INTERVIEWS

Joe Gunn will get the special opportunity to interview many of the leading local, national, and international
'stars' of the 3ds Max Community.

This section is dedicated to those interviews, and if you know of someone who is a 'star' in the Max
Community, please feel free to nominate them for an interview and send us their contact info.

Deep Thanks to all who have shared their time and interview with Joe.

Interview with Shane Griffith of Discreet:

1) What first got you into CG?

Wow, this one takes me back a bit…. In the very early 3ds Dos days I did a lot of playing around with modeling various different parts for pumps and tanks used in gas stations. At that time I was merely a CAD-Draftsman and was really venturing out of the box. These models fortunately caught the eye of my CAD teacher in college and he made a recommendation for me at Engineering Animation Inc. in Ames , IA. EAI is really where my career took shape and gained lots of exposure to very high-end tools for the time. During my 5 year stay with EAI I was fortunate to be able to work on a very diverse set of projects and many that turned out to be very successful…

Disney Interactive & Pixar

“A Bug's Life – Active Play”

#1 selling children's educational game 1999

“Toy Story 2 – Activity Center ”

#1 selling children's educational game 2000

Mattel Media

"Barbie Magic Hair Styler"

#1 selling children's game 1998

Hasbro Interactive

“Clue Chronicles”

“Outburst”

SouthPeak Interactive

“Animaniacs: A Gigantic Adventure”

#1 selling children's game 1999

Other TV productions for: Hewlett-Packard, Discovery Channel, Miravant Technologies, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

2) What sort of job did you do in last few years and what's your current job?

For my last project in the gaming industry I have the great pleasure of working on MechAssault the 2002 Xbox Game of the Year (GameSpot, December 2002). MechAssault was a very challenging project that the crew at Day 1 Studios worked on for nearly 3 years. My role on this project was to manage the art staff on day to day duties and also coordinate with the engineering team as the Technical Art Director. While working in the gaming industry can be over taxing at times this project was challenging and overall a great pleasure to work on.

After finishing up on MechAssault an opportunity crossed my path to take on a fairly different role as an Application Engineer at Discreet. Although the pace is much different the challenges continue to be rewarding. Working as an AE for Discreet has been an immense learning experience that I continuously am challenged by learning new tools and techniques.

3) What does 3ds max let you do or accomplish that other 3D applications do not?

For obvious reasons I'm a little biased here, but one of the biggest factors that makes 3DS Max win is that it gets the job done out of the box. Over the course of the last 10 years I have worked with nearly every 3D package under the sun and it has only been within the last 3 years that I have discovered what a hidden secrete Max really is. Working as a production manager on several projects I faced two key facts, the project needed to be done on time and needed to look kick ass. These two things never changed and will always continue to be the driving forces behind any 3D production. Now with that said there was one simple fact that I could always point to in all the projects that I managed, and that was the projects using 3DS Max always finished on time and frequently under budget. Oh and of course the art always looked kick ass.

4) What's your favourite part of 3d max ? Modelling, Texturing, Lighting, Animation, Effects?

Good question… you know I tend to sway back and forth on this one with each release of max. I really feel 3DS Max is now very solid in all these areas, and frankly hands down the best in a few of them. The Modeling and Effects tools I would say are very strong now in Max6 with the revisions to patch modeling and of course the huge addition of Pflow. But you know I really think the Lighting, Texturing, and Animation tools have come a long ways in versions 4 and 5. So, really once you start to become proficient in all these areas they all ROCK!

5) W hat are you working now? Sneak preview perhaps? :)

Currently I spend much of my time answering emails and doing demos for you all, and unfortunately don’t really get much time to play with the tools. In the upcoming months I will begin focusing on Max7 with the Product Development team, but I’d have to kill ya if I said more about that ;)!

WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND LOOK FORWARD TO THE NEXT RELEASE OF 3DS MAX!

THE MN MAX USER GROUP!