Kiwavers (NZ) meeting, 19th Feb 2003

[kevman3d]

For those of you in the country, and around the Auckland area next week, our next meeting will be on Wed 19th Feb, usual start about 6:00pm, til the wee hours as always!

If you don't know where, check out the website for more info:
http://www.geocities.com/kiwaver

Show and Tell:
I have some new test animations I've been making with my new character that I covered at the last meeting. They're mildly amusing!

As always, if you have demo reels, animations, new models, want feedback, critique or just to show off, please bring your work with you! Otherwise I'll just torture you with my stuff! :)

Tutorials:
I'll be showing a few different ways to make use of the freeware FI_BezierBend plugin, together with some simple expressions to create cool effects from dangling hoses, floppy afro hairdos to silky smooth logo effects! This plugin is fantastic, and its just sooooo useful I thought I'd share some ideas!

This tutorial will cover the plugin, and also show you how to use expressions, create expression libraries and how to use subexpressions...

Demos:
I may have some demos of other excellent plugins - UnrealX is an updated Celshader with some cool new features you just have to see to appreciate... And some others (Eki has a new baby - If I get time, I'll also try and show MODPak at work) :)

News:
As you know, the 'LightWave World Community Tour' is planning to come our way in August! Exciting news - We'll try and get a group together for those interested in a reduced fee - And talk about getting some serious show reel material together to show off to our visitors when they arrive! :)

See you all Next week!

Kev.

[mgrusin]

Go Team New Zealand (http://www.teamnewzealand.com)! :)

-MG

[kevman3d]

Hey folks

Thanks to everyone that turned up tonight - A good turnout! As always, I let rip with a handful of cool animations, from Korean Manga/CG movie trailers, to a touch of the exotic Italian and French CG...

SHOW AND TELL:
For this section, it was a definite "Wow!" - It was great to actually get so many people showing their work!

Dave showed us a cool 3D rose he'd done, and some other small character projects, as well as a funky looking toothbrush.
Logan had a few animations with particles, lasers, MD jello and butterflies in the rain!
Kevin was kind enough to let us check out his AWESOME showreel - Great work!
Stuart let us check out his progress with modelling a face using Larry Shultz' awesome character course...

Then I followed up with my dodgy running animation - An infamous 'pants on fire' sequence I'd created for a little fun with my character from the last meeting - You can check this out here:
http://www.kevman3d.com/video/butt_burner_divx502.avi

DEMOS:
I figured it was time to demo some free plugins. The demos started out with the public Beta of 'OGO_Taiki'
(http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/%7Epq1a-ogs/taiki.html), a new and very impressive volumetric cloud and atmosphere plugin that produces some amazing results, however at the cost of rendering time - Very impressive (realistic) none-the-less, but definitely in need of some major processor speed (or render farm) to make it useable in an animation project!

Next I looked at the updated Unreal Extreme celshader plugin - This baby really does an awesome job, especially cool was the new edgetracer interface, with its own little 'viper' style preview window - So no more edit-render-edit-render to check out those edges and pen lines!

There's also plugins to let the celshader integrate with Sasquatch shadows! You can get your hands on this awesome plugin right here:
http://webclub.kcom.ne.jp/mb/dhm/plugin.htm

FI_Jigsaw was a funky tool for creating extra geometry, ala Bandsaw, but by tracing through the selection of polys that you made! No need for continuous bands of polys, just select the tools in order and hit jigsaw - Drrrrrrrrrrrrr! The web site is here :
http://www.infoseek.livedoor.com/~f_ichikawa/

We also tried 'Load from Scene Plus' from Dstorm, but sadly without too much luck. Maybe next time! :-)

A FEW TIPS:
As well as the plugins, I also pointed out a few tips and tricks - One was on the use of SHIFT-F9 in Layout to test DOF and MotionBlur in OpenGL - Its something I've been using a LOT of lately to check things before I commit to rendering...

I also demo'd the use of the Rail Bevel tool, however the demo needed a little more finese and a little more planning on my part - Maybe next time I can do some cool stuff with it!

FI_BezierBend:
And it was onto the list of things we could do with this awesome plugin. I started out with a simple example and overview of the plugin, how to set it up and how to manipulate it... From there I showed how I'd used it to deform a river animation, flex a set of hair guides, wobble a pole and animate a spiraling logo... We also looked at experimenting with particles and how to make use of the Bezier control nulls for other things like locking in textures and more...

BezierBend is a very powerful plugin, very easy to use and get excellent results from, and has so many possible applications! Its a definite tool to the animation arsenal! You can find this plugin at the FI_JunkBox web site here: http://www.infoseek.livedoor.com/~f_ichikawa/

NATTER:
There was some nattering about the upcoming 'LightWave World Tour', local resellers and dealers, and general gossip - We finished up early, around 9:30pm, but it was a cool meeting!

THANKS:
Many, many thanks to Nicola and Stuart for the Munchies and drinks! Also, thanks to Dave, Logan, Kevin and Stuart for showing us what they'd been up to! Its always great when people show their hard work!

I'll see you all in a month - Then I can cover things I didn't do (Expressions, and a pile of cool plugins like Skelegon Editor and more!)

See you then!