November 16 2008

Hello Folks: Wow! The end of the year!...and what a year it's been. November marks the last meeting of the year for the Los Angeles LightWave Users Group...There's no meeting in December due to the holidays. The meetings resume back in January 2009... For our last meeting we will have Dave Jerrard do a space effects demo. Dave Jerrard has been busy working on specials for National Geographic. Most recently on the history of the Hubble Telescope. This month we are doing things a little differently, since our schedule is overlapping with a class from Studio Arts, we are starting at 4pm. But we will have hot pizza and drinks...plus door prizes and giveaways...$8 at the door. November is Thanksgiving month and as always, I take this time to thank the people that make the LA LightWave Users Group possible. Without these people, we would not have meetings. To our frequent presenters: Dave Jerrard, Jennifer Hachigian, Larry Shultz...Thank you as always for your expertise and availability in spite of your busy work schedules. Your help is most appreciated... To our special guest presenters this year. Chris Manabe, Steve Burns, Robert Powers, and Ken Nign, thank you for your wonderful presentations... A most special thanks to Ken Nign for redesigning our website and becoming our webmaster. And for the LW Plugin database... To Newtek for your continued support... And last but not least...Eric Huelsman for giving us a home at Studio Arts over the years. We can't have a meeting without a place to meet...Thank you... And thank you to all those who attend our meetings month after month...Thank you to our newcomers and to the loyalist who have been attending for several years... Thank you for making 2008 a great year. Here's to more LightWave geekiness in 2009...(and hopefully we'll usher in LightWave 10).... Happy Thanksgiving, Upcoming Holidays and New Year... Sincerely, Jessica Vitale President Los Angeles LightWave Users Group Post Meeting Followup The page with the Tycho star map which Dave showed, can be found at this NASA page.

October 19 2008

Stephen Burns: Photoshop Creative Suite 4 Steve will demonstrate the new features of Photoshop CS 4, importing LightWave objects into Photoshop's 3D layers, and Rendition. Stephen is the author of many Photoshop books including  "The Art Of Poser Pro & Photoshop CS4", "Advanced Photoshop CS4 Trickery & FX". He is also the President of the San Diego Photoshop Users Group as well as the San Diego LightWave Users Group. You can check out his work at www.chromeallusion.com Meeting will start at 2pm. $8 at the door. Food and drinks provided. We hope to see you there. Post Meeting Followup Here are the links for the two plugins that were shown at the end of the meeting. They are Random Cloner and ImagePlane.

September 28 2008

Ken Nign Ken will be showing two plug ins he has written. Random Weight Per Connected and Weight Clone, plus a node called Vector Mixer... Larry Shultz Larry will cover the new joint tools in LightWave 9.5 as well as some features of Fiber FX.... Post Meeting Followup As was suggested at the meeting, Ken has written a node for mixing Materials together that uses the different Blending modes. It's called Material Blixer. The weight mapping script that was also suggested is now available, it's called Weight Outward.

July 20 2008

Untamed, Uncut....with Chris Manabe and Larry Shultz For this presentation we will have Chris Manabe and Larry Shultz who work on the Animal Planet show Untamed and Uncut. Chris and Larry will demonstrate how LightWave's character animation tools are used to meet the show's tight deadlines... Larry Shultz recently did an IK Boost presentation. Anyone who found that demo fascinating should come to this meeting, or even if you missed his earlier presentation you should still come to the meeting. Donuts, drinks and sandwiches will be provided...$8 at the door. Meeting starts at 2pm...we hope to see you there...

June 22 2008

Hello Folks... For our next meeting we will cover how to create crowd scenes and marching armies. Jennifer Hachigian will cover how to create characters marching in military formation and Dave Jerrard will cover using particles for crowd interactions... Post Meeting Followup Here's the Python script that Jennifer has written for randomizing the start times of MDD Pointer playback. RandomizeMDDPointer.zip. The MDD Pointer plugin be found on Denis Pontonnier's site.

May 18 2008

For this meeting we will have Nodes with Dave Jerrard Part Two. This is a continuation of last month's meeting on Nodes which was done question and answer style. This meeting will be a little more structured, but you are still welcome to ask Dave any questions you may have. Just like last time, you may bring recording devices. We will be taping the meeting as well.

April 27 2008

For this meeting we're going to do something special. It's almost a class. Nodes with Dave Jerrard. All three hours Q & A style. Bring your questions regarding nodes. Everything from "What are Nodes?" to "How do you re-create this particular surface?" You can either bring your questions to the meeting or you can submit them to me in advance, and I'll forward them on to Dave. This is a chance for you guys to pick the brain of the MASTER of Textures and Nodes. You are allowed to bring recording devices (Video cameras etc). We will be taping the meeting ourselves but can't say when it will be available for viewing.

March 16 2008

Jennifer Hachigian Jerrard will do a demo on Dynamics grouping/event/playback. There will be donuts, coffee, and St. Patrick's day goodies. Have a Happy St. Patrick's Day if I don't see you at the meeting, but I do hope to see you there.

February 24 2008

Ken Nign will be up first to talk about some of his plug ins. My favorite is Project Directory Maker, Info Saver,and the new Folarkey. He has also created a website, the LightWave Plugin Database. Dave Jerrard will cover the second half with a demo of Denis Pontonnier's free shaders. Available on Denis' Website.

January 20 2008

We're starting the New Year with Larry Shultz doing a talk on modeling clothing (a particular interest of mine) and possibly UV mapping. We are also starting this year with some major changes. Since I've been involved with the User Group (1999) the fee to cover the lab rental has been $5 at the door. That worked well over the years when we had the number of the attendees to sustain it. Over the past couple of years, our numbers have decreased and I've had to subsidize the meetings from 25% to 50% of the cost and that's not including the donuts, coffee, and other food. It was alright while I was able to do it, but this year that's not going to be possible. Financial difficulties won't allow me to do so. Therefore starting with January's meeting, the entrance fee will increase from $5 to $8. Sorry to have to impose this, but when I look at other organizations in the graphics field, all have increased their membership fees amidst dwindling attendance. Siggraph LA being the prime example. Others, such as Motion Graphic LA are free but are sponsored by Adobe and Apple. Then the Maya Group which meets sporadically is sponsored by Gnomon. Whereas LW LA is completely self sustaining with no support from NewTek or other organizations. I hope this doesn't cause any financial hardship among attendees. We'll see how this works out. I hope you continue to attend the meetings. They are difficult to put together but I'll keep going as long as possible 'cause I need them most. We will meet every month this year except in August (Siggraph comes to LA and so will NewTek), and December due to the holidays. Then of course unless I have to cancel a meeting for some important reason.

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