LOCATION:
Auckland University of Technology (AUT)
State Building (corner of Wakefield and Queen streets)
13th floor (room 1307)
Auckland

DATE:
Wednesday, 19 February 2003
6:00pm to 09:30pm.

WHAT HAPPENED:
Thanks to everyone that turned up tonight - A good turnout! As always, I let rip with a handful of cool animations, from Korean Manga/CG movie trailers, to a touch of the exotic Italian and French CG...

SHOW AND TELL:
For this section, it was a definite "Wow!" - It was great to actually get so many people showing their work!

• Dave showed us a cool 3D rose he'd done, and some other small character projects and a funky new toothbrush design.
• Logan had a few animations with particles, lasers, MD jello and butterflies in the rain!
• Kevin (the other one, not me!) was kind enough to let us check out his AWESOME showreel - Great work!
• Stuart let us check out his progress with modelling a face using Larry Shultz' awesome character course.

Then I followed up with my dodgy running animation - An amusing 'pants on fire' sequence I'd created for a little fun with my character from the last meeting - You can download this little snippet from http://www.kevman3d.com/video/butt_burner_divx502.avi.

DEMOS:
I figured it was time to demo some free plugins.

OGO_Taiki (http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/%7Epq1a-ogs/taiki.html), a new and very impressive volumetric cloud and atmosphere plugin that produces some amazing results, however at the cost of rendering time - Very impressive (realistic) none-the-less, but definitely in need of some major processor speed (or render farm) to make it useable in an animation project!

Next I looked at the updated Unreal celshader plugin, aptly called Unreal X (Unreal eXtreme) - This baby really does an awesome job, especially cool was the new edgetracer interface, with its own little 'viper' style preview window - So no more edit-render-edit-render to check out those edges and pen lines! There's also plugins to let the celshader integrate with Sasquatch shadows! You can get your hands on this awesome plugin right here - http://webclub.kcom.ne.jp/mb/dhm/plugin.htm

FI_Jigsaw was a funky tool for creating extra geometry, ala Bandsaw, but by tracing through the selection of polys that you made! No need for continuous bands of polys, just select the tools in order and hit jigsaw - Drrrrrrrrrrrrr! (The web site is here : http://www.infoseek.livedoor.com/~f_ichikawa/)

We also tried Load from Scene Plus from Dstorm, but sadly without too much luck. Maybe next time!

A FEW TIPS:
As well as the plugins, I also pointed out a few tips and tricks - One was on the use of SHIFT-F9 in Layout to test DOF (while in camera view, obviously!) and MotionBlur in OpenGL - Its something I've been using a LOT of lately to check things before I commit to rendering...

I also demo'd the use of the Rail Bevel tool that is part of LightWave's modeler, however the demo needed a little more finese and a little more planning on my part - Maybe next time I can do some cool stuff with it!

FI_BezierBend:
And it was onto the list of things we could do with this awesome plugin, originally demoed by Sami back in December - I figured that this was too cool to NOT show some interesting uses for it!

I started out with a simple example and overview of the plugin, how to set it up and how to manipulate it... From there I showed how I'd used it to deform a river animation, flex a set of hair guides, wobble a pole and animate a spiraling logo... We also looked at experimenting with particles and how to make secondary use of the Bezier controls for other things like texture mapping and more...

BezierBend is a very powerful plugin, very easy to use and get excellent results from, and has so many possible applications! Its a definite tool to the animation arsenal! You can find this plugin at the FI_JunkBox web site here: http://www.infoseek.livedoor.com/~f_ichikawa/

NATTER:
There was some nattering about the upcoming 'LightWave World Tour', local resellers and dealers, and general gossip - We finished up early, around 9:30pm, but it was a cool meeting!

THANKS:
Many, many thanks to Nicola and Stuart for the Munchies and drinks! Also, thanks to Dave, Logan, Kevin and Stuart for showing us what they'd been up to! Its always great when people show their hard work!

I'll see you all in a month - Then I can cover things I didn't do tonight (Expressions, and a pile of cool plugins like Skelegon Editor and more!)


Kevman