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January 25, 2007
IGDA Smich makes some critical moves
Last week, Michigan's IGDA chapter kicked off the new year and met up with SEMAfx, our local ACM-SIGGRAPH group, for a tour of Critical Moves USA, a newly-established motion capture studio right down the road in Detroit.
Owners Michael Bolden and Thad Johnson gave attendees a great look at their new facility, providing a real time demonstration of motion capture. At the time of this writing, Critical Moves was able to show off very detailed performance capturing, with details as fine as finger movement and as unique as "virtual camerawork," enabling another person to move the 3D camera around in real time while capturing data.
"Critical Moves will be upgrading our system with an additional 70 MX40+ cameras. With the addition of the 70 MX40+ cameras, Critical Moves will posses over 120 cameras, making Critical Moves two stages one of the top and largest mo-cap studios in the world," said Bolden.
It was standing room only as attendees watched Critical Moves' mocap actress Claudia go through a routine and have her data mapped to a pre-rigged character in real time. Enthusiasts from ages 8 to 48 marveled at the technology, and the excitement at having such great technology in our backyard was palpable.
Before closing for the evening, IGDA coordinators announced next month's meeting – again in tandem with SEMAfx – and rounded up a crew of several for an afterparty at the Cadieux Cafe down the street from Critical Moves. Combined with swag giveaways and a delicious spread of food provided by SEMAfx, it seemed like everybody had a great time, and left flush with enthusiasm and ideas of how to best use this new tool for great new game development.
Posted by CristopherBoyer at 12:15 AM | Comments (0)
January 07, 2007
University of Michigan - Dearborn ranked in top 10 for gaming!
Global Gaming League ranked the University of Michigan-Dearborn 9th on their First Annual Top Gaming Colleges Survey due to the MPCon LAN party held there.
Posted by RichElswick at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2007
IGDA Game Choice Awards
Support the IGDA with your Developer vote for what is good in the industry!
Happy New Year! What better way to start the new year than by getting the word out on the opening of the Choice Awards nominations period.
All the info/etc is online:
GDC Game Choice Awards
Rich
Posted by RichElswick at 07:18 AM | Comments (0)
January 02, 2007
The year of the secret agent is upon us
Hi everybody,
By now you might have heard, I'm the new coordinator for IGDA Michigan (South). Some of us have met, some of us haven't, but we'll get to in time, I'm sure. I want to let you guys know about our plans for the year, lay out some calendar information, and even set up some meeting announcements. Settle in for a few minutes, won't you?
First things First
First up, I want to thank you all for sticking around, and welcome everyone who's new to the scene. (Speaking of, got a friend who isn't getting this email yet? Forward it on!) We've got some changes planned this year, and I think we're really going to do some awesome things with IGDA and gaming in Michigan in general. I'm very excited about what the year will bring. Of course, not everything is changing. Jay, Brian and Rich are still sticking around, and we're still going to have a fat pile of fun. But some things are going to be done a bit differently.
First up, starting in January we are going to be charging chapter dues. According to the member surveys we passed out at the last big meeting, it seemed that the majority of you were okay with a small membership fee to belong to IGDA SMich, so long as we made your membership worthwhile. So that's what we're going to do. The membership fee will be $25 per year, and those dues will go toward things like paying for venues, securing giveaways, bribing speakers and so forth. =)
Folks who donated prior to December 31, 2006 will be grandfathered in for the year. Rich has a list of those members already, so if you gave money in the past, then you're covered. Don't sweat it.
Secondly, we're going to be operating with a Board of Directors structure. The idea is that, with a core of officers responsible for various tasks, it takes the load off the main coordinator (yours truly) and makes things a lot easier all around. Jay, Brian and Rich will be on this board for the ensuing year, and I'm really glad they've agreed to do so. We are looking for a few other folks to join this board, we'll either be contacting you in the coming weeks, or if you (or someone you know) would really make a GREAT candidate, get ahold of us.
Finally, we're going to try to gear the chapter in a more professionally-oriented direction this year. That's not to shove aside all you students, which I realize makes up the majority of the chapter, but there are professional members here too, who I think could stand to get a little more out of their time and membership in the IGDA than we've provided them in the past. I think with our planned program, you students will also get quite a bit out of what's to come, so not to worry.
Meeting Announcement
Our first meeting of the year will be on January 16 at Dangerous Moves, the new motion capture studio in Detroit. Michael Bolden, the fellow in charge, (you may know him from the Games in Detroit meetup.com group) is going to show us how it all comes together.
Dangerous Moves is at 4925 Cadieux, just east of Warren Ave. Reports are that parking is not excessive, but it's recommended that we get there early. This is a joint meeting with SEMAfx, the official Metro Detroit chapter of SIGGRAPH, which for those not in the know are computer graphics professionals. This stuff applies to us both, so we are teaming up for great justice. Meet & greet starts at 6:30pm, and the meeting proper starts at 7:00pm.
Calendar of Events (tenative)
You know, originally we planned on doing an event every other month, and keeping things simple. But more and more, we got requests for this event and that event, and suddenly the year was full up. So we've moved to a 12 month calendar, with one event per month. Venues are still to be determined on some events, but there's time enough for that. Unless there's a particular reason, meeting nights will also be the first Thursday in each month. Save your weekends for your friends and families. Now, these aren't set in STONE, but as things stand, it looks like this:
January 16 - Motion capture presentation at Dangerous Moves MoCap Studio, Detroit
February 20 - Autodesk presents 3D Studio Max and Maya sessions, Schoolcraft College in Livonia
March 27 - Game Developer's Conference wrapup & Open Discussion with Flash book author Jamie Moller
April 12 - Rich Elswick presents a tutorial session on C#
May 10 - Discussion on the business of Xbox Live Arcade with Cristopher Boyer
June 10 - IGDA SMich Project Showcase, for Students and Professionals
July 12 - Microsoft presents XNA & Games on Vista sessions
August 9 - 3D Studio Max tutorial
September 27-29 - Midwest Gaming Conference
October 11 - Texture painting in Photoshop tutorial
November 8 - TBD
December 6 - TBD
You can plug this calendar into your feed reader:
click here for the feed
Or you can even use iCal/Thunderbird/Outlook 2007 with the ics link:
click here for the ics
We'll keep it updated as the days go on. Keep an eye on it.
Other things
Did you forget about the chapter website? (Clearly not, you're here after all.) It's at http://www.igda.org/smichigan/ and believe it or not, it does get updated. I'll personally be making more posts once I get access to it. In the meantime, you might notice a link to the chapter wiki. If you're registered at the IGDA website, maybe look into helping expand that into a really useful repository on all things IGDA SMich. These are things you should check out.
Anyway, that's the skinny. If there are things that really stick in your craw, or if there's something you'd like the chapter to get in on, get ahold of me or one of the board members, and we'll do our best to make something happen. It's your chapter after all, so we'd love it if you help us help you.
See you in January 007, your secret agent laser-gun spy watches will be handed out at the meeting.*
Best regards,
Cristopher Boyer
Chairman, IGDA Michigan South
*That is secret agent code for "secret agent laser-gun spy watches will not be handed out at the meeting." We're on a budget, here.
Posted by CristopherBoyer at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)
January 01, 2007
January Meeting on the 16th at a MoCap Studio - Dangerous Moves
Our first meeting of the year will be on January 16 at Dangerous Moves, the new motion capture studio in Detroit. Michael Bolden, the fellow in charge, (you may know him from the Games in Detroit meetup.com group) is going to show us how it all comes together.
Dangerous Moves is at 4925 Cadieux, just east of Warren Ave. Reports are
that parking is not excessive, but it's recommended that we get there early. This is a joint meeting with SEMAfx, the official Metro Detroit chapter of SIGGRAPH, which for those not in the know are computer graphics professionals. This stuff applies to us both, so we are teaming
up for great justice. Meet & greet starts at 6:30pm, and the meeting proper starts at 7:00pm.
Posted by RichElswick at 01:55 AM | Comments (0)