Our June meeting was chock full of information. Let’s see what we can fit in this post.
First up was David Matheny talking about the Indiegogo campaign for the sci-fi short he is directing. The campaign doesn’t have much time left (62 hours as of this post), so donate while you can! The Runaway Sun Indiegogo
Here’s a little more about David from the Indiegogo Campaign
“David Matheny is an award-winning writer, director, and producer from Overland Park, KS. His deeply rooted love for film began at an early age and he started filming fight scenes with friends after school. While attending Avila University, Matheny created a short film entitled “The Scientist,” which one Kansas City Star critic called “A short film so intuitive, visually acute, and narratively assured that it required no dialogue. It may be the best student short I’ve ever seen.”
You can also check out one of his last student films here!
DEPART FROM ME from David Matheny on Vimeo.
Next, Jim Lammers from Trinity talked about his company’s nearly 20 year history as an Autodesk reseller. In addition he had some new stock asset DVD’s to share with us. Their assets include, trees, cars, materials, and pretty much everything you could imagine.
Speed up your content creation with stock assets from Trinity! Contact Trinity for further details. Jim was kind enough to donate a couple materials pack DVD’s as giveaways in addition to Archer T-shirts, mugs, and Vray T-shirts. Thanks, Jim!
Now on to the main course. Steve Roselle, the writer of the My, Oh Maya! blog on the AREA showed us new features in Maya 2014 including Grease Pencil and the Modeling Toolkit (just to name a few). Then he we over the 123D toolset that Autodesk is making available. Finally, he segwayed in a new feature in Mudbox that let’s you “re-topolgize” your messy triangulated geometry (for instance from 123D) into easier to work with quad-meshes while also maintaining your LOD’s for various uses.
Finally, we had Gary Davis showing us loads of uses for the CAT (Character Animation Tools) in 3ds Max. In addition, it could create procedural walkcycles for any number or type of CAT system from Bipeds to Quadrupeds. He also showed us how to use the Kinect for low cost motion capture using the Brekel Kinect tools with Motion Builder. Not only did he show full body motion capture, but also used the system for potentially capturing facial animation. Also, Gary did a quick (but incredible) demo of Smoke for 3d Artists. Definitely check out Smoke if you’re on Mac. Compositing and editing in one package. Pretty great stuff!
We had some great prizes to give away from Trinity, Sybex books, and Autodesk. Look for an announcement of our next meeting as we get into July.