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

DATE:
Monday, 25th Feb 2002
5:30 to 9:30pm.

VIDEO TIME:
As always, I had another collection of new and unviewed 3D animation from the web - However, I do think 45 minutes did run a little overtime, so after some feedback from a few people, I'll be culling this down a little!

SHOW AND TELL:
Many thanks go out to Sam Ousta of Photon Studios, who showed us his impressive 'Muppet' meshes and rigs, as well as some local TV Adverts he'd done! It was great to see some real pro LW work, and even more interesting to hear about how it all worked! Many thanks Sam!

TUTORIALS
EXPRESSING YOUR DESIRE
It was a hard act to follow, however we followed Sams cool session up with my robot where I demonstrated how expressions can be used to control gunfire. I used expressions to activate a random flickering light and animated image sequence to simulate machine gun fire when the trigger was squeezed (using a morph target). To finish the effect, I also spun the gun flare rapidly and used motion blur to give the flat polygons a more 'volumetric' look.

GIVE YOUR CG SOME FUNKY MOVES!
Mocap files, and how to use them were next - A quick explanation of what Mocap files were, followed up by how adding your own models was simply a case of replacing the NULL object at the centre of the skeleton, deactivating all bones, and then readjusting them to fit your own model hopefully gave people enough idea how to approach this themselves.

PLUGIN' PLAY:
VIRTUAL GENETIC ENGINEERING
We took a looksee at Gene, a genetic modelling tool that let us create roots, branches, etc by randomly generating bevels based on simple settings.

ONE PC? LOTS OF SCENES TO RENDER? EASY!
I also showed the easy-to-use LWSNController for batch rendering on a single PC/Mac. This was cool, as it let you set up all the rendering output options and more, including being able to email you when scenes were completed, analyse the config file for missing plugins, etc. To boot, this is a free download!

RUN, FOREST, RUN!
Finally, we took a look at an oldie-but-goody called Treecage - This is an amazing piece of LScript (yes, it was completely written using LScript) for growing trees, with leaves, roots and even allowing morphing for animating the growth of the tree! If you want to try this one yourself, you can download it for 5.6, 6.5 and 7.0 from the link above. (click on the 'Treecage' word)

FINALLY...
After that, people left while some of us stayed behind and chatted til the late hours... All in all, a nice night.


Kevman