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Interesting stuff I saw at Siggraph 2014

 I just came back from Siggraph 2014 in Vancouver as I was a presenter for Maxon which is the company that makes my favorite 3d software Cinema 4d. I had a great time- I got to meet and hangout with some of the developers that work on Cinema 4d and a gang of awesome artists that use it.


I did two presentations- one on character animation for cg filmmaking and one on game dev for non programmers- they will be available on c4dlive.com soon if you missed them

I also got to hang out with my friend Ricky Grove whom you may know as the voice of Lord Wor in Heart String Marionette and Mayor Tom in I am Nightmare
Two professional weirdo's in Vancouver
Here's the most interesting things I saw at Siggraph 2014

Unity 5

A lot of new awesome stuff has been added to the newest version of Unity- I was most excited about the new audio features, the ability to add scripts to mecanim states, the new UI system,  the webgl export, the new universal shader- well pretty much everything I saw in the demo was great ^_^

Cinema 4d R16

Since I was presenting at the Maxon booth I got a good look at the new features in R16- I even got to see one of the developers demo a new feature that he made for the program- and it was one of the best ones in the new interaction tag. I was the most impressed/excited about the interaction tag and the polygon pen tool. I'm looking forward to animating my characters with the interaction tag and retopologizing characters for my games with the polygon pen tool.

Shapeways sandstone 3d printing

I think 3d printing on demand is a great idea and I want to start printing toys based on my characters but so far most of the affordable on demand services print with plastics that can only be printed in one color BUT I learned at the shapeways booth that you can now print your full color models in sandstone- and its a lot cheaper than plastic- so I'm going to print out one of my characters as soon as I can as a test.

Project Neuron mocap suit

This company was showing off an affordable mocap suit that does full body + fingers for $550- they are running a kickstarter for the product right now- I've wanted to get into mocap for awhile now and when I do I'd like to get something like this as I think it would be much less problematic and much faster than an optical solution.

Now this wasn't at Siggraph but it was awesome......

The Killing Machine

Ricky took me to this big art gallery in Vancouver the day I left- I wasn't impressed with anything I saw until we walked into this dark room and saw this....

So yeh if some of those things interest you check em out!

 I told Ricky about some new things I'm working on and showed him some of my plans in my sketchbook....

I asked him if he would do a voice in my big video game project I'm working on now and he agreed- the game will also have 20-40 minutes of animated cinematics so I haven't totally left filmmaking land- I'm back in San Jose now and tomorrow I'll get back to work on the prototype for my next game-

Film----->Games

We are allowed to change- some times our dreams morph into new shapes so we have to morph as well to chase them into new places-

Here's the non textured model of the main character of my next game- does he look at all familiar?


That busted up little stop motion puppet with the doll head I found in the gutter lives on in a new form though he's grown up a bit and ditched the skirt- he's been laying on my desk behind my keyboard for the past couple years- its time I make him a star again...

After all.... he was always into video games....




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