Fahrenheit Digital

I did not have much on my schedule today. I woke up a bit late (finally got a full night of sleep!) then went to the convention center, which is a few steps away since the hotel is connected by a short pedestrian bridge. Hooked up with a few friends then headed out for lunch. We didn’t really know where we were going but ended up at a really good sea food restaurant.

After walking back I went to the Autodesk User Group gathering. Ran into another old friend from my days in the Bay Area at ILM. Actually, I met Bryan at my first industry job working for a game company called Rocket Science Games! This year is the first combined 3D Studio Max/Maya gathering. The demos tended to be pretty short since there were several products that needed to be covered. But I had to miss the Duncan Show at the end! :0(

But there was an impressive demo of the tentacle rig used on Davey Jones in “Pirates of the Caribbean 2″ by my old coworker Tim Naylor at ILM. Quite impressive! The work ILM did on this show is a new high water mark for our industry! There was also a London-based architectural firm that has mapped (in 3DS Max) a huge portion of the city of London! The model they showed was over 12 million polygons with great interactive feedback. They were using this model to help planners visualize what new buildings would look like in the context of their city. Another studio showcased the work they did on “Superman,” including a crystal creation system and a very impressive fluid cynamics & rendering system.

It is interesting being introduced to a new community in seeing all of the work being done in 3DS Max.

Ducked out of this event a bit early so that I could make my Electronic Theater time. Lots of fun and interesting pieces were showcased. “Monster Samurai” by Sprite Animation was pretty cool. Of course ILM and Imageworks had cool stuff to show. The CG short by Charlex titled “One Rat Short” was also quite good. A touching story. All in all, there was a lot of great work from all over the world.

Returned to the hotel lobby and ran into some coworkers who were heading out for dinner, so I tagged along. We grabbed a taxi to the North End of the city, ate some great pizza (recommended by one of the city denizens), walked around for a bit (got a picture of Paul Revere’s house as well as a monument to one of the first women killed during the Salem Witch Hunt!), grabbed some gelato then headed back to the hotel via the subway. I did not realize there was such a large Itilian population here… lotsa great food!

Tomorrow I have an all-day RenderMan class that I will be attending, so I have to get up early enough to make it there by 8:30AM. Good thing my hotel is only 5 minutes away fro mthe convention center!!!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 9:48 pm and is filed under Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.