Maya API Developers Conference: Day 3 and our ILM Presentation

The final day of the conference was even more fantastic than the first two. A couple of good reasons for that were...

1. Amazing Autodesk presentations about threading and viewport manipulation
   
2. Martin Watt's presentation was exceptionally interesting/awesome
3. Dean Edmonds is as good a comedian as he is an API Programmer :)
4. Julien and I presented our talk!!
   
5. See #4 :)

The sessions were:

• Developing a Production Workflow: Greg Elshoff, LAUNCH
• Leveraging the power of multicore machines by threading plugins: Martin Watt, Autodesk
• Rendering Tricks using the Maya API/Scripting: Jason Walter, Autodesk
• Solution Session: Dean Edmonds, Autodesk
• Maya & the ILM Visual Effects Pipeline: Julien Cohen Bengio and Mike Jutan, ILM

Awesome!!!!!!!!!!

We shared the final session timeslot with Dean, and it worked out really well. Dean's presentation was really interesting, useful (and really hilarious too), and then he handed it off to us and we did our presentation on Maya & the ILM Visual Effects Pipeline. Awesome.

It was such a great experience and we both really enjoyed presenting and sharing our experiences with everyone there. What a great conference!

Here are some pictures from the last day of the conference. Note that there are some of our presentation, and I've blurred out the content. I'm not sure if it's possible to post it, and I assume it's not, so I've blurred those images (sorry).


The hotel and the weather were amazing


Glorious


Lunchtime again


Julien going to town on a burrito


More lunch tables


Haha the "putting green" :)


Practicing our talk


More practice


Just before the talk


The room we presented in


Here we go!!


Discussing Maya usage


Julien laughing at one of my jokes


Q: "Why do we all love Computer Graphics programming?"
A: "Inspiration!"


Scott and I climbing the hotel pillars


At Chili's To Go at the airport


Good times

Maya API Developers Conference: Day 2

Today was insanely amazing too. We started off the day the same as yesterday, and I met Dean Edmonds, the new API Developer for Maya. He is hilarious and very nice, and we are sharing his session tomorrow afternoon.

The lectures were awesome today, and we got some very useful information. The sessions today were:

• Advanced Maya Python: Dean Edmonds, Autodesk
• Enhancing the Maya Particle System through the API: Alex Ongaro, DreamWorks
• FBX SDK: Viviane Rochon, Autodesk
• Portable Maya Animation Caching: Rob Tesdhal, Cafe FX
  

This evening we went to the pool and then for the scavenger hunt. We didn't win unfortunately, but the people who won got a huge cool prize!

Then a reaaaaaaally fancy dinner on the patio deck around the pool, the food was amazing, the drinks were good, and the atmosphere was just great. We hung out for ages there, and then headed back to our rooms.


Conference room


Julien hard at work


The audience


Alex and I with some new friends


Good times


Dean presenting


Me and Andrea


Dinnertime!


Fancy dessert


Me, Scott, our crazy Australian friend in the background


Julien and Scott, haha


We are crazy


Julien looking ready for food


The line at dinner


Mmm... looks good!!


Chillin' after dinner


Socializing


Scott about to take me out with a fork, and I am unaware of it :)


More chillin'


The crazy British dudes jumped into the pool with their clothes still on!


Awesome room at the hotel!

Maya API Developers Conference: Day 1

Yesterday started off with a big bang. It was awesome. Julien and I checked into our new rooms and went for breakfast. Immediately we started to meet cool people, and no doubt the conversation turned into a talk about Maya, pipelines, 3D, graphics in general... oh so awesome.

After breakfast we went to the conference room and started the first talk. The format of the talks is great, they last about 1 hour 20 min, then 10 min for questions, and then a 30 min break. After 2 sessions we have a 1 hour lunch, and then 2 more sessions, and then a 1 hour break, and then dinner. Awesome.

The lectures today were the following:

• API Overview: Cyrille Fauvel, Autodesk
• Python Introduction to the API: Habib Chahin, Autodesk
• Animators Toolbox: Brendan Duncan, Disney Feature Animation
• Real Time Cloth Simulation: Miguel Escudero, KINO Dynamics Ltd
  

The lectures were fantastic. Great overviews, and Brendan showed some pretty wild tricks. I leared a few very interesting and useful ideas for API Development and it was just awesome.

Lunch was amazing, outside in the beautiful weather, and Julien and I continued to make a million cool new friends. After the last session we had a break and went swimming for an hour, and then went to the big lawn area called Paradise Park under the tent and had an amazing dinner!

We stayed until late in the evening having drinks and chatting with a bunch of guys from Sony UK and Sony Pictures Imageworks, a guy who now works at a small company, and some other Brits who now live in the US.

After that Julien and I went back to my room to practice our presentation again which we are doing on Wednesday. We practiced twice and finally we were getting the flow of the presentation right. I ordered a goat cheese, mushroom and garlic Pizza, a cheesecake and 2 Perrier sparking waters with room service!! This was SO fun, and also important so we could have some food to eat while we practiced our presentation into the night. Good times!


Julien and I on the way to the conference


Sweet hotel


Julien getting breakfast


Sweeeeeet


Amazing palm trees and fountain


Some of the guys we met at lunch


Me and some cool guys from England and Australia


This place is so fancy


The meeting room


A small portion of the audience


Julien, Scott, Me


Tennis Courts?!!!


Sweet tent on the main lawn for our dinner


Tables ready for dinner


Dinner time


Looks good!!


Andrea and Alex


Mmm... dessert


Some of the other nice guys we met


Chillin'


Julien back at my room, doing a run through of the presentation again


Hard at work


Pretending that we did something wrong in the software


Pizza for room service!!


Haha the box to pizza size ratio was not exactly what we had expected


Awesome cheesecake I ate later from in bed, watching the news on TV!