Michele Bousquet

3D or not 3D. That is the question.

2010-08-28T20:13:00.000-07:00

The film Avatar has gone on to break box office records, and for a while it was the talk of the 3D industry. The buzz has died down a bit, but in Avatar's wake there's a huge surge of interest in this thing called "3D".

The term 3D actually refers to two different, but related, technologies. Toy Story, Monsters Inc., and Cars can all be called 3D films. Here, 3D refers to the process used to create the film. Instead of drawing 2D images to make the animation, as with, say, the the TV show The Simpsons, the images are created by sculpting in three dimensions on a computer screen. The characters and environment can be turned this way and that interactively on the screen to view them from any angle. To set your shots, you place a virtual camera in the scene and move it around. Here, I will call this technology 3D graphics for clarity.

3D graphics has been used extensively in the last decade to create not only entire Pixar films, but to simulate real imagery for live action films. Any time you see massive destruction of a spaceship, train, or building in a film or TV show, you are probably looking at 3D graphics. Real-life train wrecks and explosions are expensive and dangerous. With 3D graphics, you get a lot more control over how the effect looks, and can generate it over and over again until you're satisfied with it.

The kind of 3D where you put on a pair of glasses to see perspective effects is called stereoscopy. Stereo refers to two separate images, one for each of your two eyes, while scopy refers to seeing, as with telescope (seeing over a distance) and microscope (seeing really small stuff).

Anyone can film live action in stereoscopy by using two cameras and placing them a few inches apart, the same distance as between your two eyes. The process for creating a computer-generated 3D graphics film follows a similar principle--you by basically create two versions of the film, each shot with a virtual camera from a slightly different angle, and merge them together. I am greatly simplifying here, but that's the gist of it.

Still, thinking 3D graphics and stereoscopy are the same thing is like confusing experiments with Mentos and Diet Coke with the making of the Iron Baby trailer. While both are YouTube videos catchy enough to go viral, the production process for each of them was nowhere near the same.

Do viewers care? Probably not. Although I (and most of my friends in the 3D graphics industry) thoroughly understand the distinction between 3D graphics and stereoscopy, the rest of the world apparently doesn't. Following the popularity of Avatar, a stereoscopic film that used both live action and 3D graphics, the interest in 3D graphics has soared disproportionately (and I have the TurboSquid sales statistics to prove it). Sure, there's a relationship there, but there have been lots of other 3D graphics films over the years that didn't have the same effect. After the Pixar film Up (a fine example of 3D graphics), a bump in TurboSquid site hits and sales. After Avatar? A wild, soaring, stratospheric bump, and interviews with CNN, MSNBC, and the like. Suddenly, everyone is taking my phone calls.

And there's no end in sight for the confusion about what "3D" really means. One obvious solution is to stop using the term "3D" when promoting stereoscopic films, but that ain't going to happen anytime soon. The biggest obstacle is that "3D" sounds sexy, while "stereoscopy" sounds like an intrusive medical procedure.

Am I complaining? No, not really. If confusion about stereoscopy leads more people to my 3D graphics doorstep, I am all for it. I might even stop trying to explain the difference. Instead of telling people that I do marketing for a company that sells 3D digital assets (and watching their eyes glaze over), I have started saying, simply, that I work in 3D.

And now the recipient of this information actually has some context. "Oh yeah," they say, "I saw Avatar." And I am relieved of my burden. No complaints here.

Come in, Tokyo!

2010-01-25T18:54:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to report that my Facebook adventures prior to going to Japan paid off bigtime. I had lots of contacts to hook up with once I got there, and made some friends that I hope to keep for many years to come.

The most important contact I made was Shinya Hasegawa at Autodesk. Shinya is an Autodesk AE in Japan (Applications Engineer, or demo jockey in common parlance). I have a few American AEs that are his mutual FB friends, so I was able to hook up with Shinya on Facebook and set up a meeting for my first day in Tokyo.

Shin and me clowning it up at the Siggraph Replay Event, Tokyo

Shin introduced me to a whole bunch of people, including Sun Kawaguchi. Then Sun introduced me to Jun Inoue, a key person in the Japan CAD world. After returning home, I’m continuing to work with Jun to open up the TurboSquid marketplace in Japan.

Sun, Jun, and me after the most delicious sushi dinner on Earth

Through Arka Roy at TokyoPC I met an interpreter, Anderson Lin, who came with me to visit with Yusuke Morishita, one of TurboSquid’s top sellers. Even though Yusuke doesn’t speak English, we still had a great time. I love meeting other 3D artists! By the time the meeting was over, I’d made two great new friends.

Anderson, me, and Yusuke raise a glass in a Tokyo pub

In short, my use of Facebook enriched my trip to Japan many times over. Long live FB!

Long live the Internet

2009-09-16T17:57:00.000-07:00

In 1992, I was planning a three-month backpacking trip to Europe. I was going to see all the places I'd always dreamed of visiting--London, Paris, Munich, Barcelona, Brussels. There were a few obstacles, however. Namely that I had very limited funds, and that I didn't know a single person in all of Europe. No matter. The Internet was there to save me.

At the time the WWW was still a twinkle in Al Gore's eye, and all we had was the text-based CompuServe forum. But the big CS was where all the 3D Studio users in the world congregated, and I was very active in answering technical questions. So I had a brainstorm. I put up a message stating that I was traveling to Europe on a 3D Studio teaching tour, and I'd be happy to visit anyone in Western Europe for a two-day personal lesson. At the time, a 3D Studio instructor was a rarity, and my reputation as a question-answerer got five takers in various cities.

Thus began my trek across the European continent. I charged just enough to enjoy three low-budget weeks in whatever city I happened to be in, with a little leftover to get to the next gig. It was a total blast. I returned with the same amount of money I left with, a backpack full of clothes all the same dingy-brown color (from being washed all together in youth hostel bathroom sinks), and priceless memories.

Things are a little different now. The Internet is big stuff, 3D Studio is now 3ds Max, and there are a lot of instructors out there. I remember when the CompuServe 3D Studio forum had 300 members; the AREA forum now has thousands. Sure, I've written a few books, but I doubt I could pull off the same trick again. Plus I'm a little older now, and sleeping on trains doesn't hold the same appeal.

Just the same, I find myself in a similar boat today. I'm planning a trip to Japan in a few weeks. I'm going to meet up with some friends halfway through the trip, but for the first part I'll be on my own. During that time, I'd rather hang out with some cool people than wander around alone. Maybe some other Americans who can show me how to get a decent cup of coffee, or other 3ds Max users who like to hang out and talk polygons as much as I do.

I poked around the Internet looking for people who might be interested. I looked at the University of Tokyo, where they have a strong 3ds Max curriculum, but the website is mostly in Japanese. I tried all kinds of Google searches. Then I went to Facebook. Bingo.

TokyoPC is a user group for English-speaking computer users in Tokyo. Talk about finding my people! I posted a message on their Facebook page tonight asking for 3ds Max users who might want to get together. I also posted a message at Japan Network, a Facebook group for English speakers in Japan. I don't know if I'll find any actual 3ds Max users, but I'm confident that someone will be willing to have a bite of sushi with this lost American.

Okay, I'm back

2009-07-08T17:51:00.000-07:00

I got an email recently from a student asking me to please update my blog. Okay, so here I am (she says in a grudging tone of voice, but secretly happy to be back).

I'll try to bring you up to date. I've been working at TurboSquid for nearly two years now, feeling much like the little bumblebee girl in Blind Melon's No Rain video (ie. hangin' with my funky peops). I just finished up revisions to How to Cheat in 3ds Max, updating it for v2010. I also contributed to the new book 3ds Max 2010 Architectural Visualization - Advanced to Expert for 3DATS.

On a personal note, last year I got divorced, bought my dream house, and started dating a very cool guy. I took up the piano again, and I'm also learning guitar. Life is good.

Enough about all that. You want to know what I've been doing with graphics. O ironies of ironies, I am back in the CAD world. At TurboSquid, I work on Revit Market, the (let us say it all together now) world's largest online marketplace for Revit content. So I'm learning Revit, too. It's kind of like 3ds Max, except it requires, like, accuracy and stuff.

Back in 1990, I used to be quite the AutoCAD maven. We all were, all us 3D Studio users. You kind of had to be, since all the "serious" modeling was being done in AutoCAD, and then it was brought into 3D Studio for rendering. Literally every 3D Studio user I knew, used AutoCAD too.

But AutoCAD in 1990 is not Revit in 2009. They are just a wee bit different. In Revit, you can create your own parametric objects, which is way beyond most other CAD software. For example, you can set up a chair object with parameters like those for a Box in 3ds Max, and when you change the Height parameter all the parts of the chair will scale proportionally or change placement in an intelligent way. But only after you painstakingly set it up that way, of course.

So that's what I've been up to. I'll try and post more than once every six months from now on. If not, feel free to remind me.

My Posse

2008-06-12T19:41:00.000-07:00

The last couple of months, I've been getting in touch with old 3D friends. It happens quite naturally, as a matter of doing business and living my life. I got Roger on IM, Mike on Skype, and I talked to Pia, Mark, and Steve on the phone within the last couple of months. And then there's Wade, who actually reads my blog. Plus I got Ted, Bobo, and Swami on the email, and Beau, of course, who I talk to all the time.

Beau Perschall of TurboSquid

Who are these people? They are my buds, my compadres, my posse. Now, I ain't no cowboy, but I gots myself a posse. Everyone needs a posse.

Ken Maffei, Amer Yassine, me, Pia Maffei

Over the years, there are industry people I've gravitated to. Other teachers and writers, mostly, but a few people I've interviewed, or learned from, or just plain liked. Most of them I've met online on 3ds Max forums, then in person at Siggraph.

Bobo Petrov, me, Swami. No, I am not drunk. Bobo is tickling me, the little bastard. He does it every year when we get together for a picture, and I fall for it every time.

Then we stayed in touch. It's always more pleasurable to work with people you like, so whenever a project comes up that requires some collaboration or advice, I turn to my posse. Over the course of work, we went from acquaintances to friends, and we meet at Siggraph and other functions.

I see them only once or twice a year, but they're my buds.

Bobo, Mark Gerhard, Gary Yost, Oleg Bayborodin, Ted Boardman

So what goes on with a posse? Here are a few examples:

Mark recommended me for a job at Autodesk.

Mike was a stellar student with whom I did several documentation jobs for TurboSquid. He has now gone on to make his own mark with Cebas.

Roger did technical editing on my most recent book, How to Cheat in 3ds Max. In fact, we've tech-edited so many of each others' works over the years that I've lost count.

Gary Yost, the "inventor" of 3ds Max, was instrumental in getting me into the early Beta Program.

Swami and I collaborated on a MAXScript book for Autodesk, which was actually a revision of a book Ken Maffei had written.

Amer, being one of the few hold-outs that still works at Autodesk, translated some 3D-related text into French for me recently.

Steve called me a few months ago to ask for help preparing a class on 3ds Max, which I was happy to give.

Ted and I get together once in a while and talk about teaching.

I interviewed Oleg in Moscow for a video on 3ds Max artists. At the time, he spoke no English, but somehow we got along great. Then a few years later, Beau hired me to write the documentation for one of his plug-ins. Thankfully, Oleg knew a few words in English by then, and was able to explain the software to me.

Bobo and I taught a MAXScript class together at CGSociety last year.

Beau recommended me for a job at TurboSquid, where I now work. Now he sees more of me than he ever wanted to.

Pia has invited me into several Beta programs over the years, and happily, she and I have a meeting next week to talk about working together again.

Wade is just plain happy to see me every year. I'm sure I'll find a use for him someday. (Please laugh, Wade.)

Wade and Swami

None of this was planned. I'd go to Siggraph, hang out with some people that I thought were cool, and the next thing you know, I had a posse.

Looking forward to many more years of riding off into the sunset.

A little secret

2007-08-23T12:55:00.001-07:00

I have a little secret that I use to be successful in any area. Don't tell anyone. The secret is...

Polite Pestering.

The amount of work it takes to get anything done in this world constantly amazes me. I can think of numerous examples, but the one that comes to mind is, of course, the one that I'm going through right now.

I am trying to get on the Beta List for a particular piece of software. In the software industry, there are two phases software goes through before it's released. There's the Alpha version which is tested internally, then the Beta version goes out to a select list of previous clients and media people for testing and review.

Being on the Beta List is kind of like being invited to a very exclusive party. You get to see the software before anyone else does, try out new features and comment upon them. Sometimes your suggestions are incorporated into the new release. It's a big responsibility, especially when coupled with the confidentiality agreement, which states that a breach will result in your left leg being amputated.

Unfortunately, getting onto a Beta List is harder than getting backstage at a Rolling Stone concert. I know because I have tried both. (Mick Jagger is very pleasant in person, by the way.) Before you can apply, you need to receive an invitation via email. If the software company doesn't send you one, you need to bug all your friends until you find one that did, and you get your friend (who is hopefully not too sore at you by this time) to forward it to you.

Then you apply and...wait. You hear nothing back, so you send an email to the Beta List administrator and explain why it's in their best interests to accept you. You shamelessly trot out all your credentials. Then you wait some more.

A few weeks and several unanswered emails later, you call the company. You find out that the administrator left the company three weeks earlier, and the new guy is doing the jobs of three people and can't talk to you right now.

So you email that guy, and you get some of your friends to email him too, explaining why you are the perfect Beta List candidate. You make a very polite pest of yourself. "I know you are very busy, but it's important that I get on the Beta List as soon as possible because..." Finally, perhaps just to stop the emails, the guy puts you on the the Beta List.

Now for the most important part of Polite Pestering: you send the guy a nice present for his trouble. I like to send candy, flowers, or balloons. No one has ever complained about this.

If I'm lucky, next year the same guy will be handling the Beta List. And he'll remember the candy, not the pestering.

Try it and see.

Latest Stuff

2007-07-20T17:33:00.001-07:00

Some new animation for your viewing pleasure:

Play Dead!

I was dog-sitting, and, well, you can guess the rest.

From Russia with Love

2007-06-29T17:47:00.001-07:00

This week I got back in touch with Bill Forsche, SFX expert and a friend from my travelin' days. Bill and I did Moscow together one memorable August back in 1995, and we got to resminiscing about our time there.

The reason for the trip was my brilliant idea to make a documentary about Russian 3D Studio artists. In the 1990's, the Russians were all over the 3D thing even though most of their equipment was 2-3 years older than the average American artist's. They were particularly good with organic modeling (fruits, people, landscapes) before anyone else had figured out how to do it. This intrigued me, and I worked my contacts to get in touch with five places in Moscow that were crankin' out the good stuff on a regular basis.

Once this was worked out, I needed to hire a cameraman. The job description was simple.

Lug around equipment to interview sites, often on public transportation
Operate camera during interviews

Willing to stay in strange or unexpected lodgings

Bill and I met at a small graphics conference held at Virtual Partners, James Murphy's place in Appleton, Wisconsin. My trip to Moscow was scheduled to take place about 3 weeks later, and I still hadn't found a suitable cameraman. Bill and I hit it off right away, and he mentioned he was at loose ends for a few months. I made the offer, and he accepted.

I went to Moscow about a week before Bill arrived and went full-speed ahead on pre-production. At the time, an American could travel to Moscow only if a hotel reservation had already been made for at least the first part of the visit. The Internet was still a patchy thing back then; it wasn't like I could go to hotels.com and pick one out. From a list I got from the American visa office, I managed to make a reservation with a hotel on the outskirts of Moscow for $80/night. This might not seem like much, but I needed to find cheaper housing. Two rooms at $80/night for two weeks adds up pretty fast!

Through my interview contacts I managed to get a couple of rooms at the Hotel Sputnik right near downtown Moscow. My contact had tried several other hotels and as soon as they heard we were Americans, the price per room tripled. (Isn't that illegal? In Russia, apparently not.) At the Sputnik they didn't usually house English-speaking visitors, but a deal was struck: $30/night each, two rooms for two weeks.

Russian hotels have priorities different from American hotels. All rooms had a single bed, a TV and a fridge, but I paid a little extra for rooms with a shower. None of the staff spoke English. I made do with a phrase book and lots of hand motions.

The staff found us amusing, if a little crazy. When I was shown the room by one of the many house matrons that live on the premises, I riffled through my phrase book and asked, "Gdyeh douche?" ("Where is the shower?") After more hand signals she showed me the "shower": a hand-held sprayer that attached to the sink faucet. In the floor was a drain, so one simply hosed oneself down while standing in the center of the bathroom. The house matron looked at me strangely; had I never seen a shower before?

There was no room service, but there was a restaurant on the 8th floor that served up delicious coffee in lovely delicate china at ten cents a cup. The morning after Bill and I arrived, we took our coffee back to my room to plan the day's production schedule. Later, the room matron let me know that this was simply not done. Cups in the room! Crazy Americans!

To avoid further offense to my gracious hosts, I purchased an urn and brought it to the restaurant so I could fill it with coffee and take it back to my room. The waitress looked at me in horror. The bill for such a service would be around US$1.50. Add a carton of milk, and the tab skyrocketed to US$2.20. Who had that kind of money to throw around? But they got used to me and my urn, and the waitress even seemed to accept the wisdom of such a thing. Who knows, maybe the Sputnik has introduced room service because of me.

On our 3rd or 4th morning, I woke to find my sink would not dispense water. I summoned the matron, and she cheerfully confirmed that yes, there was no water. More riffling through the phrase book, and I discovered that half the city was suffering the same fate. Hadn't you seen the notices in the lobby (you idiotic American)? The next day we had water, but the other half of the city didn't. This is apparently a weekly occurrence in Moscow and drew no surprise from anyone but us. We got in the habit of showering every night in case the next day was a dry one. ("Did you remember to hose yourself last night?" became a common morning greeting.)

Moscow in August is hot and humid. Between that and the water situation, we stunk a lot of the time. The subways in Moscow are beautiful, lofty structures with incredible architecture, but they are very crowded, and air conditioning is not one of their features. Suffice it to say that we fit right in. Bill, bless his sweaty little heart, got into the adventure of it all and didn't complain once.

The interviews themselves went smoothly. Many of the graphics professionals we interviewed had been to the USA, so our habits didn't surprise them. Steepler Graphics provided us with a guide named Dmitri (Dima for short) who showed us how to get around Moscow and buy soda from the kiosks that seemed to be at every corner. When American soda was introduced to Russia, refrigeration was not necessarily a common amenity, and people accepted warm Pepsi as a perfectly fine refreshment. After a few days, so did we.

In the black market that thrived in every subway tunnel we bought a variety of souvenirs too good to pass up: a pocket-watch engraved with a hammer and sickle; a fake Russian passport (it would fool no one, but I thought it was cool); sets of nested dolls, all hand-painted; and just for kicks, a bootleg beta of Windows 95. (I wasn't brave enough to install this on my computer when I got home, but my brother-in-law was. It completely messed up his system and he had to reformat his hard drive. Lesson learned.)

It was a trip to remember, to say the least. If you want to get to know someone, spend two weeks in a foreign country together! When I called Bill a few days ago, we chatted like old friends despite more than ten years of no contact.

The resulting documentary, 3DS Around the World: Russia, had its run in the late 1990's but passed into techno-oblivion after its techniques became old-school. Happily, my friendship with Bill lives on.

Car Talk Meets Book Talk

2007-06-20T05:44:00.001-07:00

Well, it's been a while since I've made a post, but not for want of things to say. Just busy livin' life in the fast lane. You know how that can be.

Last weekend I went to a 20th anniversary party for the radio show Car Talk and got to meet Ray and Tom Magliozzi, otherwise known as Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers. They had to be two of the funniest and friendliest people I've ever met.

Never one to miss a photo opp, I presented each of the brothers with a copy of my auto-themed novel Combustion. Ray in particular was really happy to see a novel in the "woefully under-represented genre of auto parts fiction."

I recently found out that Ray's garage is about 6 blocks from my digs in Cambridge, so I'll be dropping in to see how well he likes the trials and tribulations of Genevieve Carmody, part-owner of Carmdoy Automotive (and the heroine in Combustion).

Tonight I have a library show in Raymond, NH, more plugging for the book. Hopefully the attendees won't ask me too many probing questions. ("Where do you get your ideas?" "Er, from my head.")

The visit with Ray was so inspiring that I finally finished the first chapter of my next novel, a dark tale set in (where else) suburban Massachusetts. I will tell you more about it when I know more about it. I always start out with a plot in mind but then it goes off in directions that not even I suspected. So all I can tell you is that it's about a mathematical researcher that ends up solving a murder involving two childhood friends. If you have any plot ideas please let me know.

Next up is a MAXScript Fundamentals class at CGSociety, and a teaching gig in Los Angeles. I'm also talking with Focal Press about doing another book on 3ds max, something completely different from what I usually do. More will be told as the plot thickens.

Time to plug in

2007-04-01T06:37:00.000-07:00

Well, life it just full of learning experiences these days. I've been playing the fiddle for a few years now, and last night I had my first "real" gig. Actually, it would be more accurately described as surreal.

I have lots of friends that are "real" musicians. By a "real musician" I mean someone who can play a song flawlessly in front of an audience. They don't get flustered when they hit a bad note or break a string in the middle of a performance, and often they can play a song they've never heard if you call the chords out as you go along. They even get paid to play sometimes.

I jam with my friends often, and a few weeks ago Rose Kula, a now dear friend I met through my husband (a real bass player, guitarist, and singer) asked me to perform with her at a gig. Rose has a heart bigger than New Hampshire, and she has always encouraged me at our jam sessions. Last night she put her repuation on the line and had me come up for four songs at the Village Trestle in Goffstown, NH.

They say the more you play the better you get, and that turned out to be true even for just one evening of performance. The first hurdle was that I brought my acoustic violin and had no electronics to help me be heard above the drums and the electric bass and guitar. So I played right into a microphone. Then I realized that although the audience could hear me, I couldn't hear myself.

On another instrument this might not have been a problem, but a violin has no frets (those raised lines on the neck of a guitar or bass that help you know your fingers are in the right place) so we fiddlers place our fingers from memory and make subtle adjustments on the fly. The first song was pretty rough, with me trying to send the instrument's vibrations to my shoulder so I could get a sense of of the tone. This was a skill I hadn't practiced when rehearsing!

To solve this problem on the next two songs, Rose had me come up to her personal microphone for my solos. Her mike is optimized for the higher tones of a woman's voice, and they picked up the violin very well. She also has a big monitor in front of her mike so I could finally hear myself. It was still quite a different experience from the acoustic jams I'm accustomed to. I had to keep my violin held just so the whole time, and I had to draw the bow at a strange angle to keep from hitting the mike stand. ("Trial by fire," my husband commented at the end of the night.)

On the last song, an original ballad named "Burn Me Clean" that Rose performed for the first time that night, I asked if we could do it the way we rehearsed it: just the two of us. She agreed, and the lovely, lilting solo I had worked so hard on could finally be heard. The song had the desired effect; one of my friends told me it brought tears to her eyes.

So I learned a few things last night. One is that Rose is a joy to perform with; she nodded and prodded me through the entire set. The other is that I have to make the jump to performing with electronics. I've been resisting this because of the way I usually play with others. When I'm not sure of a song at an acoustic jam session, I toy around with the notes so softly only I can hear until I get the swing of things, and at that point I turn back to the group and play at full volume. This takes perhaps 15 seconds, but I've come to rely on those seconds before committing to a series of notes.

With an electric instrument, there is no such thing as playing so softly you're the only one who can hear. To hear myself at all the sound had to come out of the monitor, and that meant the audience heard it too. So I can't rely on my old tricks in an electric performance. The only solution is to know the song so well that my fingers will know where to go without having to hear the notes beforehand.

So a new era has dawned. I already have an electric fiddle but I've always used it strictly as an unamplified, quiet practice instrument.

Time to plug in.

The best way to learn something

2007-03-30T19:30:00.000-07:00

I've been teaching this online class in modeling at CGSociety, and it's quite the adventure. If you ever want to learn a lot about something, teach a class on it.

I've been teaching on and off for more than half my life. When I got my first job at ComputerLand in 1984, they had this big classroom they would sometimes toss me into at a moment's notice. There I'd be in front of a dozen hopeful faces, struggling to teach something I barely knew myself.

It went something like this: On Monday the manager would hand me a box, still in shrink-wrap, with some unfamiliar software label on it. If I was lucky he'd hand it to me early in the day, but more often it was around 4pm. Then he'd inform me that 12 people from State Farm Insurance (or wherever) were coming at 9am the next day to learn the software, and I was expected to give them a one-day class.

The first time this happened I freaked. WordStar, what the heck is that? I haven't even cracked open the package! But after much discussion it was determined that the training couldn't be canceled. By the time we finished arguing it was too late in the day, and everyone at State Farm had already gone home and were even now enjoying their cozy dinners in front of the TV while I, slave to my boss, was destined to stay up all night reading a cryptic software manual that was obviously written by Zulus high on crack.

But being a young and energetic thing at the time, the sleepless night wasn't that big a deal. I taught the next day and did the best I could. Then the strangest thing happened. Some people called up the next day to say they loved the class. What?! Are you people crazy or something? That was rubbish! I can do way better than that. During the down time that followed, I played with the software some more and wrote up a much better curriculum.

My boss (who was later fired for substance abuse during business hours, no kidding) figured that since that went so well, he'd do it again. This time it was Lotus 1-2-3 at 4:30pm. Another pot of coffee, please.

And so it went for the six months I worked there. The funny thing was, it got easier as time went on. After learning Lotus, it was a snap to learn Multiplan, another spreadsheet. And WordPerfect was just like WordStar but you pressed different keys, that's all. In the months that followed I learned (and taught) those packages plus MultiMate, DisplayWrite, EasyWriter, VolksWriter, XyWrite, Peachtree, VisiCalc, SuperCalc, Friday (a short-lived customer tracking program, one of the first written in dBaseII), the Basic programming language, and the operating systems MS-DOS and CP/M, which you had to know in those pre-Windows days to create folders and copy files.

I developed a method for skimming the manual quickly, figuring out the most important bits, and putting them in a sequence that would build from simple concepts to the more complex. Once I got into the classroom, the main tool I used was patience. Many students commented on how kind I was when they asked "stupid" questions, how I would go through the steps over and over again until they got it. They didn't know my dirty little secret: I had been asking the same questions myself just a day or two before.

So now I find myself here, many years later, teaching a class on a subject about which I thought I knew a great deal. But apparently not enough! Students will always come up with questions that stump me. Then it's back to the manual, online tutorials, DVDs, whatever I can get my hands on to figure it out.

I like to think I'm a "good teacher," but what is that? Someone who can fish around and find answers, then deliver them with kindness. And that, my friends, is all there is to it.

Caution: Viewing May Be Addictive

2007-03-16T16:50:00.000-07:00

Up until a few days ago, I had heard a lot about YouTube.com. The thing that really got my attention was that the founders sold it to Google for a boatload of money. But I hadn't really been there much until I was talking to my husband and said I wished I had gotten to see Stephane Grappelli play the fiddle before he died. He fired up YouTube, and there he was.

After that, it was hard to pull myself away. Looking for set designs for your next performance of Pirates of Penzance? See dozens of productions on YouTube from Broadway to middle school. Want to see Eubie Blake play the piano? That's up there too.

It's kind of like when I discovered online Scrabble. I'm going to have to ration my time on YouTube. The question is, how do I come up with a gazillion-dollar idea like that? If you know, please tell me.

Once you've learned one, you've learned them all

2007-02-15T22:01:00.000-08:00

I've been teaching this course on MAXScript programming at CGSociety, and it's brought to mind my own adventures in learning how to program. For my first learning experience, I was fortunate enough to take a class in Fortran at McGill University in the summer of 1980. I had just completed a year at McGill, majoring in nothing in particular. I stayed for the summer because classes were small, dress was casual, and everyone was in the sort of pleasant, lazy mood brought on by warm weather. My parents said computers were the next big thing, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Back in those days you learned programming in a lecture hall, scribbling down commands with pen and paper. There were no books yet because it was all pretty new and it changed all the time, so you just had to write down what the teacher said and pray that you didn't put the spaces and quote marks in the wrong place. Then you went to a separate "computer room" on the other side of campus where there were no teachers in evidence, just overworked grad students.

In the lecture hall, your login and password was handed to you as a printout on a tiny little strip of paper. The login was always something like x76G8fE2p5g and the password was even worse. If you lost the little strip of paper, you had wait another week to get another little strip of paper. You could always tell the second-semester programming students by the way they carried around scotch tape for sticking the little piece of paper to a notebook at first opportunity.

On top of that, teachers sometimes forgot that many of us had never touched a keyboard before, and often left out important instructions like "You must press Shift+Q+4 to access the login screen." Another reason to love those small summer classes; it's much easier to confront the idea of raising your hand and asking, "How the heck do I log in?" Then you'd find out that half the class had the same problem.

In my first class so many of us had trouble logging in that we finally convinced the teacher to come to the computer room and help us. The actual appearance of a teacher in the room was so rare that it caused little ripples of excitement as students eagerly anticipated actually getting some help while they were on the computer. Alas, he stayed only long enough to figure out that he had given us a bad batch of little strips of paper, and then he went off to grumble at some administrative types about it.

After logging in, you had to go through a series of keystrokes to get to the editor, the place where you typed in your program. Back then you could only type at the bottom of the screen, where you would enter the line number you wanted to change, change it, then hit another button to save it. Add to this the hunting and pecking at the keyboard while simultaneously squinting at your scribbled notes from class, and it's a wonder any of us passed. Then you had to run the program, which was another set of keystrokes. Teachers sometimes forgot to tell us how to do that, too.

In the fall, with two programming courses under my belt, I took to hanging out in the computer room so I could help new students log in and run their programs. I made a lot of new friends, and they all thought I was really smart because I could, you know, log in and run programs.

This might all sound horrible, but it was actually fun. Computers were new, and hardly anyone knew how to use them. My friends and I were part of an elite group. We read science fiction, we played Dungeons and Dragons; each of us bragged that we would be the first to have a Cray in the living room. And we felt infinitely superior to people studying, say, political science. Study all you want--we were going to rule the world!

Over the next three years, I took classes in several programming languages: Pascal, Snobol, APL, PL/1, C (the original C, before it became C++), and a bunch of others I can't remember. My final project, for a class taught by the programmer that had written one of the top chess programs of the day, was an online game of Othello that I wrote with two other students in Pascal.

Then I graduated and reality set in. Most of the places I applied for jobs were using something other than the languages I had studied! Horrors!

But the beautiful thing was, after learning so many languages, learning one more was easy as pie. My first job was at my local ComputerLand store doing various support tasks, including writing programs in Basic. If you've ever suffered through Fortran, writing in Basic is like a vacation. Then I moved on to a job writing accounting systems in a language called Dataflex (which has now become Visual Dataflex, but I used the DOS version in 1984, no "visual" in sight.) It took me about two weeks to learn it, and about two more months to become an expert.

While some of the students in my current class have never done programming before, some have. The experienced ones are finding it much easier to pick up this new language. But for the novices, I am striving to provide the same service I gave in that crowded college computer room. Click here, type in this and that exactly, with no spaces. Make sure you have all the parentheses in place, then press Ctrl+E.

It's important that they gain confidence as well as knowledge. I want them to keep at it. Programming is a whole new world. Once you learn one language, the next is easier, and the next even easier. By the time you get to the 5th and 6th, you find you can learn a new language over a long weekend while simultaneously watching reruns of Stargate SG-1.

Next Best Thing to a Spaceship

2007-01-25T21:24:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago I had the pleasure of visiting Sky-Skan, a New Hampshire company that creates animation and display systems for planetarium domes. There I was, innocently having a pleasant chat with a couple of folks, when one said, "Would you like to see a demonstration of our product?" Of course, I replied. That sounded just fine.

What followed nearly knocked my socks off. Sky-Skan has this product called Digital Sky 2, a hardware/software system that lets you move freely through all the known data about the universe in 3D, all in real time. You can go to planets and stars and have a look all around when you get there. In addition, you can display the names of heavenly bodies and their trajectories, speed up time to see orbiting moons and planets, display constellations, and do just about anything else you want.

Sitting there in the dark with a 180-degree display of the Milky Way drifting by bordered on a spiritual experience. Then we zoomed out to the point where we were outside looking in at all the known data about the universe. It was just about then that I decided to grab a sleeping bag and move into the dome permanently.

Everyone working there seemed to be in a good mood (I was introduced to the Universe Director, a fine fellow who wore his title well), and I don't wonder why. There's a possibility that I'll get a chance to work there sometime soon. If so, I'll have plenty of opportunities to fly around the universe again.

If not, there are portable domes available, and there's an abandoned barn a stone's throw from my house... Planet Party, anyone?

Pursuing Uncharted Territory

2007-01-06T14:52:00.000-08:00

I recently got a phone call from a friend who's starting a new consulting business. He asked me a few survey questions, including "What's your favorite part of business organization?" The answer was easy: "Pursuing uncharted territory."

In this spirit, I have started the new year by trying a few things I've never done before:

E-books. An e-book is a downloadable book in PDF (Adobe Acrobat) format. I was drawn to this format for my shorter books (less than 100 pages) where a dedicated audience exists for the topic. Readers like them because they're inexpensive and they can take delivery right away. I like them because they're quick to create and there are no printing costs. The nominal posting fee is easily covered by a handful of sales, which means I can take chances and publish books that might not have otherwise seen the light of day.

In November 2006 I published my first e-book, MAXScript Made Easy. Sales for December were downright respectable, so I'm pursuing this avenue for a number of other topics. Next in the line-up are Modeling a Hand in 3ds max, Saving Money on Parts for your Minolta Magicolor 2200 Printer (a popular booklet I've been selling on eBay for years), and Write, Print, Publish, and Sell Your Own Software Book, a little booklet I've been circulating among my aspiring writer friends who want to break into the biz.

A Career in Fiction. Last year I published my first novel (that's a fiction story, for you techies out there). Publishing fiction is a world away from non-fiction. With my 3ds max books, I simply put up a few notices and the animators come running. With fiction, the response is more along the lines of, "Yeah, you and every other hack in the universe." The sheer volume of competition means the ambitious fiction author must be very creative with her marketing.

So I'm embarking on a series of gambits designed to make readers lust for my book. These include, but are not limited to, entering writing contests, giving in-person pitches to independent bookstores (this is also called "begging"), selling the book at country fairs (did that last year, very successful), getting the book reviewed by famous female racers (the plot centers around the auto industry, and yes, I did this too), getting on Oprah (still working on that one), and plugging the book on my blog.

Want a good read? Of course you do.

Lightning Classes. If you've been to my company website recently, you've seen a teaser for Lightning Classes. These are spontaneous, short online classes on a specific 3ds max topic. This is how it works: I put out an email saying a particular class is starting in 15 minutes, and the first 20 people who show up can get into the class. When you log in you'll see my screen on your screen, and you'll see the technique in action and hear my voice telling you what I'm doing. You can also send questions in real time. I'm in the process of working out the kinks, and I expect to start offering these classes in March 2007. To get on the mailing list for Lightning Classes, visit the website or send an email to subscribe@click3ds.com.

Scientific Visualization. This term means graphic or animated representations of scientific subjects. You can see examples of this on the Discovery channel all the time, like when they show a satellite or space shuttle. They don't have a remote space camera out there taking pictures; they use animation to show the concept.

There are various branches such as math, physics, and medical visualization. One of my fave examples is the Outside In video shown at the 1994 Siggraph conference, which showed how you can turn a sphere inside out without puncturing a hole in it. I have a few things of my own brewing; stay tuned.

TV Show Development. For a few years, my good friend Mike McCarthy and I have been developing a TV series about a circus. The show features a bald, bearded Hungarian circus master named Bobo, a trapeze artist that bears an eerie resemblance to the lovely Pia Maffei, and a snake charmer that's a dead ringer for our good friend Swami. There's even a dog that somehow brings to mind our buddy Steve Schain. I plan to finish the pilot this year.

That's all for now. I think that's enough to keep me busy for a while.

Home alone on a Saturday night... sort of

2006-11-11T20:02:00.000-08:00

Well, it's happened again. My husband, a professional musician, has gone off to play with a bunch of his friends, leaving me home alone on a Saturday night.

But I didn't despair. In fact, being an animator, I always have friends around. You see, it all started back in the early 90's when I decided to learn character modeling and animation. I quickly found a ready source of reference materials: Happy Meals. It seems the promotional toys were of better quality back then, but maybe it's my imagination.

Before I knew it, the house was filled with Woodys, Mulans, Muriels, and all manner of plastic dogs, cats, bugs, and sea creatures. Around the time I decided to cut back and keep only the toys I found most useful, I got more into facial modeling. That's when I started collecting heads.

I'll never forget my first head. I was visiting Australia with my husband-to-be and two nephews when we happened upon one of those $2 stores. Well, we were just about to return to the USA and we needed to get rid of all those $2 coins rattling around in our pockets. And there is was, the glistening, gleaming friend that we now fondly refer to as Glass Head. I lugged Glass Head all the way back here, and it still remains a faithful companion, often wearing a party hat or other accoutrement, but more often reposing in all its refractive glory on a bookcase in the living room.

Hangin' out with friends on a Saturday night. Can you spot me in the picture?

There was no stopping me after that. Our local hair salon had a bunch of discarded heads whose hair was no longer useful for practice, and they sold them to me for a song. Alas, after the third overnight guest woke up screaming (the guest bed is in my office), we decided to give them away to good homes. One bore an eerie resemblance to the wife of fellow animator Dan Isaacs, so I gave it to him. He placed it on a high shelf in his office so it could look down on him and keep him in line when Simone wasn't around to do it herself.

I have found a better source of heads now, my local wig shop. They sell me plain, white styrofoam heads for the magic price of $2 each. And on this lonely Saturday night, my husband left me with all the heads, a few magic markers, and a full bottle of white-out. What a wild evening!

Styro head is still passed out and hasn't seen her new tattoo yet.

Catching up with old friends

2006-10-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

About a hundred years ago (okay, maybe just 15 years ago, but in computer animation time that's at least a century) I co-wrote a bunch of books with Glenn Melenhorst, one of the most prolific and talented 3ds max artists around.

Glenn, who is based in Melbourne, Australia, is still one of the best, and so are his website and blog.

Glenn's website - Portfolio and the like.
Adelaide Grey blog - Ongoing info about his latest project, with pictures and behind-the-scenes production secrets.

Enjoy!

Happy Halloween

2006-10-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you have one of those days when it all comes together. Like, when you realize that from selling all that junk on Ebay, you have enough in your Paypal account to buy a piece of software you've been wanting. That happened today. It was only 35 bucks, but hey, it beats gettin' out the plastic. (The software was HySnap from Hyperionics, still the best screen capture program around, even better than Snagit.)

Then I made a forest completely out of hair. This might sound pretty horrifying, but it was actually easier than I expected.

I started with a ground plane, and grew some hairs from it--short hairs for leaves on the ground, and longer hairs for tree trunks. Then from the tree trunks I grew more hairs for branches, then from those hairs, more hairs for leaves. And the software I'm using (Hairtrix/Ornatrix, plug-in for 3ds max, mentioned in an earlier post) lets you curl the hairs automatically as you go to make a nice random effect.

Then I gave each of the hairs a thickness and color, threw in some blue lighting and fog, and voila!

Happy Halloween!

PS. For those interested in such things, the viewport poly count for this scene is 32 (!) and the rendered poly count is around 82,000. The image rendered in less than 20 seconds on my li'l 1.6GHz laptop with 480MB RAM. Another reason why it was a good day.

Recycling old work

2006-10-20T13:32:00.000-07:00

I'm slated to teach an online class at CGSociety in a few weeks. To advertise the class, they wanted a few high-profile images from work I've done.

One of my favorite jobs was working at Argonaut Games in London around 1991-92, where they were in the process of creating the Ren and Stimpy Fire Dogs game.

When I worked at Autodesk doing documentation 2002-2004, I made a lot of models and animation, but most of them were specifically for tutorials. This meant they were designed for simplicity in learning. For example, I modeled and animated this little guy for the Basic Rigging tutorials that shipped with 3ds max 6, 7, and 8.

The controls you see are the rig you create with the tutorial. I modeled, rigged, and animated the guy in about 6 hours. Writing the tutorials for him took much longer!

A world of hair and fur

2006-10-19T22:19:00.000-07:00

When you write the documentation for a hair/fur plug-in, you make a lot of hair. Here are some samples.

Friendly little woodland creature. The fur is automatically pushed to the shape of the body, and then you comb it appropriately.

A braid. Computer artists get excited about stuff like this. Any 10-year-old girl can make a braid, but computers have a hard time with it.

This one might not seem so exciting, until you consider that the leaves are actually "hairs" growing on the branch. Meaning you can "comb" them into different configurations, increase the number and have them automatically appear on the branch, etc. You can make an entire forest this way, and with a lot less polygons than you'd imagine.

How much should an artist charge?

2006-10-19T06:43:00.000-07:00

All this talk about how to find a job got me thinking about the second-favorite question students give me: How do you decide how much to charge for a job?

Oh, this is a great mystical question, one that requires meditation and perhaps an offering of a small furry animal to the gods. Actually, it requires you to answer a few key questions:

What's the current market rate?
How much time is it going to take?
Does it require any special skills that I have had to spend a lot of time developing?
Does it require special software or hardware that I need to purchase or have already purchased?
What personal benefits/disadvantages will come from this job (besides the benefit of money)?

Let's take a look at these one at a time.

What's the current market rate?

Hmm, good question. This fluctuates with the economy, demand vs. available experts, and the like. My base rates are what I charged the last three times plus a little less or more depending on this and that, but I realize that's not very helpful to you.

Here are a few benchmarks based on the current economy. By short-term I mean a few days or weeks, and long-term anything longer than that.

Modeling/animation: $30-$80/hr long-term, $100-$150/hr short-term
Modeling/animation with special skills required (compositing, character rigging, programming, expert lighting/mapping): Add $30-$100/hr commensurate with the degree of specialization, software needed, etc. (This is covered more later in this post.)
Teaching: $400/day long-term, $600-$800/day short-term
Teaching in a vertical specialty: $800-$1500 short-term, depending on how much of a niche it is at the time you do the teaching.
Writing: $25-$50/hr long-term, $50-$150/hr short-term

If you're a student used to living on baby-sitting wages, these rates can seem huge. But remember that as a freelancer, you will likely have periods of little or no work during which you still have to pay for stamps and the phone bill and also feed the marketing guy (you).

For surveyed artists' hourly rates by geographical region, see Brenner Books Sample Prices.

How much time is it going to take?

This is the easiest one to calculate. Basically, you make a list of job tasks and assign a time to each one. Then you add 10%-100%. With time you get better at this. For short jobs especially, just make a guess, add a percentage, and do the ding-dang job. The experience will help you figure out the time needed for future jobs. (For teaching or other day-rate work, you might want to add a day or two for preparation and travel.)

Longer jobs are more dangerous than short ones when calculating time. For example, suppose you take a job that you think will take two weeks, but you miscalculate and it ends up taking double the time, four weeks. No big deal--just cut back on the Starbucks lattes and fancy pastries, and ride out the short dip in your finances.

But suppose that job was originally supposed to take two months, and it takes four months instead. Now you're in trouble. (I did this once, and between poverty and stress I lost 20 pounds. Still, I don't recommend it.) For longer jobs, you need to be very careful in calculating the time. Usually I make up a rather detailed agreement regarding work required, how many changes the client is allowed to make once the job starts, approval milestones, etc. but this is a topic for another post.

Does it require special skills?

Special skills include knowledge of a particular piece of software or hardware, and experience with a particular usage such as character animation or architectural rendering. For teaching, a college degree or some other kind of certification is also worth something.

Your rate should correspond to the amount of time you've spent "training" for the job. Think of it like doctor's or lawyer's fees. You might pay $150/hr for a doctor's appointment. You are not really paying for that hour; you are paying for his/her years of medical training.

If you've spent weeks, months, years learning a particular software package or skill, that's worth something. When clients complain that I ask for too much per hour, I give them the doctor analogy, and that usually does the trick. If they want to pay only $15/hr, they can go grab someone off the street and see if they can get them to do some poly modeling.

So what is your time worth per hour? Figure out a ballpark range. The remaining questions will help you refine it.

Does the job require special hardware/software?

When you go to Kinko's and make copies, the paper and toner accounts for only a small fraction of the price. The bulk of it is to pay for the machine. Likewise, when you do an animation project on your own hardware and software, the cost of these items should be worked into it to some degree.

This doesn't mean that if you paid $1500 for a piece of software that you should pass that entire cost on to a single client. But you should charge some portion of it for each job so the software will eventually pay for itself.

If you have to buy a piece of software for a job (such as a plug-in) or some hardware (graphics card, new computer), you can make a judgment call. If I think I'll have some use for it after the job, I might charge the client for a portion of it. If I need it just for the job and I don't see how I'll use it afterward, I'll tell the client this and include it as a line item on my cost sheet, or better yet, get them to buy it for me before I agree to start the job.

This last gambit is a good way to see if a client is really serious before you plonk down some of your hard-earned cash for a plug-in or graphics card. In any case, don't buy the thing until you have a signed agreement from the client and a deposit on the job. Again, a topic for another post.

Are there personal benefits/disadvantages beyond the money?

For me, this is the wildcard. Over the years, I've worked out a rate range with enough variables to choke a spreadsheet. That's why I keep it in my head instead.

The first thing I do is answer these questions to myself. For each "Yes," I lower the rate by a percentage.

Do I need the work? (Am I nearly broke, with an expanse of empty time yawning out in the months before me?) This one can cut the rate by 25%. And yes, even an esteemed personage such as myself goes through times like this, particularly when I've been lazy and haven't been working my short list.
Will this job advance me toward a more desirable one? (Can I use the client's name to get more work? Is it a stepping stone toward something I'd really like to do?) This one can be worth up to 50% if my financial situation will support it.
Will the job require me to learn a skill that I'd really like to learn? Compositing, architectural rendering, the use of Premiere or Flash, anything at which you're not an expert but would like to be. Cut 10-20%, but this usually needs to be added back in to cover a portion of the software costs.
Is the client a friend that I will enjoy working with? Maybe 20%, but usually my buddies can afford my full rate.
Does the client have a limited budget that I am willing to work with? In days past, I used to consider this quite carefully and try to work within the client's budget just so I could get the work. I don't do this anymore; I set a rate and they can take it or leave it (with perhaps a bit of negotiation). But if you really need the work and want the credit, it is worth considering.

Then there are the "disadvantage" questions. Answering these questions with a "Yes" actually raises the rate.

Do I suspect the job will take more time than originally planned? This often happens with new clients, either new to you or new to the business. If they're new to the business, you will probably have to do quite a bit of hand-holding. For example, you might have to spend a few hours explaining why you can't purchase unlimited usage rights for Stairway to Heaven at Amazon.com and absorb the cost in your fee to boot. (Yes, this has happened to me.) If they're new to you, they might be accustomed to working a certain way, and sorting this out will add time to the job. New to me, 10%. New to the business, 30%-50%.
Will I have to learn a new skill that I'm not particularly interested in learning, and that I won't ever use again? If yes, charge for the entire time/cost of learning the skill.

After all this calculation, there is the final consideration that can override all the rest:

Is there something about this job that I don't like? Location, hours, the type of work, any number of things can contribute to this. When I think about doing this job do I get excited, or do I groan and roll my eyes? If the job is an eye-roller, I figure out how much I would have to charge to enjoy it, or at least not loathe it. Face it, if someone offered to pay you $1000 an hour to sling cow dung, you'd be whistling happy little songs all day as you chucked the patties hither and thither. There's a line to be drawn here, you just have to figure out what it is. What amount of money will make you happy to do the job?

Negotiations

You could spend days figuring out how much to charge, but my advice is to just make a decision and get it overwith. You can use the extra time to find and contact other potential clients who can afford you. When you give them your rate, the worst they can do is say no. After they hire Joe Low-Rate-Schlocky-Work and suffer the penalty, they'll be back.

Sometimes you'll make an offer and the client will just take it. Other times they'll come back with a lower offer. For this reason, it's a good idea to add 10-20% to your estimate to allow a little leeway for negotiations. And usually, they just accept the higher fee anyway, and you're good to go (and oh-so-happy to be making more than you expected!).

When in doubt, go with your gut rather than the client's budget. You'll be happy you did.

How'd you get that sweet job?

2006-10-18T15:00:00.000-07:00

I spent most of the day working on the documentation for Hairtrix, a new plug-in from Turbosquid that will be available in a few weeks. It's a very cool plug-in for making realistic hair. Very intuitive and easy to use--you just brush the hair right on the screen.

I also got a call today from an ex-student, someone who took a class in Character Studio with me eight years ago. He now runs his own company, and he wants me to come by for a day or two next month to teach his guys.

Both these jobs are very cool to have gotten. Doing plug-in docs means I get a plug-in for free, and I learn to use it, and get paid for it too! And the teaching gigs are even better; I show up for a couple of days and make an outrageous daily rate.

For the moment, let us set aside some of the more unsavory facts, namely that I don't make day-teaching rates every day (or even every week), and that writing documentation can be long, hard work. Let us instead look at the question I get most often from students: "How did you get that job?"

To get the answer, you have to connect the dots through a line that runs all the way back to 1990. Let's take a look at the writing job. I got the job at Turbosquid because I know Beau Perschall, one of the company's founders, and I've done work for him before. He hired me before because he knew me from when he worked at Digimation, for whom I used to write documentation. They hired me to write docs because they sold all my self-published books, so they knew I could write. I was able to self-publish books because I had experience and a recognizable name from writing a book for a "real" publisher. I got the deal with the publisher because I had written an article for Cadalyst magazine, and I had impressed one of the product managers at Autodesk.

And how did I do all this? I followed three easy lessons.

In 1990, I started doing 2D animation with a package called Autodesk Animator, now defunct but a real gem in its day. Sort of like Flash, but DOS-based, if you can imagine that. I really got into using it, and because it had a small user base and I called the support line so often, I got chummy with some of the support staff. I didn't think much of it at the time. I was making my real freelance money writing documentation for accounting systems, and still doing some programming now and again.

A few months later I took the afternoon off from my contracting job and went to the National Computer Graphics Association conference in the city I was living in, Los Angeles. One of my support pals sent me a free ticket, and I thought it would be fun. Anyway, I went to the Autodesk booth, but none of my friends were there.

Then fate bowed its gracious head in my direction. One of the demo stations was empty, and there it was, the holy grail, Animator, running on the screen, its blinking cursor beckoning to me. (Every time I think of this moment, I hear that kind of heavenly chorus reserved for moments when one is in the presence of God or something.)

I couldn't resist--I hopped onto the chair and started making things fly around. Before long I had crowd of about 30 people, and I answered all their questions and demonstrated some tricky techniques I had developed on my own. When the demo was over the crowd applauded, and the Product Manager for Animator came over to me and said, "Excuse me, who are you?"

He was very impressed, and he hired me to make some animation to ship with the next version of Animator. He also gave me some free software, his direct phone number at Autodesk, and I don't remember what else, but it was all very cool.

Lesson 1: I took a risk jumping on that stool, but I'm convinced that is the moment my animation career began. The product manager could have been a jerk and thrown me out of the booth, but he didn't. (Thanks Bob, wherever you are!) I wouldn't try this trick these days--the vibe at trade shows now isn't the same as it was then. But there are an infinite number of ways you can take a risk. Walking around a trade show with your demo reel on a portable DVD player is one. Entering a contest is another. But this requires you to put in time that may or may not pay off, and to risk rejection. I learned the software on my own time, and I seized an opporunity. Jump on the stool! Take the risk!

Later that year, I went to my first Siggraph conference. This was (and still is) the biggest conference for computer graphics in the US, but back in 1990 it was considerably smaller than it is now, maybe a few thousand people total. I met a lot of folks and got some great gigs from it. A bit of after-hours partying with the guys from Cadalyst magazine got me a writing assignment, and more hanging out with Bob got me on the beta list for a new Autodesk product called 3D Studio. Perhaps you have heard of it.

I wrote the article for Cadalyst, which they didn't like but printed anyway. I sent a framed copy to Bob, then used the writing credit to get more writing assignments with other magazines. (I sent Bob stuff all the time, some of it relevant and some of it weird. He eventually moved on to Microsoft, probably so he could change his address and get rid of me.)

The next year, New Riders Publishing called Autodesk and got Bob on the phone to ask for the names of writers who knew their software. Guess who he recommended?

Anyway, I had always wanted to write a book. The title, Autodesk 3D Design and Presentation, which I ended up co-writing with my CAD friend Jeff Hester (met him at a trade show, natch), wasn't exactly my dream book, but I took it anyway. It was a long, arduous process, and to this day Jeff and I can still make each other groan out loud by mentioning it. I ended up making about $0.02 an hour, but hey, I could add "author" to my bio.

Lesson 2: Don't be too much of a snob to take a decent short-term job related to your goal, even if it isn't your dream job. Take it, and use it to get where you want to go.

I learned as much as I could about the publishing process, and I figured I could make it worthwhile if I did it on my own. With a bit of cash I made from teaching gigs I had gotten with my new "author" status, the next year I self-published three books on 3D Studio, the first ones on the market for 3D Studio only. I was selling the books myself over Compuserve. (Eventually they were picked up by Thomson Delmar, but that's another story.) This was 1991, mind you, before there was such a thing as a web page, and even Compuserve was just a bunch of scrolling text, but there was a thriving 3D Studio community up there, and they ate them up.

The books sold like hotcakes. (Compare with my first effort, which sold like ugly rocks.) At the time, Digimation was selling just one product, their own brand of training videos. I called them up and talked one of their salesmen into bundling my books with their videos, and then the books sold like flaming hotcakes. I also developed a relationship with all the personnel at Digimation, including Beau, and even went down to do a video with them.

A few years later Digimation branched out into plug-ins, and of course they hired me, Ms. 3D Studio Writer At Your Service, to write some of their plug-in documentation. Fast-forward a few years and Beau leaves Digimation for Turbosquid. And there you have it.

"So," you say, "Beau needed some documentation, so he thought of you and called you. End of story." Not so fast. I have made a point of staying in touch with Beau over the years. I hung out with him at Siggraph just a few months ago, and a few months before that I emailed him about a possible bundle deal with some of my books. And before that I emailed him to make sure he survived hurricane Katrina (Turbosquid is based in New Orleans).

Beau is one of the people on my freelancer short list. I pop him an email regularly, either asking about work, just saying hi, or about whatever. It helps that I actually like him. And the reason Beau thinks of me for doc writing is that I do the job well and in a timely manner without too much whining when the software doesn't quite work yet. And I stay in touch often enough so that when a job does come up, my name is fresh on his mind.

Lesson 3: When you finally do get a freelance job, do it well and stay in touch. The client will hire you over and over again.

So there you have it. Three easy lessons! Okay, maybe there's a little more work to it than that. But if it were easy, everyone would do it, right?

Welcome to the World of Michele

2006-10-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

My friends and students have often commented that I should blog all my hard-won knowledge on making it as a freelancer in the world of 3D graphics. I have some hard-and-fast rules that don't necessarily follow conventional wisdom, and they've always worked for me. Also I have managed to escape some of the more dangerous pitfalls of this industry with a mere scrape or two, meaning I've seen the nasty side of this business and I know how to avoid getting trapped by bad deals and dishonest clients.

I've got a million stories, and over time a few of them will come out. Hopefully the graphic artist new to the freelancing world will find these ruminations helpful in making a success of his or her career.