Chicago 3ds Max Users Group

Next Meeting is June 17th!

First I’d like to thank everyone that made it out to our second annual “mental ray Seminar”, a presentation based on my book “Mastering mental ray” (http://tinyurl.com/y94ase4).  I had a great time, and I hope you did too!  I trust everyone learned something new along the way.  It seemed like almost everyone went away with some ‘SWAG’, and we had a lot of great questions, so I trust you enjoyed the day.  If you have more questions on mental ray always check out http://www.the-area.com for help from experts and users alike, and the http://www.mastering-mentalray.com web site and my blog and forums.

Rendering Revolution

On the ‘Area’ web site is a page called “Rendering Revolution” (http://area.autodesk.com/renderingr) which highlights the latest and greatest rendering technologies from a number of developers.  If you haven’t given it a look yet, drop by and check it out.  One of my thoughts for the “mental ray Seminar” is for this to evolve into a general “Rendering Conference” that covers a number of rendering technologies and a number of speakers with a variety of backgrounds, talents and experiences to share.  To do this takes YOU, and the participation of our users in meetings and events, and I encourage you to participate at the meetings, to share your knowledge and experience with the group, and to think about participating in the largest 3d rendering event this side of Los Angeles.

Are you LinkedIn?

The Chicago AAUGA has discussion groups on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=89289, with sub-groups for 3ds Max, Maya and Softimage.  You must join the main group before joining a sub-group.  If you have questions, want meeting information, or find something interesting you want to share (especially jobs) then please join our groups at LinkedIn and post your message.  Members of the group can enable email to be sent to them to keep on top of the latest news in AAUGA-related topics and the group in general.

June 17th Meeting

Our next 3ds Max User’s Group meeting will be Thursday June 17th, 2010, at Moraine Valley Community College.  To sign up for the event go to our Event Bright page:  http://aaugajun17.eventbright.com - You do not need to print a ticket for entry, but we do ask that you register.  As usual, pizza will be served around 5:30 and the meeting proper will begin by 6:30pm in the Fogelson theater in the T building, near the building entrance.

Meeting Agenda

As always, we invite our members to participate in doing demonstrations, large or small, and to share their work-in-progress or completed renderings and animation.  If you would like to present to the group, or have a particular subject you would like to see demonstrated, please let me know.  If you want to show your work just bring it along, in print or digital format.  As far as demonstrations at this point I have “Modeling tips and tricks” as my subject.  I’ll have another email update before the meeting to finalize plans, and you can join the discussion on the meeting on the Chicago AAUGA LinkedIn sub-group for 3ds Max.

Chicago Downtown Meetings

We are planning on holding more meeting in the downtown area.  The biggest issue at the moment is the traffic to get there, as with all the construction it is a 2.5 hour drive for me when the traffic is ‘good’, whereas Moraine Valley is only one hour.  If anyone is interested in assisting with downtown meetings, please let me know, thanks.

See you on the 17th!