Greetings from Los Angeles,
 

It’s Day 1, otherwise known to us at Autodesk as “set-up”. While you attendees are taking your classes and enjoying your ample rest(that will turn into sleep deficit by Wednesday), the exhibitors like us are frantically setting up our booths and displays. After installing my applications at a number of different partner booths that we, the Max Men, will be “appearing”, I took a stroll around the exhibit hall. While it would have been kind of cool to show you some of the booths in there state of assembly, it would have truly been disrespectful to have hidden cameras showing our friends and foes “getting dressed”. If you need a visual, close your eyes and imagine Christmas morn at the house of the biggest computer nerd you know (if that me, you may be right). Computer boxes (the boxes they come in, not the hardware) lie thrown around like beer bottles at a frat party. There are people running around with cables, checking and double checking the ends to verify that this one WILL work and will be long enough (unlike the last 3). You hear “You’ve got to upgrade the driver” almost as often as “I’m going for coffee”. 
 

After “setup”, I was honored to be invited to the mental images reception. Like many receptions at SIGGRAPH, we were luck the Fire Marshal wasn't checking attendance numbers. There I got a private little demonstration of IRay and RealityServer. At the end of the reception, I felt exactly like I did just after updating all of my favorite albums to CD and then seeing this thing called an MP3 player. We will definitely be talking more about that stuff here in the near future. Until then, you can find out more about it at the mental images website.

Next, I was invited to the Unofficial 3ds Max user group meeting. On my way, we stopped in Trader Vic’s for a bite. “Just a bite” turned into 2 hours and we ended up missing one of THE events of the week. That’s the way its rolling Day 1 here at SIGGRAPH 2010.

For Day 2, watch for Gary M. Davis at the ATI booth for a cool “spread your work around” kind of demo. Then he’ll move to the Wacom booth to show how drawing your creations works. Then it’s off to Fusio-io to introduce you to Autodesk Composite and he may just ride the mechanical drive. What an over-achiever.

Speaking of over-achievers, Louis Marcoux pokes his head out of the backroom customer demos just long enough to help with some “hands on” opportunities for you at the Autodesk Booth. Mark Noland will also be “Mudboxing” and “Sketchbooking” with you at the Autodesk booth. The man on stage is our newest Max Man, Chris Murray.
 

Yours truly will start my day at the Intel booth, stop by and say high on your way to pick up this year’s “teapot” or Twentieth Anniversary T-Shirt. I’ve got Max/Max Design and Showcase on this HP Z800 that makes the word “fast” seem obsolete. Given a little more time, and you’ll see Revit up there too. I can’t tell you a whole lot about it yet, but I can tell you that I brought up the task manager during a rendering test and there were 24 CPU Usage History graphs.
 

Until tomorrow,

Eddie