What sort of computer are you using LightWave on at the moment?

AMD Athlon 2100+, 1 Gb RAM, G-Force 3 /64Mb, Pinnacle DV500, monitor TFT 19" Sony.
Macintosh I-Mac G4 700 Mhz

Do you use any plug-ins. If so, which ones?

Yes, I use several plugins. In Modeler: FI's_OEXtender, Normal Rotate, Normal Move, Rotate Any Axis RT; and in Layout: Keytrak and Eki's PlugPak.

How did you get involved with LightWave Expo Madrid (LEM)?

To have an annual educational meeting place in our language, is a wish many Spanish-speaking LightWave users have had for a long time.

For a starter LEM[03] includes seminars and a product showcase, but for future LEMs we want to have free "help desk" areas that would include conferences, forums and many other activities that would allow our community to interact, or at least, that's our idea of how LEM should evolve.

I always interested in conventions and meetings where companies, professionals and general users get together in workshops and theme seminars, with the idea of sharing experiences, and to show to other colleagues techniques and special working methods useful for daily production needs.

LEM's primary inspiration is the very popular L.E.N.Y. (LightWave Expo New York), organised by the Stranahan brothers on a yearly basis. Actually, working on the same idea, and with logistic support from the Virtual Department from "Istituto Europeo di Design", several collaborators and professionals alike, we'll develop a concept similar to that in its format, and so LEM[03] (LightWave Expo Madrid) began to take shape in the autumn of 2001, and its organization began in the autumn 2002.

As a matter of fact, there will be five people teaching on the workshops: Jacobo Barreiro, Emilio Girones, Pedro Casado, Juan Ventura and me.

For this first ever LightWave Expo Madrid we'll offer a series of essentially practical workshops that will go into great detail. The meetings will begin on February 20^th, with a very interesting workshop by Jacobo Barreiro on character set-up and animation. On the afternoon, Pedro Casado will show the processes involved in videogames development, and how Merlin Studios used LightWave on their games. As for me, I'll be in charge of the Lighting and Surfacing workshop, where I'll talk about the lighting methods and surface tweaking I use daily in production.

We'll also have a go at ways to get astounding visual effects by using particles, HyperVoxels and surfaces.

LEM[03] will end with two workshops, Juan Ventura from Seville-based ZZJ studios, with support from BrainStorm, will explain the process to create virtual sets for television with LightWave. Last but not least, Emilio Girones will devote two hours to show postproduction tips of the trade with Digital Fusion 4.