Marc’s Blog | Marc Petit With 20 years experience in management and technology, Marc Petit leads Autodesk Media & Entertainment as Senior Vice President. In his current role, Petit manages the Media & Entertainment business and guides the development and marketing of Autodesk’s leading systems and 3D software solutions, including Autodesk® Flame®, Flare®, Smoke®, Lustre®, 3ds Max®, Maya®, Softimage®, MotionBuilder®, Mudbox™ and FBX® software. He launched his career with French 3D software pioneer Thomson Digital Image (TDI) in 1987. From TDI, Petit joined Softimage in 1991, and helped the then-fledgling company reach critical mass in Europe. In 1996, Petit moved to Montreal to serve as Softimage’s Vice President of 3D Products. Before joining Autodesk in 2002, Petit was Vice President of Operations for Aptilon Health, a company specialized in online interactive marketing. He was in charge of all operational activities, including IT, infrastructure and product development.

3D Roadie | Shawn Hendriks Shawn Hendriks is the Community and Video Production Manager for Autodesk and has worked in the 3D industry for 14 years. Shawn's first job with Autodesk was as 3ds Max demo artist for Canada. Over the years he has been responsible for everything from creating feature videos and customer video profiles to demos and presentations. He now manages the teams responsible for the AREA. Thanks to the nature of his job, Shawn has spent a lot of time visiting and talking with top Autodesk clients in many fields about their work, problems and successes.

Mayalicious | Cory Mogk Cory is the Technical Product Manager for Maya and MotionBuilder. He's been doing 3D since DOS was pervasive and IRIX was high-end. He's worked in production doing games, film, video and design/viz. Cory has been a consultant and a trainer, writing much of the original Maya courseware and PowerAnimator before that. Cory likes to wear a t-shirt that says "geek."

Maxed Out | Ken Pimentel Ken Pimentel is the Director of Visual Communication Solutions within Autodesk's Media & Entertainment division, responsible for guiding 3ds Max, Project Newport, Mudbox, ImageModeler, Stitcher and FBX solutions. Ken holds a BS of Electrical and Computer Engineering degree from the University of California at Davis and is the coauthor of the book "Virtual Reality: Through the New Looking Glass.

Duncan’s Corner | Duncan Brinsmead Duncan Brinsmead is a principal scientist with Autodesk. He is the creator of Maya Paint Effects, Maya Hair, Maya Toon, and also worked extensively on Maya Fluids and nCloth. Duncan holds an MA in Music Performance from Juilliard and enjoys playing piano as well as creating digital realizations of symphonic works in his spare time. The nuances and sensibilities from his musical background certainly find expression in all aspects of his work.

Taking it to the Max! | Shane Griffith Shane Griffith is a Product Manager with Autodesk, currently responsible for Autodesk 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design. Prior to becoming PM for 3ds Max Shane worked several years within the Autodesk sales team as a Technical Specialist for Games and prior to that he worked in the industry as a Technical Art Director. As a well respected product specialist Shane is now tasked with blending that hands-on experience with his industry and customer knowledge into product strategy for 3ds Max.

Louis Marcoux Blog | Louis Marcoux Louis has been a 3D technical artist and software developer since 1994. He joined Discreet Logic in 1998 where he has been involved in the broadcast graphics industry for 6 years before joining the 3ds max team in Montreal, now part of Autodesk Canada. Currently he specializes in 3ds max and Combustion.

Mudbox Blog | Dave Cardwell Dave Cardwell is a Co-Creator of Mudbox and Product Designer at Autodesk. Dave has worked across the Automotive Design, Film and Games industries for the past 10 years. Prior work credits include Ford Motor company, Lord of the Rings films, King Kong the movie and Electronic Arts.

The 3ds Max SDK Blog | Christopher Diggins The 3ds Max SDK blog is hosted by Christopher Diggins the documentation writer for the 3ds Max SDK. Christopher will be writing about various topics related to plug-in development for 3ds Max and using the 3ds Max SDK, with occasional gust-posts and interviews with 3ds Max experts. Before joining Autodesk in September 2008, Christopher was an SDK writer for Microsoft, and before that a freelance programmer and writer. Christopher has written numerous article for Doctor Dobbs Journal and the C++ Users Journal, and co-authored the C++ Cookbook from O'Reilly. Christopher is a programming language geek, and in his spare time likes to implement programming languages with cute names like "Cat" and "Heron".

My Oh Maya! | Steven Roselle Steven began his career 1996 as a 3D generalist, using Power Animator and Maya on a wide variety of projects ranging from broadcast graphics, to medical visualization, to video games. In his current role at Autodesk as a games focused Solutions Specialist, Steven has had the opportunity to work with a long list of game developers using Autodesk products for game content creation. Above and beyond simply demonstrating the power of Maya, Motion Builder and Mudbox, his job involves workflow development, pipeline integration and tools customization, as well as working as a liaison between game developers and the Autodesk product development teams.

Planet Softimage | Mark Schoennagel The newest member of The Area, Mark Schoennagel comes to Autodesk from the acquisition of Softimage in 2008. Mark had spent the previous 15 years working at Softimage as the 3D Evangelist for XSI and Soft 3D. Before that Mark worked in broadcast for a television station and also modeled and animated many exciting organs for a medical animation company. Currently he resides in Los Angeles working out of the Autodesk Venice office.

With Design in Mind | Eddie Perlberg Eddie Perlberg has spent the last 3 years at Autodesk as a Technical Specialist with a focus on Design Visualization. Prior to joining Autodesk, Eddie spent 17 years in and supporting the Architectural industry. He began his career as an intern architect before working for an Autodesk reseller to help customers with their implementation of Autodesk solutions including Architectural Desktop, Revit and Autodesk VIZ and 3ds max. Most recently, Eddie worked at various firms including R.A. Smith as a Project Manager for the visualization department and as CAD Manager for Kohl’s Department Stores and Kahler Slater Architects.

The 4Kay Story | Grant Kay Grant Kay is an Editing & Effects Products Specialist for Smoke & Flame. Based in the United Kingdom which covers Europe, Middle-East and Africa, Grant has spent the past 9.5 years supporting the editing and VFX communities from within Autodesk. Prior to working at Autodesk, Grant worked for 10 years in the TV/film effects and editing industries in South Africa and the United Kingdom. Currently, Grant’s responsibilities include pre and post sales activities around Flame and Smoke. This includes product demonstrations, presentation content creation, workflow consultations, operational support and operational training. Grant is also an Autodesk Certified Instructor in Smoke and Flame. While a “Go To Guy” for all things Flame and Smoke, he also has a broader knowledge of other applications and production workflows.

Flame can do that | Bill Ennis Bill Ennis has been working with Flame since 1993. In 1995 he joined Discreet Logic (acquired by Autodesk in 1999) and has been demoing Flame and training artists worldwide ever since. Bill is currently the AE Manager for Systems based in New York.