I am Jennifer O'Connor, President of 4D Artists, Inc, and author of the upcoming book, "Mastering mental ray".  

4D Artists, Inc. is a boutique 3d computer graphics and animation studio located in Lake County, Illinois.   My company and I produce 3d-generated images and animations for clients all over the US, and I specialize in using and teaching 3ds Max and mental ray.

My background is in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, and my early career has been working for the entertainment industry on hardware and software for video games and amusement rides, including motion simulators and roller coasters.  

I started doing commercial 3D work in 1992 with my friend and associate Emil McCauley under Emil's business, TGWB, Inc.  I formed my own company at that time, then called "Virtually Real", to do freelance work for Emil and my own clients.  This company eventually morphed into 4D Artists, and incorporated in 2007.

In 1996 I startd teaching CAD and 3ds Max at the College of Lake County, in Grayslake Illinois.  I currently teach both Into and Advanced 3ds Max Design, and Architectural Illustration using 3ds Max Design and Revit, all classes I developed.

In the fall of 2006 I started the Chicago chapter of the "Autodesk Animation User's Group Association", an official Autodesk User's Group for 3ds Max and Maya.  The web site for the group is www.max3ds.com, and meetings are scheduled at locations downtown and in the western suburbs.

A few highlights....

Prior to college, I taught myself assembly language and computer design and designed/built a Z-80 based wire-wraped custom computer that included a speech processor, effects chip and interface components for producing arcade game-like sounds and light/LED control. That was the tip of the iceberg for a life-long passion for computers and technology. 

In 1985 developed the first Artificial Intelligence rule-based Expert System for amusement rides. It gave a graphical representation of the internal systems and status of the ride system, in addition to valuable diagnostics capabilities the system sorely lacked.  The system used the fifth-generation PROLOG language from Borland.  The project was the "Specialized Processor of Computerized Knowledge", or S.P.O.C.K., and was a rule based inference engine that was hard wired into the TTL logic of the ride system.

I was sole developer of a multi-tasking, multi-threaded environmental control system for greenhouses using the DesqView X-Windows operating system and the C/C++ language.  This was one of the first multi-tasking/multi-threaded applications to run on the IBM PC platform for commercial application, circa late '80s.  For the project I developed a graphic library extension for DesqView creating a bridge to the Borland graphics library, adding multi-theaded graphics capabilities to the OS.

Along with my associate Jerome Knull, we developed the "Digital-Analog Technical Analsys System" or the D*A*T*A Sytem, which was an accelerometer data collection and analysis unit for amusement rides.  A custom-built industrial, battery-powered PC, it was one of the first portable PC devices to use a pressure-sensitive display overlay and a graphical user interface which included charting capabilities.  I was an early adopter of 3D in AutoCAD, designing and modeling the vibration-isolated cage and systems of the unit completely in CAD, and rendering in 3D Studio for sales presentations.  The unit also had general-purpose interfaces for digital logic monitoring and analog probes, in addition to digital signal processors for interface to accelerometers.

The DS3 was my first 3D project, created on AutoCAD with the Advanced Modeling Extension.  Here is an updated rendering of the device using mental ray in 3ds Max Design 2011:

I was the sole developer of the Automated Message System (AMS), an audio playback, control, and scheduling system for amusement park paging/music systems.  The AMS went through several major revisions over the years, starting as a straightforward multi-document C program in Windows 3.1, evolving to use C++ in Windows 2000 and an SQL database for schedule and configuration, and then eventully to a .NET based C# application in Windows XP, all versions multi-threaded and multi-tasking event-driven applications.  The last two versions used the DirectX interface for sound playback and recording, and the last version of the AMS series was capable of simultanious playback and control of four stereo audio channels for messaging to different zones of the amusement park, allowed unlimited messages at any time of day, and had unique paging recording and playback capabilities.  The last version was called "SpyderGrrl" because it interfaced to the SoundWeb series of equipment.  

Above is the main Status interface.  Gives you status of all time-of-day operations, DirectX message queues, and software/hardware status.

Above is the main time-of-day and Open/Close message interface.  You can set TOD for any day of the year.