progress (WIP), or other images or scenes you'd like to show to the group, or discuss. You can also post images and WIP on the www.max3ds.com web site.

Be sure to RSVP to jenni @ max3ds.com if you are going to make it, so we know how much pizza and refreshments to get.

Autodesk's 3December Celebration

Alias, and now Autodesk, have been doing an annual "Celebration of all things 3D" called '3December' on or about the 3rd of December, for about 9 years.

Our Chicago group is hoping to be one of the two cities chosen for one of Autodesk's big celebrations, but regardless, we are planning to do something big for our members and the 3D Community in the northern Illinois area.

The event will contain some of the matrials from the Autodesk SIGGRAPH presentation, including demo reels, and we are looking at doing demonstrations similar to topics covered at SIGGRAPH and the Vismasters conference.

Watch for news as plans progress, and we'll let you know more about our plans as soon as they become available!

Free 'mental ray Essentials'

I've been working on revisions and additions to my 'mental ray Essentials' documents. You can get the latest version of Part 1, and a draft version of Part 2 which covers Daylight and Exposure control, in the www.max3ds.com message forums. You do need to register to download the attachments.

Part 2 will be available September 27th. Future editions will cover the new 2008 versions of mr, as well as the A&D and mr Materials, and Global Illumination

Free User Networking & Sharing at www.max3ds.com

This is the informal site for the User's group. Stop by and register, and tell us a little about yourself in the message forums! We know most people can't be to every meeting to meet everyone, so this is a great way to get to know others in the group.

Free Meeting on the 27th!

Again the next meeting is on September 27th, a Thursday, in Chicago at the IMAGINiT office in at 55 E. Jackson Blvd, near 290 Expressway and the Art Institute.

The meeting begins at 5:30 with pizza and networking, and runs until about 9pm.

We are still working on a date for an October meeting, but there will be 3ds max and Maya rollouts in October, so we will see when those dates are first and perhaps combine our get-together with that event. Because of holidays, the November and December meetings may be combined and happen the weekend of December 1-2, for the 3December Celebration. We shall see!

Please remember to RSVP to jenni @ max3ds.com to let us know that you are coming the 27th!

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