I have been a Microsoft Student Partner since the beginning of this year, and in conjunction with the other MSP at UTS,(Chris Webster) have been planning a large event for this semester.

Recently we decided that the best thing to do was to give a talk on the ways you can get free (or cheap) software from Microsoft as a student.

The time has finally arrived.

How to get Free (and cheap) stuff from Microsoft

Slides and content will be available after the presentation, although probably only late night or next day due to a late lecture. :P

If you intend to come to the event, head to the website there and register your interest so we can get an idea of numbers.

Remember, not only do you take away the methods of gaining free software, but you also take away a bag of goodies and have the chance of winning a lucky door prize!

In my preparation for CeBIT starting tomorrow I found an article on the website about the recent export numbers for Australian Game Developers.

http://www.ausinnovate.com/2008/05/05/export-boom-for-game-makers/

The article mentions that 06-07 data shows $139.7 million in generated revenue, with most of the market coming from Queensland or Victoria. Programmers accounting for 29% of those employed, compared to 34% for artists. A logical number. :)

If you missed out on the free registration, check for information next year around February, that is the time the free Registration occurs.

The professional video tutorial scene has started to adopt XNA from the looks of it, with Digital Tutors releasing a DVD training package named Pipeline Development with Maya and XNA.

Popular highlights:

XNA Development Overview

Interfacing with Keyboard and Gamepad

Building Controller Systems

Controller Vibration

Exporting and Loading Static Meshes from Maya

Exporting Animated Characters from Maya

Moving and Turning a Character

Object-oriented Programming with Bullets and Targets

Baking Textures in Maya

Deriving Bounding Boxes from Maya

Collision Detection with Bounding boxes

Collision Detection with Rays

Building a Custom Animation Player

Switching and Blending Between Animations

Chase Cameras

Camera Shakes

Drawing Text

CGSociety has this to say about the product:

'Pipeline Development with Maya and XNA' contains nearly five hours of project-based training for technical artists learning the methods of creating game content using XNA and Maya. 'Pipeline Development with Maya and XNA' offers artists an essential workflow and innovative techniques for easily integrating Maya and XNA for game creation.

Since this costs money, I cannot get this at the moment and so I cannot give my own review. However it looks like a good product, and considering Digital Tutor's track record, it should be a good investment for the artistic programmers out there.

Edit [17/5/2008]: I noticed that Digital Tutors also has an interesting looking Training Package titled Real-Time Shaders with XNA.

As of now the XNA 3.0 Community Technology Preview is available for download.

XNA 3.0 CTP

This requires a version of Visual Studio 2008 and will co-exist with Visual Studio 2005 and XNA GS 2.0.

Note there is no Xbox360 support in the CTP release, however there will be with the final release, currently only PC and Zune.

Now I am off to see what else they added. :) Enjoy.

If you are a student attending UTS, then visit the new UTS MSP website and watch it for details on promotions and events that we are running. Some great stuff will happen and you do not want to miss it! :D

http://www.utsmsp.com