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!