Are the any 3d animators and Southern California? Particularly Orange County? If you don’t live in the U.S., for your info California is a state in the U.S.A., for those who don’t live in California and don’t know where Orange County is, its like 25 miles away from Los Angeles.

-Austin: Using Maya 2009
My CGSociety Portfolio
IRC Nick: AustinZ

Austin Zago 04 April 2008 06:59 PM

Are the any 3d animators and Southern California? Particularly Orange County? If you don’t live in the U.S., for your info California is a state in the U.S.A., for those who don’t live in California and don’t know where Orange County is, its like 25 miles away from Los Angeles.

Yes to the first question - in SoCal… I’m out in Riverside though I work for an Architectural firm in Ontario.

Christopher Grant
Sr. Visualization Artist, Associate | HMC Architects
Portfolio | christophergrant.com

Focus360 is in OC as well.

For games-related:

Gamedevmap - LA area

E. K. Anna Hennequet [FA]

Austin,

OC used to have a more active 3DS community, but it has been pretty quiet here for a few years. There was a well attended user group that sputtered out due to lack of interest a few years ago (around Max 5/6 time as I recall). OCC used to have 3DS classes, but I don’t know if that is still the case. LA has a user group, and there used to be an active group in San Diego. I don’t know if the San Diego group is still active.

FYI, I’m located in Newport Beach. I’m in Arch viz, so I don’t run into a lot of animators.

John Hostick

Max Design 2012, Win 7 Pro 64, 6x2.8 Xeon, 12 GB RAM, Quadro 5000

John Hostick 07 April 2008 04:01 PM

... there used to be an active group in San Diego. I don’t know if the San Diego group is still active.

Yep - there’s still an active user group in San Diego that Alan Iglesias has faithfully been running ever since the early 3ds days… Its a great group, I’d encourage anyone to go - they meet on the 1st Thursday of every month, 7pm at Kelar Corp…

Following info copy/pasted from group page that for some reason is censored by the area…

“The San Diego 3DS Max User Group meets the first Thursday evening of each month at 7:00 PM at the office of Kelar Corp , a local CAD, Digital Media, and CGI oriented software and hardware vendor. They have been dealing with Autodesk for many years and are known as a leading local dealership for their products. Proprietors Derek Renn and Moe Mansouri have graciously expressed a desire to support the group any way they can. In addition to providing our meeting place, they will also be available for consultation regarding many software and hardware issues as well as perhaps providing certain digital media services to our members for an exrtemely nominal group membership rate.

The office is located in Sorrento Valley, at 6020 Cornerstone Court W, Suite 105, San Diego, CA 92121. Click here for a Google Map link.”

Christopher Grant
Sr. Visualization Artist, Associate | HMC Architects
Portfolio | christophergrant.com

cgrant3d 07 April 2008 04:25 PM

John Hostick 07 April 2008 04:01 PM

... there used to be an active group in San Diego. I don’t know if the San Diego group is still active.

Yep - there’s still an active user group in San Diego that Alan Iglesias has faithfully been running ever since the early 3ds days… Its a great group, I’d encourage anyone to go - they meet on the 1st Thursday of every month, 7pm at Kelar Corp…

Following info copy/pasted from group page that for some reason is censored by the area…

“The San Diego 3DS Max User Group meets the first Thursday evening of each month at 7:00 PM at the office of Kelar Corp , a local CAD, Digital Media, and CGI oriented software and hardware vendor. They have been dealing with Autodesk for many years and are known as a leading local dealership for their products. Proprietors Derek Renn and Moe Mansouri have graciously expressed a desire to support the group any way they can. In addition to providing our meeting place, they will also be available for consultation regarding many software and hardware issues as well as perhaps providing certain digital media services to our members for an exrtemely nominal group membership rate.

The office is located in Sorrento Valley, at 6020 Cornerstone Court W, Suite 105, San Diego, CA 92121. Click here for a Google Map link.”

Oh dope!  I was just checking for Users Groups on Google and came across that one.  I hope I can make it this Thursday.

btw, I’m in the El Cajon area and am in no way a pro animator, but am seeking to become one.  I’ve been using Blender
for about 4 years off and on and am too frustrated with getting hung up on all the technical problems.  I just want to
animate.  I started using the Maya PLE to get moving in the direction of Autodesk.  So far, so good.  Schooling is
ridiculous though.  I just checked out Platt College.  [sigh].  around $64,400 for a 2.5 year course and only 1 year is
actually learning animation.

Behold my simple DeviantArt page

I’ve been going on and off to those meetings in San Diego.  I missed the last one - sometimes family obligations take priority.
If you decide to go, bring a sample of your work, Alan sometimes fits it into the meeting.  They sometimes bring up work that Alan has done in the past or someone will have a problem they can’t figure out and will bring it to the group for a solution.  Sometimes Alan will bring in someone from the industry to show and talk about projects - recently focus360 was there - cool stuff.  And you can learn a trick or two as well.

Mike

Michel (aka Mike)
software engineer by day...3D interest by night
Max v7
hardware: who cares

I live in OC, about an hour away from San Diego.

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Longboarder1 16 July 2008 06:03 PM

I live in OC, about an hour away from San Diego.

Do you live in San Clemente?

-Austin: Using Maya 2009
My CGSociety Portfolio
IRC Nick: AustinZ

I live about a ten minute drive up the freeway from San Clemente.

22in Samsung T220 flatscreen and 17in. Dual Setup
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.7 Ghz
4gb DDR2
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT
Wacom Intuos 3 Tablet and Pen
Windows Vista Home Premium
Maya 2008 Unlimited
Combustion 2008
Photoshop CS4 Extended
Cleaner XL