The Story
What
about me? I think I should tell you something
about my story, or maybe not. However I'm sitting
here to write something, and you are there because
you want to read something. This woun't be a novel,
but I hate schedules and lists.
My
name is Massimo Liani, I was born in 20 December
1977. My origins go back to Vicenza (in the nort
of Italy). What about that place? It's a town
between Padova (famous for one of the most ancient
italian university) and Verona (famous for "Romeo
and Giulietta" by William Shakespeare). Originally
it was built as roman colony (Vicentia)... but
I thing I'm going too back in the past.
My
passion for whatever give out a beep or an error
message, goes back to my childhood. My father
did a good thing when he decided to buy a Commodore
C64. At that time I was attending the second class
the primary school. One of the things I really
appreciated about that "toy" was a little
program called GEM. With that tool it was possible
to draw, and my favourite subjects were heavenly
bodies ... maybe because the first film I saw
at the movies was "Return of the Jedi"?
The passion for 3D graphics came after.
The
real discovery of 3D world happend in 1994 with
a program I hadn't had heard before: Autodesk
3D Studio v2. The program environment was austere:
textual user interface with wireframe quadview.
3D Studio ran on the old DOS. It took many hours
to render a simple image. Fortunately I had the
occasion of testing my patience while I was exploring
fractals. I was immediately attracted, even if
for some months I brought to life only colored
primitive combinations.
Once
I met a guy, Stefano Parenti, who was some years
older than me. I was still attending the 4th class
at the lyceum when he was at university. Stefano,
as well as me, had the passion for 3D graphic;
we spent much time working together, on projects
that became more and more interesting. Then we
began working on animations, but not on characters
animation. I can remember a locomotive wich had
to trasform into a spaceship.. but unfortunately
I don't have anything saved about this project
anymore. We began to prepare demo contents for
enter the market with a new society "ImageLab",
wich soon became reality, but not for me because
I was still at school. When I finished the opportunity
to work in ImageLab was passed due to economical
problems. Waiting for my occasion I tried to apply
to different works.
The
big change came in 1996 when I started working
in PixelMachineCompany (PMC), a company oriented
in 3D production. Unbelievable! I could do 3D
as a profession! I couldn't believe I found job
like that in my city. The shock was hard, it was
not the same thing as working for myself. There
were deadlines and directives, but the chance
to use PowerAnimator on SGI was a dream for me.
It was wonderful for me to work with that workstation
wich I only read about.... even if I learned soon
that image animation quality dipends 90% from
you and 10% from the software.
At
the time Maya was released, from PMC was founded
DarkSide (the official Alias|Wavefront training
center in Italy) and I became 3D production responsible.
It was not a division in the society, so that
who was teaching in DarkSide could also work in
shorts realization for PMC and viceversa. So I
also had the chance of teaching Maya in many course.
Two of the topics I used to talk about was using
skeletons, kinematics, skinning; or shading&lighting..
maybe someone reading these pages will remember
my lessons.
Day
after day I realized that I needed something else
(I'm still talking about professional point of
view). Often I realized that I would edit and
extend the tools I had, for best adapt them to
my requirements. So I started studying code developement.
I was particular attracted by C++ for it's efficiency
and for it's possibility to use it in writing
plugins.
My
first developement project was a kind of dispatcher
for distributing render sequences on different
CPUs and for managing a render queue. I called
this tool NetRender and I use it daily on our
renderfarm. It's revealed indispensable in our
pipeline.
Life,
you know, is a continous change. Ways which frequently
had joined a group together, sometimes split up.
My way, after 3,5 years in PMC, led me to Milano,
so driven by wish of growth , but especially driven
by the heart, I discovered a new reality. Decembre
1st 2000 I started to work in PhoenixTools (PT),
a software house wellknown by Softimage|3D users.
In that period PT was in expansion. They would
bring on Maya portion of 3D technology, developed
in years of research.
At
the beginning I was introduced in the ContentCreation
Team to write code documentation, tutorials and
demo images for the new Maya shaders collection.
I understood that what I was doing was not for
me. I asked for the shader source code and have
a look at it. There I solved some problems of
integration, and I also improved calculation performance.
Then I was transferred to the Special Team of
Research&Development department with the task
of implement already existing Softimage tools
in Maya. In particular I worked on abehaviour
simulator tool called "Behave". Integration
it's never a simple work. Soon I suggest how improve
the tool. It was added an event handler and script
based functionalities to allow definition of complex
behaviors. It worked!
As
soon as I finished that job I received an offer
from a postproduction house in Milan: BlueGold.
So I started a difficult period during which I
did two different works contemporary: I was working
for Blue Gold and I was supporting PT for bug
removal and drafting the presentation for Siggraph
2001.
Today
I'm a 3d artist / 3d developer in Milan's BlueGold
team.
Max |
