Tell us a bit about yourself.

Well, what can I say - I live thousands of kilometres away from most LightWave 3D users I know, here in little New Zealand!

I've had a varied career path over the last 15 years - from office administration, helpdesk operator, IT technician/programmer, multimedia programmer, web developer and now I'm working at an animation studio called 'Flux Animation Ltd' doing 3D-animated TV commercials. I've been there around 2.5 years now.

The rest of my working week is spent teaching 3D for a small media college here called 'Natcoll Design Technology' half a week and also helping out part time at the local Technical university, AUT, with their 3D classes.

Every month, I also organise and run KiWavers (pronounced Kee-Wavers). It is, as far as I know, New Zealand's only LightWave User group. I started it initially back in 1997 to see how many other 'enthusiasts' were in New Zealand using LightWave that I could 'talk to'. Several years later, I'm still doing it every month...

So, in general, I spend most my time working, teaching, promoting or talking about 3D and LightWave. Probably too much sometimes - my wife calls herself the 'LightWave Widow'. She's been very supportive of my passion and interests, luckily for me! :-)

In running the user group since 1997, you must have seen a good few changes?

Ah yes, before all these 3D websites, forums, etc, there were ftp servers like Aminet where you could find cool LightWave-related stuff! That's going back a while now! Dial up with my 2400 baud modem using Telemate to my shell login, type in FTP and the IP number (once you found out what it was - I think NewsNet forums were how I found out using good old TIN)

No web browsers in them days, I can tell ya! However in 1997, the web was starting to become pretty popular - I think 1995 was the first time it appeared here in NZ.

I recall LightWave 6.0 too: its HUGE sexy red box with thin manuals, compared to 5.5. With 6.0, I think that's the first time I ever really forced myself to read a LightWave manual! It was so different from 5.5's menu, I needed to to find where everything went!

As for memberships - 1997 was almost the start and end of the LWUG, with some 'dealer' issues that almost wiped the whole LWUG idea out completely.

In 1998, I resurrected the group, and while sometimes I'd get a handful (like 4-5 people) if I was lucky, most would be between 2-3. However I discovered a secret to getting people to attend - dangle a carrot in front of them! So I started to promote new tutorials every meeting... I'd write them myself... It was a great way to learn LightWave as well! Though this meant meetings were mostly me talking, demoing and tutoring for years after.

However in the last two years, things have changed quite a bit - I've got a handful of regular people. These people are really great, and they are frequently bringing in bits and pieces to show! But it has been a hard battle to get here, I can tell you!

When did you see LightWave for the first time?

Honestly, it was actually Babylon 5... And an Amiga friend back in the early 90's... I was never rich enough to go the Amiga direction - it was a pricey beast back then - I was a Sinclair person - ZX81, then the Spectrum 48k. Eventually I moved onto PCs where I started to really get into 3D with POVRay on a 286 I'd picked up cheap.

I'd tried other 3D apps on what was at the time a 486 I'd upgraded to. Nothing I'd done on any of these applications had that beautiful Babylon 5 look I'd seen... I just had to get this application!