LOCATION:
Auckland University of Technology (AUT)
State Building (corner of Wakefield and Queen streets)
14th floor (room 1401)
Auckland

DATE/TIME:
Thursday, 23rd November 2000
6:00 - 8:30pm

WHAT HAPPENED:
First up, Stuart had the demo reels of the AUT 2000 students playing. I was happy to see, having assisted in the last week or so of the class, some quite outstanding work!

Of particular interest, and amusement was the gory, crude but oh-so-funny Samurai Teddybear. Crude, violent - the animation was so over-the-top it was hilarious and worth a few more looks! This work by Chia Sue Guan showed a student with an extremely good feel for fluid character animation, as well as a good artistic feel for his work!

I demo'd Lightwave 6.5 beta - That ParticleFX system really rocks! Add in some wind generators and the amount of effects possible are fantastic!

Also of interest (and demo) was Baker to show how you can render the surfaces of a model to an image map for UV mapping back! Those game graphics will never look the same after people start developing their textures using this tool!

Finally, I had a few new animations - A full-res copy of trailers for Shrek and Final fantasy showed some of the amazing CGI coming to the big screen soon - This was quickly followed by a demonstration of some TV graphics developed by AJ, one of our professional members!

All in all, it was a fun night - And the last meeting of 2000 - But hopefully we'll be off to an early start in the new millenia!

Cheers, and see you at the next meeting!


Kevman