zap's repository of mental ray tips and tricks, frequent questions and their answers, and some smoke and mirror mental ray trickery you may not find elsewhere...
To show off the renewed push for 3ds Max development, product manager Eddie Perlberg will be there along with Martin Coven, plus my very esteemed collegues Daniel Levesque and Neil Hazzard.
Now the sad part: EUE this year is scheduled exactly on the same time that my son graduates from highschool, which, honestly, I had to prioritize. So I won't be there....
...in person. I for sure will be there in spirit!
But I'm shipping quite capable substitutes in the aformentioned people!
It's that time of year again! Time for the worlds least-known most friendly computer graphics conference... the unmistakable "End User Event" in Utrecht.
I won't say more than of course I am going and of course I am speaking. Would you have thought otherwise?
As several years previously, I will be presenting at the EUE (= "End User Event") 2011 in Utrecht, Netherlands.
The event is June 30:th/July 1:st, and it is held in the Florin, a nice old building that used to be a bank, but now is a pub..... with adjoined conference rooms.
Think of the event as the worlds smallest SIGGRAPH - only with the commercial glitz shaved off, and held in a pub. And if you walk outside, you are not run over by yellow cabs, but by blonde students on bicycles. Seriously, you almost need a bicycle helmet to walk the streets here. :)
Check out the www.EndUserEvent.com site for more details; there is even a Youtube behind-the-scenes channel where you can see the organizers setting up the event, which I found neat.
This year I will be talking about light, the perception thereof, and how to translate that knowledge to what you do in CG.
But I'm not the only one rambling, other speakers include:
Jeff Mottle (CG Architect)
Wayne Robson (y'know mudbox guy)
Rune Spaans (about his work on Troll Hunter)
Jamie Gwilliam (Autodesk)
Neil Hazzard (Autodesk)
Shane Griffith (Autodesk, will be holding an NDA session on future dev. of 3ds Max)
Ted Boardman (often mistaken for a member of ZZ top)
While waiting, what about the trailer for Troll Hunter that Rune worked on? Think of it as "Cloverfield goes to Norway. With Trolls". :)
See you in Utrecht!
On June 3/4, my good friend Joep van der Steen, author of "rendering with mental ray & 3ds Max" will be - again - hold the "End User Event".
Imagine it as a very tiny and very European and very personal mini-version of Siggraph. There are two days filled with lectures and talks and mingling, and, yeah... it's held in a bar. :) (Well, a bar with conference rooms on the sides)
Sign up now if you want to join in on the fun. I'll be speaking there about MetaSL in 3ds Max 2011 and some other mental-ray-y things.... see you there.
Well, that was an interesting ride of 10 weeks of doing FXPHD. And while I really enjoyed doing it, well, it was quite a lot of work (since I'm such a nerdy perfectionist and want to embellish everything to the border of insanity) so I won't be doing it again any time soon....
I have not heard if the FXPHD guys plan to re-run the course, at least it is not being re-run immediately for the current April term starting up in the next few weeks. And of course, if/when it is re-run, it's the same classes run again, so all I have to do then is to hang around in the forums for questions, which is much easier....
It was quite fun to see the progress of the students and I saw quite a few nice renders done by them. I think I made several people see the light of linear rendering... :)
I'll let you guys know when more similar stuff happens. Next up is EUE (more in a future post)
Also, expect some trickle-down effect for the blog. I created some nifty Phenomena for the FXPhd course that I will post here after some polish.... stay tuned!
