This is a reminder and update for the meeting This Thursday, February 19th.

The meeting is at Flashpoint Academy in downtown Chicago. Pizza will be at 5:30ish in the first floor ‘Digial Garage’, and at 6:20 we move upstairs to the 5th floor and Flashpoint’s ‘Matrix’ room.

Don’t Forget to RSVP!

If you haven’t already, please RSVP and also let me know if you will be there for pizza! Email jenni at max3ds dot com.

Please feel free to forward this email to others that may be interested!

Flashpoint has requested a list of attendes for their security station, so please RSVP before February 19th, whether you will be there for pizza or not.

Flashpoint Academy’s web site is http://www.flashpointacademy.com and their facility is located at:

28 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60602

http://www.flashpointacademy....index.html

You may need to enter on Washington Street if you come later.

We will have pizza from 5:30 to 6:20 in the first floor ‘Digital Garage’, then move to the 5th floor and their multimedia room “The Matrix”. The meeting will run from 6:30 to 9pm on the 5th floor. No food is allowed upstairs.

Presentations

As always, please feel free to bring any work you would like to show!

This meeting we have a new presenter: Perry Harovas of Flashpoint Academy. Perry is the Department Chair of the Visual Effects and Animation department at Flashpoint, and he will be demonstrating the ICE technology in the new release of XSI.

I will be showing some of the new things that have been released on 3ds Max 2010. We can’t demo the software yet - maybe by our next meeting, but will show what has been released on The Area.

My main presentation will be on techniques to Reduce flicker in mental ray animations. There are a number of techniques and settings that contribute to flicker reduction, and we’ll cover all the bases.

SWAG

As usual, Autodesk has set us up with SWAG for the meeting, and again we have one of the amazing Ballistic Publishing books, “Elemental 3: The world’s best Autodesk art”. This is always the first thing to go! We also have a printed copy of 3ds Max tutorials, and a copy of the excellent CG Academy DVD, “Intermediate Rigging 2: Spline IK, Arm and Hand Rig”.

As a service and benefit to our members, we’ve arranged a partenering agreement with Focal Press - one of the premiere Autodesk Media and Entertainment Publishers to bring you additional SWAG, 20% discounts w/free shipping for books, and valuable content we can share. We hope to have some things for Thursday, and news on how to get discounts shortly.

We are also working on something with Ballistic Publishing and The CG Society, so stay tuned for news!

mental ray Symposium

The date has been set for the first annual mental ray Symposium. Be sure to clear your calendar for this free all-day event on Thursday April 30th, 2009.

The event will be at Flashpoint Academy, and we’ll be covering mental ray in 3ds Max in-depth, and we are also workng on having demonstrations on XSI and Maya, and possibly some other advanced rendering technologies in addition to mental ray.

We are still working on corporate sponsors, including Autodesk, Avatech and others, to help provide food and refreshments, and maybe even a few things to give away. Keep watching for updates as things come together!

This will be a big event that you won’t want to miss!

RSVP

Don’t forget to RSVP to jenni at max3ds dot com for the event this Thursday, and let me know if you will be there for pizza.

Jenni

Author of “Mastering mental ray”:  http://www.mastering-mentalray.com
4D Artists, Inc.:  http://www.4da-inc.com
Chicago 3ds Max User’s Group: http://www.max3ds.com

Max Design 2012; Win 7x64 12gb i7 Dual GTX 580; Win 7x64 Intel i7 4-core@3gHx 12gb Quadro 5000 and Tesla C2050.