Adelaide (SA) Blender Meetup - Wed. 13th July 6pm @Monkeystack!

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EDIT - First meetup finally locked in as per the title. More details in my most recent post.
http://monkeystack.com.au/ - Host Location and map

Hi all,

I was talking with Lee (LohnS) on IRC last night about a Blender meetup here in Adelaide. We bounced a few ideas around, but I figure instead of trying to outright guess the interest and pick a venue, etc we might as well discuss it openly here.

I know there are Blender users in South Australia but I can’t get a decent picture for how many. I was thinking for a Venue the foyer at the Mercury Cinema might be a decent central location. The Cinema itself would be fun if we had enough interest to make it worth while, screen some things and so on. However, if someone has access to a venue they think would be great - and preferably cheap :eyebrowlift: - then certainly I’m open to suggestions.

Timing we thought a Saturday afternoon perhaps, with the potential to go into evening if people wanted to hang out and chat more. Saturday also allows for travel better with Adelaide being rather spread out geographically if people had to make a bit of a trip in. Its something I keep hearing in other threads about meetups so it’s worth considering. However, not opposed to a weeknight if it actually works out better for more people.

Format - The Melbourne one I went to seemed to work quite well without being overly formal. A few (four or five) people give some pre planned presentations on what they have been up to or want to share with Blender (laptop, projector, etc). After that general chitchat and meeting other users, either at the venue or at a cafe/pub etc nearby. Pizza at these sorts of meetings always goes down well… actually pizza always goes down well so definitely up for that as an option. Plenty of other stuff we could do like competitions and such, but for a first meetup or two keeping it simple sounds good.

Depending on the venue and time, etc I should be able to bring in my machine to demo the Cycles renderer and some other things. (Runs awesome on my GTX460). Also I’d try and get permission from work to show some stuff, talk about Blender in studio usage with other software, field any questions about Durian if anyone still has them, etc.

Date is really up to what suits people, but July sometime seems a reasonable time frame to get something planned and let people know about it.

Of course this would be open to all who want to attend, noone is going to ask for a South Aussie birth certificate at the door… Even if you’re just curious about learning Blender we would love to have a chat.

So where to from here? If you are interested in attending, sharing something or have ideas on venue - let me know! Also, if you run a successful Blender User group elsewhere and have tips I’d be keen to hear them.

Hope to meet some of you soon!

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Im all up for it. Just to talk to someone who knows and works with blender (who lives in Adelaide) will make my day.

I might bring a showcase [usb] of cycles tests and bench marks as well as other blender related things.

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Hey all!

Yeh i would be interested in an adelaide meetup… I think I may know another 1 or 2 people (who arent really on the forums but use blender) who would also be keen!

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Well it’s good to see some interest already, will keep people posted on updates. :slight_smile:

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So, so far it is:

Dan
Lee?
Me - Michael
Doublebishop
~His friend 1
~His friend 2

Looking pretty good so far :smiley:

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Lee had a couple of people he thought would be interested as well. If this one goes well I might try and get it mentioned on the DLF lists for any future meetings. You never know. Was a bit ill last week so I didn’t really give this any more thought, but nailing down a venue, and therefore a time, is going to be the main thing. The actual details of the meeting should be pretty straight forward.

Haven’t looked into the Mercury foyer for availability/price etc yet, but if there are other ideas feel free to suggest them. IE, if someone had access to a room at a uni with a projector, that sort of thing. I may be able to borrow a projector relatively easily, but it’s one less thing to worry about if it’s already there.

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Woo!

All sounding good so far, and yeah I might see if a couple of guys I used to work at Krome Studios with may be interested in coming along. We all used Blender in spare time so we didnt have to buy a maya license for personal use haha. But who knows, either way looks like more than enough to make a day of it. I’ll keep my eyes open for possible function room options also.

Should be great to catch up =)

Lee

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Awesome, but overdue guys, overdue :stuck_out_tongue:

Ive got at least one other friend who’d probubly want to come along as well, maybe more.
Will be great to sit down with some fellow Blenderheads for once.

Oh and Mercury cinema works for me, the date does as well, on mid year break after my last exam July 1st so July is good for any of us who are uni students.

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This should be fun
I had said i may be able to show some stuff from short film project Materia 2 im helping with but as far as any kind of presentation of the current project goes im not particularly up to date and may not have time for anything like that… lots of studying to do atm.
However if the plan is to show some shorts, which i think would be nice if theres time, im sure i could get a high quality version of the original short if thats desired.
see you guys there. :wink:

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Awesome, but overdue guys, overdue :stuck_out_tongue:

I know, I know…

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In the meantime while I mull over planning, etc - I’ve got a BBB sighting for those who haven’t found it in town yet. The Bang and Olufsen (B&O) store in town in that glass cube next to the Hugo Boss seems to be playing BBB on loop all day, every day that it’s open on at least one of its funky display TVs. Either that or it just plays when I’m near the bus stop conveniently every time. Nice little pro Blender moment before work each day. :slight_smile:

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Nice, Im sure it would be an even better moment if they were playing Sintel however. :slight_smile:

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Depending on expected turnout I’ve had an offer for a venue in town that should suit nicely. However if it looks like we are going to get 20-30 people to the first meeting I’ll probably need a new plan. Realistically though it should do well. Part of the Mercury would be nice, but it seems the price is going to be waaay out of range for something like this, including just a room or the foyer. Still open to venue suggestions though if someone has one, might as well look into all the options.

It looks like mid July is a good time to aim for with the Uni teaching break, does a Saturday afternoon work for people or would a weeknight be better? I’m leaning towards Saturday otherwise I’ll probably be thinking about nitpicky organisational stuff at work instead of, well, work. This of course depends on the venue/hosts as well but if people don’t have an issue with Saturdays I’ll start looking into specific dates so we can actually announce something! Woot!

So as far as itinerary/presentation stuff:

  • I’ll put together a mix of Cycles related stuff and anything from work I’ve got permission to show.
  • Possibly more Cycles stuff and other goodies from radiant
  • Possible ‘Materia’ showcase from iisthphir
  • Lee - something? Have emailed about ideas.
  • Bring reels and work and we can have a Q&A / friendly hints session.
  • Can watch some Blender shorts if people want

Setup wise I should be able to make sure that regardless of venue we’ll have at least one recent (windows 64bit) workstation and a projector/large screen. So feel free to bring laptops or usb’s and I’ll have a few Blender builds on the machine ready to go (2.57b official, recent trunk, Cycles 64 bit, etc). If people have anything Linux or Mac specific you’ll need to bring a laptop.

As for a flier, I had an idea to do a bit of a composite with either the Malls Balls or the Trash Pigs, just adding some Suzanne heads into the scene and match the materials. Simple, but it will immediately say Adelaide and Blender without requiring much effort. :slight_smile: I’ll try and tie off the details soon but if someone wants to have a go at the artwork itself I’ll be glad for the help. No need to do that idea btw. If not I’m happy to come up with something.

PS. At the risk of a long post, we had a visitor from UniSA come to work the other day and we bounced ideas about using cheap 3D printers for art purposes in local high schools. He’s already underway for getting them into some schools for design/prototyping purposes.

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fantastic, i have been experimenting with the caustic ability’s that cycles as to offer along with testing Ultra Hi resolutions and doing some render compares with octane.

And by mid July i will probably 30+ renders and some blends for people to :eek: at :smiley:
Along with many other material testings such as alphas, mix’s and HDRI comparisons.

That being said i just need to get this term of school out the way. essays, reports and deadlines coming up.

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Awesome radiant! Obviously focus on the essays, etc where appropriate, no need to work a formalised presentation together. :slight_smile:

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Looks like I’ll be able to host this at work http://monkeystack.com.au/ which makes a weeknight a much more viable option. Kudos to the folks I work with! A Saturday could have run at a more leisurely pace, but lets face it, it is a Saturday and some people like to do weekend things on a weekend.

I know I can’t please everyone for a time, but given that we’ll probably be a small group for starters anyway, are there some weeknights that just aren’t good for those interested? Mid to late July still to overlap with the Uni holidays. Probably 6 or 6.30pm so we can keep it an earlier night. We are located about halfway between two Australia Pizza House’s so I should be able to gather some munchables given the time slot.

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You work at f*kin monkey stack :eek: Thats awesome
That is like the place where i want to work when i finsihed tafe :evilgrin: (or grunt studios but they seem like the Adelaide version of ILM lol)

Anyway, the information is a bit vivid.

Are you saying a Friday night?
And it will end around 6:30 pm?

btw is it alright if i bring my octane work :o it was modeled in blender so it still counts :wink:

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Hu Monkeystack? Never been there before :stuck_out_tongue:

Sounds great!

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@AD-Edge - I kind of thought we would meet then, but from memory I ended up in Europe doing something-or-other.

@radiant - You’ll probably want to keep an eye on thishttp://monkeystack.com.au/incubator/index.html if you haven’t heard about it already. It’s an industry experience program I did here for people who have done tertiary study and are looking for their next leg up into the industry itself. It’s where I did the ‘Mousetrap’ project. Octane stuff is fine, other external render stuff is fine. Just keep in mind we won’t have those other renderers here.

@all - didn’t actually say a time or a day yet, just thought I’d float the idea of a weeknight around. A wednesday might break up the week nicely, but really it comes down to what is available here at the studio. If there aren’t any major issues I’ll ask the people here what works best seeing as they are offering to host.

Trying not to be a slow organiser here… :slight_smile:

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OK I was a bit busy last week but i’m much less overrun now (training dvd launch and i took on an architecture viz job at the same time doh lol). Monkey Stack sounds fantastic for a venue, thanks so much for offering there. I think its also great to have it held at a real Adelaide CG studio =) gives a nice tone to it.

Saturday sounds great, any in that month are ok for me, its not a lazy sunday, monkeystack guys (hopefully) won’t be deadline crunching on something, and theres the option to hang on a bit into the evening if we please without people having to keep looking at their watch.