MAX meets MAYA & Developing for the PS3...

Once again the "3 Tuns" in Guildford was the venue for the April 5th meeting of the IDGA Guildford chapter. With another good attendance from members of local games companies, the evening kicked off with lively discussion of recent events in the UK industry, aided by the copious drinks kindly provided by our sponsors BlueGFX. With the assembled masses all supplied with beverages, the first event was a talk by BlueGFX and Autodesk on new features in 3DS Max, including an update on their work to provide seamless integration between 3DS Max and Maya, new features demonstrated at GDC, and a demonstration of some very impressive "in-viewport" rendering functionality that allows advanced shaders to be previewed with the same effects as provided by the game engine.Following on from this, Igor Makaruks from the SCEE Technology group gave a presentation on the Playstation 3 architecture, covering both hardware features and software support that will be available to developers. As Sony's new console is heavily-anticipated by both gamers and developers alike, this talk was a focus of attention for many present and generated much lively discussion about the challenges and direction of next-gen games development.
Many thanks, once again, to our sponsors, BlueGFX, speakers and attendees for making this another very successful event
which was enjoyed by all!