August 10, 2005

Siggraph 2005 lived up to expectation this year. Attendance at this years conference was slightly more than 29,000. Like last years show, the X games were held within 500 metres of the LA convention centre. Humid forays up Figueroa to the hotels and eateries were well worth the effort as pedestrians were able to watch Big Air skaters taking elevators up to the top of a gargantuan 6 story blast ramp to execute their moves.

Three awards were presented prior to this years Keynote address.

Tomoyuki Nishita of the University of Tokoyo received the prestigious Steven Anson Coons Award for Outstanding Creative Contributions to Computer Graphics for his awe inspiring work on rendering of natural phenomena. It was humbling to be in the presence of a man who has pioneered most of the 3D lighting phenomena we use on a daily basis

Jos Stam, a senior research scientist at Alias, received the Computer Graphics Achievement Award for his pioneering work on subdivision surfaces and on fast Algorithms for the simulation of natural phenomena, especially fire, fluids and gases.

Ronald Fedkiw of Stanford University received the Significant New Researcher Award for his contributions to the field of computational fluid dynamics.

The keynote presentation was a wonderful experience this year as George Lucas was given the honor. It wasn't so much a keynote speech, as it was an interview and a look into Lucas and his legacy. It was a little sobering hearing that he has opened a division of LucasFilm in Singapore, and that he will be using it as a testbed for a forray into broadcast. Lucas is eyeing broadcast because he has always despised the hold and clout Hollywood has tried to exert upon him. The ability to use broadcast as an experimental ground for some of his pent up ideas will be more forgiving and cost effective to his company's bottom line. I couldn't help thinking that broadcast as we know it is about to fundamentally change the way Film did when Lucas first exploded onto the scene.

Emerging technologies was as fascinating as ever this year.

Spore 1.0 is a hybrid live rubbber plant living in a symbiotic relationship with Home Depot stock. As the stock rises the plant is given more nutrients and water, whereas it is deprived of nutrients and water the more the stock price drops.

Haptics based technologies seem to be growing by leaps and bounds, with the touch / force feedback systems beginning to find their stride in the marketplace. Emerging Technologies featuring haptics were plentiful as well. The most obvious was the Kayaking exhibit, where a real time fluid simulation recreated the flow of rapids in a river, complete with rock obstacles. The user sat on a box and operated a paddle equipped with haptics. To be able to detect the viscosity of the water current being paddled in, as well as the sides of the river banks and rocks really aided the immersion process.

A team of students from Japan Institute of Technology created an interactive exhibit where a real box on a table top is manipulated in real time by a set of three elf like characters on a Digital display. The elves push a box on screen which moves the real box on the table according to their actions. If a user picks up the box and moves it around on the table, it knocks the elves around on the digital screen. It was a cute exhibit, and one I am sure will find its way into game consoles in the not too distant future.

Keeping in the realm of Video games, I caught a demo of a video game that was based on the classic Atari game Combat. The tanks were real live models of vehicles on a tarp like substance of which was projected a battlefield, operated with a standard PS2 control. The tanks could fire missiles which were projected onto the tarp as well, with real time explosions. The tank had the typical blockade / wall obstacles to overcome or use as protection. It was a neat take on an old classic. Now if only they could somehow get the live tanks to really explode. It would be easy enough to do with a little springloaded canopy that was already fragmented. As the tanks energy diminishes and the game is over, an event change activates the spring mechanism.

The Electronic theatre was excellent. This years pre-show featured a live performance blending real time 3D hand rendered imagery into a barren virtual world. The score was a blend of classical, neo digital, house and trance. The performing artist J. Walt Adamczyk stood illuminated in the fornt left corner of the theatre bathed in a spotlight, and using his tools; a mixing board, laptop, a large Wacom Tablet and a Joystick conducted a mesmerizing show.

Some of my personal favorite films from this years ET were:

"La Migration Bigoudenn" by students at Gobelins, l'ecole de l'image
Blur Studios "Gopher Broke" received many laughs.
"Helium" by Adam Janczek and Florian Durand was a reflective look at population explosions inside of a bubble. "Cubic Tragedy" by Ming-Yuan Chuan was a Poly modelers delight. A short skit on makeup kits for digital women and the mishaps that occur. Very Funny film!
"Fallen Art" was a dark film that was wonderfully put together. Imagine death and stop motion to get an idea about this piece.
"Learn Self Defense", "East End Zombies"and "In the Rough" were all very funny, noteworthy films.

The Best of Show award went to "9", a film by Shane Acker which was a wonderful little film that depicts Man vs. machine or Intellect vs. the Animalistic tendencies. The protagonists in 9 are these little Rag Doll type character, with ocular lenses for eyes. They most closely resemble cuddly Tusken Raiders from the Star Wars franchise. The characters reside in a futuristic scrap yard and must use their intellect to avoid death from a mechanical Monster that lurks in their world.

A secondary character, 5, passes on his knowledge, namely, how to defeat the mechanical beast antagonist. "9" then is a kind of quest for perfection.

The party scene this year was as busy as ever. The biggest dilemna was in trying to discern which parties to attend. Softimage hosted a pre User group VIP party at Bernards bar on Tuesday at the Biltmore. It was a great chance to catch up with old friends, and down some great food and drink. The User group event that followed was excellent. Hybride took the stage and revealed some of the behind the scenes tidbits on their latest project "Sin City". Mainframe showed the work they had done on "Stuart Little 3", an all CG feature. Studio Ghibli presented a beautiful look into the world of Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke", "Spirited Away", and most recently "Howl's Moving Castle", Stan Winston Digital presented a breakdown of their work on "Fantastic Four", and Omation unveiled a sneak peek at their upcoming feature, "Barnyard". All of the presenters went well beyond the basics of simply showing footage from their respective films. Rather, we were treated to some of the inner workings of the various studio pipelines.

Blur presented 'Rock Falcon', a character they have been using to protoype the new Softimage Face|Robot. Face Robot is a special Projects tool, that isn't a part of any of the 3 price points currently available to XSI users. Its a standalone product, still in development, but which will ultimately become integrated into the general software after it has been ground through the production grinder. Face|Robot is a true muscle / tissue based simulation that actually approximates the skull, muscle and sinew uner the flash surface. Based on an approximate musculature of the face, the software allows the user through an interactive gui based pick session to define key points on the face. 'Falcon' was adorned with about 30 tracking points from which were generated the control system for the entire face. Pull on the control points and its amazing to watch the mesh accurately slide over the underlying tissue. This is good stuff. Its still a bit slow, and Soft was demoing it on a knockout machine, but you can be sure that after a few iterations, it will set a new precedent in facial technology. Animators are dying for an end to the blend shape quagmire that ultra realistic faces require.

Softimage's Mark Schoennagel, presented an in depth look at the version 5.0 release. The most apparent new feature is a complete migration toolset to ease the transition to XSI by Maya artists. On the rendering end, he introduced ultimapper, an all in one effect map work flow. Users can now quickly generate film quality normal, ambient occlusion, difference map, albedo, parallax, and light maps from within a single property page. A new gigapolygon architecture, allows for up to 10 times the existing detail when compared to current XSI scenes. The new shape manager looks to finally separate the need for utilizing the animation mixer when working with shape. No more needing to create separate morph targets, and modifying base shapes, allows for the modifications to filter down through the shape manager to the instances. An all new Ageia NovodeX physics simulation engine allows for complex Hard body simulations using complex polygonal shapes. Performance in this engine is boasted to be up to 100 times faster than in previous XSI releases. Modelers will revel in the freedom offered by the new tweak component tool which allows for ultra fast selection of loops, and modification of points, edges of polys on a polygon mesh. Components can now be slid along the surface of a mesh without altering the objects silhouette. A new dopesheet timeline allows users to see keys on the main timeline while allowing keys to be copied pasted moved and scaled as per the traditional XSI dopesheet. G.A.T.O.R, or Generalized Attribute Transfer Operator transfers any surface property across models, regardless of topology or complexity. You can now transfer weights, materials, textures, shapes across Rigged characters. The new operator also allows you to merge models, allowing for fully complete animated models to be combined without losing important charactersistics.

The party that followed lasted until midnight, at which point the inevitable discussion about where to eat, began to rear its head. Denny's was a temptation, however this year all put up a good resistance to the insane idea. The winner; bed, and the soundness of a needed sleep.

On the show floor, The XSI booth was huge, and in your face, the first thing people saw when they walked into the hall. It was a huge presence this year. With the larger than life mug of Falcon popping up periodically, it provided a huge draw for the crowds that roamed the large convention hall. Nestled deeper out on the floor, Softimage had a guerilla workshop center, where studios gave Master Classes on a variety of topics from facial rigging to Render Trees to production pipelines. to the FX tree. The amazing thing about a show like Siggraph, is in picking up those little jewels of information that round out our knowledge base, and hanging out by the guerilla booth was worth its weight in gold.

The Softimage party was awesome this year. Set atop the roof of the Standard in the middle of the city, it provided an interesting contrast to the days activities spent on the ground. Hanging out under the stars, sharing a few drinks, reconnecting with old friends, building new friendships, breathing in the laced LA air, swapping stories from around the world. The party drew individuals from almost every major studio the world over. Some simple lessons I took home from this night. People will always end up in a pool if one is present and waterbeds were not meant for rooftops full of revelers.

Many thanks to all of the amazing team at Softimage for their tireless dedication to trailblazing new releases of XSI, I can't wait to G.A.T.O.R something… anything.

I can't express how cool it was to hang out with all of the other die hards and long time list lurkers whose names and handles have become akin to quasi family over the years.

Until next year.

Adam