Next Meeting ; Sat 2nd June 2012 - 1pm : Canarvon Golf Club - Berala, NSW,

The next Sydney Blender User Group is meeting on

Date : 2nd June 2012 (Sat)
Time : 1pm
Canarvon Golf Club - Berala, NSW, Australia
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Let's meet in Berala, Australia

When:	Where:
Saturday, June 2, 2012 1:00 PM	Canarvon Golf Club - Berala Berala, NS, Australia	Check it out →
OK... booking made! Can be changed if howls of protest. The club will make the boardroom available (seats about  15) for any formal part of the meeting and it has all the  usual TV screens that connect to laptops etc. Tea and coffee supplied. No charge. Anyone hungry can get a meal from the Bistro which is open from 12 to 3PM and of course there is a bar for after meeting drinks. If arriving by train,...Learn more

Sydney BUG Tour dates

Specific location to be advised.

Tour Dates

Sydney 16th, 17th, & 18th Dec  2011- Meeting Room, Hornsby Library, fri 6-8pm; Sat-Sun 1-5pm

Melbourne : 3rd Jan 2012

Tasmania: 11th or 12th.

Canberra : 15th Jan.

Blender Meeting # 3 Report

THANK YOU (big one) to all who turned up for the meeting, it was great, Well, I felt great about it anyway.

The theme was modelling and I brought along a little kokeshi doll as the 'live subject'. Here it is.


We had 40 minutes to do our best.

Everybody had a good bash and the skill level ranged from complete beginner to quiet and comfortably advanced. Kris, Walyow, Freen, Ben,
This was great.

There were people popping up questions and shooting quick answers.
There was total concentration on the task at hand.
The more advanced were helping the beginners and it was a beautiful thing to behold.

I asked everyone to submit their finished blend to me by email and this one from Gennedy stood out from the crowd – he has been using Blender since 2009 – nice guy too (and still using 2.49b)

Kukeshi Doll Model – by Gennady – 40 minutes – nice work indeed.

Freen gave a talk about being an animator in the industry and showed us the shots he worked on for Sintel – the raw shots - and my goodness, he is doing well, and told us about the differences between feature and TV/commercial animation.

Couple of points I took from his chat were

1. Average expectation of 80 frames a week in feature production. - that is 80 frames totally polished – ready to be shown at 40 feet tall – no glitches
2. Not so for commercial and TV work – more like “we need these 200 frames by 5pm today”
3. Animating is hard. It is not easy. You may know how to move an armature – but doing it to look real, with good timing and spacing and 'the twelve rules of animation' – it is different.
4. Sintel is an amazing achievement as all work done whilst technology is being developed – beautiful – talk about bleeding edge – wow.

One blender attendee who was invaluable to the meet that I must mention is Matthew 'thewebdesignerdude'– he got the projector working with my Linux Ubuntu and got us up and running on the night. Nice work Matthew.

Kris showed us the amazing work he has done with Blender on manufacturing processes to help both his in and out house clients visually appreciate what will exist

[(KRIS - video here please"]

There were about 12-14 people in total and about half went for a couple of quiet beers afterwards.

Thank you to all of you for supporting Blender and the sydney BUG. Btolputt came down from Raymond Terrace area and Chris turned up from bloody Katoomba – wow – on a week night.

I truly appreciate the support from all of you and look forward to the next meeting.

Yours animatedly until next time.

All from Sydney BUG

Next Meeting ; Tue 23rd Aug - Hornsby Library : 7pm - 8:30pm +

Location: Hornsby Central Library - Meeting Room

28-44 George St (Entrance in Hunter Lane), Hornsby NSW 2077 (Map)
Date: Tuesday 23 August
Time: 7:00pm - 8:30pm

Workshop : Modelling

Bring your laptops as we're going to have a modelling session. So any one who is knew to Blender this is an ideal intro night, and those more experience can show off their skills and give pointers.

We will be hosting a more structured meeting this time with the following outline

6:45pm : Doors open
7:00pm : Sintel or Big Buck Bunny Screening
7:15pm: Modelling-45 minute workshop
8:00pm: Presentation by Freen
8:20pm : Q&A round-up - suggestions for next meeting
8:45pm Doors Close - Retire to pub or home as you choose.

Looking forward to seeing you all there.

2nd Meeting Report

Thanks to all who showed up. I think we had about 15 blender heads in total, which is brilliant for a family Sunday afternoon.

We had a nice visit from freen who worked on Sintel and he was kind enough to give us some insights into the world of professional 3D. He said he's happy to do a talk at next meeting, if the dates marry, so that's great news.

We had a bit of show and tell, and lots of questions answers.

Every option in blender seemed to be discussed - and people are doing very different things.

It is lovely to be able to talk about blender in a group, and it is even nicer to be able to see your answers demonstrated in front of you live.

Brilliant Stuff

Thanks again to all for showing up and look forward to seeing you all at the next one.

Next Meeting : Sunday 3rd July, Glebe, Sydney

Waylow has found a place and locked in a date. Sounds brilliant....

Location: The Friend in Hand Hotel - Upstairs
(58 Cowper St, GLEBE)
Date: Sunday the 3rd July
Time: 3pm till whenever
Map: http://maps.google.com.au/maps?clien...ed=0CBsQ8gEwAA
Underager's are allowed but there are certain areas they cannot go (pokie room and the public bar)
and someone has to be their guardian if the police show up

Sadly the kitchen is closed on a Sunday so there will be no food
but it is a bar so they have drinks

We can plug Laptops into the TV screen and sound system
it uses the old 15pin (Dsub I think it's called) connection and a 2.5 mil sound jack (ipod size)
they have the cables and I have a DVI to Dsub connector so if you have a new laptop we can also plug it in

If you want to bring your laptop you can - if you only have a desktop and want to show something then bring a USB
but this is more of a meet and greet and you don't have to show and tell if you don't want to

------\
thanks waylow, it sounds great

1st Sydney User Group Meeting - Wed 25 May 2011

All in all a great meeting. Great to know there are physical people out there happy to sit down face-to-face and chat about Blender and associated things.

Here's my take on how it went, all in blender of course...(expect for the cartoon, that is by Zanetti.

1st Sydney User Group Meeting - my take from p@ddy_anim on Vimeo.

the meeting happened - the first sydney blender user group meeting happend - it was good, and despite the miserable weather, the competing state of origin, and the meeting place not putting Blender on the list, we had a brilliant and informal meeting. Five of us were there.
Waylow, Djinn, Matt, Kris and P@ddy_anim. We like to so much, we;re going to have another one in about six weeks.

aah, the joy of being able to talk and speak out loud about blender with other people and not be looked at funny. Yay...anyway..

also, some points as follows, keeping informal for now.

1. Next meeting in about six weeks,
2. meeting should be on a weekends
3. meeting in facility to allow all ages.
4. where do we have the next Sydney Blender Users Meeting - suggestions anyone?

p@ddy_anim