Sorry I haven't written in a while. After Siggraph I immediately went on a two week, no computer, no cell phone vacation. I highly recommend it and actually think I should have taken a month. Mind you, with 1000 emails in my inbox after only 2 weeks I'm not sure I want to see it after a month.

Here are a few interesting bits I ran across in the 3D world since last I wrote...

While I was MCing the mainstage at Siggraph, Terry Posthumus, a friend of mine that coordinates the 3D animation program at Humber college brought by one of his top students this year, Mathieson Facer. they gave me a copy of the animated short they did as a productino project at the college. Check it out, its a great piece called Down On The Farm.

For those who are looking for talent keep an eye on Humber college they have a very strong program and are putting out students that understand the realities of production, which we all know is rarer then (insert your craziest unlikely visual here as I'm to lazy to come up with one).

If you are using mental ray for 3ds max or even thinking about it, here is a wiki which should be up your alley. It covers specific recipes for various materials and effects using mental ray in max.

For long time max users you might remember a few plugins by a company called Sisyphus such as grass-o-matic and Druid. My personal favorite was Max trax which allowed you to create particle based or geometry based trails and tracks. It saved my but a few times on short deadlines. Well those plugins have reappeared after many years and a number of them are now free. Chech it out at Maxplugins.de

Next week I'm off to IBC in Amsterdam so I'll post so images of what I see there and let you know if I run across any interesting tidbits.