So I'm in Montreal again and still in the process of putting together what you all will see during our 3d roadshow. I think I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. I don't know how many people reading this have had to build a 3d software demo (if its only my friends reading this then most of you have), so all I can say is sometimes its just painfull. Particularly when you have to build the demo using beta software.

Here is the general process.

First get a list of all the new features.

Decide what features will get the most time and which ones are secondary and which ones you don't have time to cover.

Find usefull content to use for the demos (thanks to all my favorite 3d shops for the content you have provided)

Figure out which order the features will be shown in and what the flow will be (some releases, like this years, make this harder then others)

Begin to actually build demos.

This last part is similar to production, but with different criteria. Instead of the the ultimate goal being a beautifull image and doing whatever it takes to make that happen, now its about the process and not the final. You need to make sure that what you show is consise and understandable. It can't be so complex that doing the task distracts you from talking to the crowd (weve all been in the demo where the presenter sits and clicks for 10 minutes in silence). you also have to decide what market You'll show the feature in relation to. After all, these days most new features are important in multiple industries but I usually only have time to show them in relation to one. And ultimately it has to happen quickly so as not to bore the audience. This is particularly challenging when you demo rendering features since the quality of the image is usually related to the length of render time. It's safe to say that if you want to optimize a scene for speed, just find your local demo artist or presenter and you will be looking at an expert. Also since this process often happens during the alpha/beta product cycle you can safely assume that you will have to rebuild your demo at least twice as the code changes. This usually happens just before and important presentation.

Of course you can't forget the obligatory Powerpoint presentation that every corporation requires. This is usually a running battle just to keep the number of slides down as more and more people chime in with "just one more important slide". I don't like them. You don't like them. I still have to do them, so I will always fight to keep them as short and relevant as possible. (don't ever say I didn't do anything for you)

Now you have everything put together so its practice time. Do the entire demo out loud to yourself so many times that your pets start looking at you funny. Now all you have to do is get up in front of 1000 people by yourself for 2 hours and not screw up (P.S. the VP of your company is in the front row, so I mean it, don't screw up)

In a future blog I'll talk about what its like to do that last bit. No I don't mean screw up in front of the VP.