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February 20, 2003
February 2003 Meeting Report
Wow, what an unbelievable success. We had an amazing turnout for only our third meeting,
with 47 people showing up. We started out the meeting with a little bit of socializing,
and then we rolled out the pizza and salad. We all owe a big thanks to Discreet for
paying for dinner and refreshments, and for sending Adam out to be our guest speaker
for the evening.
After the food, and a little bit of extra socializing time (due to the seemingly
unavoidable technical difficulties that go along with presentations), we got the presentation
started a bit before 4:30 PM.
Adam started out the meeting with a miniature multimedia-extravaganza by playing the Discreet
clip reel from GDC 2002. This movie contained scenes from a ton of games developed with Discreet
tools. Then he showed us a quick clip demonstrating how discreet tools were used in Hollywood
movies.
Adam then gave us a very detailed overview of the features available in 3ds max 5. He started out
showing us how you can build scenes quickly using prebuilt object. Then he went on to give us
a good demonstration of max's poly modeling features. He loaded up a prebuilt dragon head model,
and showed us how you can easily work on it. In mere seconds, he added a couple of horns to it, then
turned it into a Chinese dragon. He showed us how to use features such as extruding along splines,
subdivision surfaces, auto-mirroring with symmetry, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Next, Adam showed us how to use the handy U-V unwrapping features of 3ds max. He demonstrated various
unwrapping methods (normal, angle, etc), and how simple it was to tweak the unwrapping
of the model, and how to export-touchup-and-import the texture map.
Then he went on to load up a model of a mannequin-looking figure and demonstrate all of the keyframe
animation abilities in 3ds max. In just a few minutes, he took the static model and created a
pretty convincing walking animation. He also showed us some of the spline IK features. He
demonstrated how it could automatically animate an animal's tail realistically simply based on
the models movements (no keyframing involved).
Adam wrapped up the 3ds max part of the presentation with a demonstration of lighting. He showed us
how to do radiosity lighting, baking it into texture maps or vertex colors, spotlights, emissive
materials, and a few other things.
Finally, because of the earlier technical difficulties, we were running a bit late, so Adam wrapped
things up quickly with a very brief overview GMAX and finished off by showing us "The Cathedral", a
beautiful movie (made with Discreet tools) which won the Best Animated Short Award at SIGGRAPH 2002.
After the movie, Adam handed out a few Discreet door prizes.
By now, it was already at our 6:00 end time, so luckily the restaurant was kind enough to let some of
us stick around for another hour and get a bit more socializing in. The last dozen or so of us wrapped
things up and walked out just before 7:00.
Thanks once again to Discreet for paying for dinner and providing the door prizes, and thanks also to
Adam for taking the time to give us a fantastic presentation on Discreet tools.
Here are a few of the pictures we took from the meeting.
Great attendance for our third meeting
Another shot of the crowd
A scene from the GDC 2002 Discreet clip reel
Adam demonstrates 3ds max 5's U-V unwrapping abilities
Adam demonstrates 3ds max 5's keyframe animation abilities
Again, we
hope everyone had a fun time, because we definitely did. Stop by the forum
and
dicuss our first meeting. We hope to see you in April for our next meeting in East Lansing.
The chapter coordinators:
Rich Elswick
Ron Frazier
Brian Winn
Posted by BrianWinn at February 20, 2003 05:21 PM