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

DATE:
Tuesday, 21st May 2002
6:00 to 10:00pm.

WHAT HAPPENED:
We opened with some videos and material from the web - Some nice japanese Anime, and a few other items of interest, and then we were on to the business of checking out the locals!

SHOW AND TELL:
DON'T LOSE YOUR HEAD
I bought along the body mesh I had been working on (but that's now a complete character which I'll bring along in June, along with some other 'things' I've been working on!). I would like to re-emphasise the quality of Larry Shultz's excellent tutorial course if anyone is truly serious about getting involved with character animation in all aspects - Its not the cheapest, but you really do get what you pay for - rich, high quality learning material that will have you making humanoid characters with muscles in no time!! Check out his site at www.splinegod.com

URGE AT THE CINEMA!
Anna Grieve kindly also bought along a VHS tape of the Urge project that she worked on for those of us who didn't see it at the cinema... Anna and a team of two others worked on this project for 3 weeks, and the final output shows a good set of skills were being put into play!

10.. 9.. 8..
Sam Ousta also bought along some cool previews of his muppet animation he'd been working on, and also did a recap of the rigging he created which got some talk going - He also showed the advertisement material he had done, this time on nice high-quality DVD! Sam mentioned a monthly competition called the 10 second club (he showed us some examples) - If you're interested, you can check it out here - www.10secondclub.org

Thank you both very much for taking the time to show your material.

TUTORIALS
HIGHLY DYNAMIC...
Someone had asked me about HDR, so I figured I'd create a small workshop-tutorial-thing outta it and show what HDR was, followed by how HDR and reflections/specularity worked together to produce rich, burnt in reflections and highlights. We then looked at HDRShop for manipulating HDR images.

That was followed by a quick looksee at radiosity, and a few tips on using it (and how to produce bad images! LOL!). I also showed how LW used HDR data internally because of its Full Precision renderer - ImageViewerFP lets us look at the raw data, and then use the menu item 'Image controls' to control the exposure, same as you would modify a photograph from a negative!

LAND AHOY!
I've been playing with the freeware landscape renderer Terragen (www.planetside.co.uk) somewhat, and decided to do a quick demo of the application, as well as a review of some tools like LW2TG (from Spatial Designs) to integrate the cool stuff Terragen can do with LightWave. I used these tools to create the flying wing from a few meetings back flying over a simple landscape in a very simple animation.

Terragen has some accurately calculated atmospheres and effects, even allowing us to generate beams of light from the sun through the clouds! We can also use Terragen to generate 'renderwarp' style images, using its cool rendering system to make some pretty nice looking skys!

THE END
As always those who stayed hung about and talked shop, and it was great to hear some constructive commentary going on.

It was a fun evening as always, and the crowds seem to be growing each meeting, which is a great sign! I'll update you all again in the next week or so with details on the June meeting.


Kevman