Siggraph 2002/San Antonio: Smaller Show Still Swings

While Siggraph in SAN Antonio only drew about half of last year'sLA-based show, plenty of new technology made the trip worthwhile. Withattendance lower at shows not located on the West coast,Siggraph management plans to run future shows there, including nextyear's in San Diego.

Graphics, Animation, Effects & Modeling Software
Alias introduced Maya 4.5, said by the company to be the firstCG software to fully integrate fluid dynamics. Many of the other newfeatures help improve workflow. For example, users can now quicklyswitch between nurbs and subdivision surfaces within a model asnecessary. A section around a mouth might need the improved control ofsubdivision surfaces, while the rest of the character works fine usingmore generalized nurbs.

Digital Fusion 4.0, from Eyeon Software, sports new featuresincluding a cleaner, more unobtrusive interface, a simple to use 2Dgrid warp tool, a much-improved tracker, floating point color depthprocessing, concatenated transformation, auto-roto, and networkrendering and clustering.

Discreet's 3ds max Version 5 delivers numerous improvementsincluding spline IK, dope sheet editor, a character-based animationmanagement system, and a variety of advanced rendering solutions. Thecompany, celebrating the tenth anniversary of Flame, also showcased thelatest upgrades of Inferno 5, Flame 8, and Flint 8.

Kaydara unveiled Version 4.0 of MotionBuilder, its realtime3D character animation software. Featuring a completely new, redesigneddrag-and-drop user interface, the product also includes automaticcharacter rigging and motion blending which allows the use of contentfrom a variety of sources in the same work environment.

Newtek introduced LightWave [7.5] with new features includingsliders, a tool the user can build to control anything that LightWavecan animate such as characters and lighting rigs; Luxigons, whichattach lights to polygon normals in modeler, making models intelligentenough to carry their own lighting; and Multiple Bounce Radiosity.

Side Effects announced a number of new and upgraded products.Version 5.5 of Houdini 3D includes new VOP operators, an expandedshader gallery, a new compositor, a drag-and-drop interface, andenhancements to character and animation tools.

The new entry-level priced ($1299) Houdini Select also uses VOPtechnology. A new stand-alone compositing package, Houdini Haloincludes a floating license enabling users to work with any of thesupported platforms. Also new, Houdini Escape builds on thecapabilities of Houdini Master but is dedicated to modeling andcharacter work.

Another debut: Softimage XSI 3.0 offers a huge new featureset, said to run to over 2,500 items. Improved workflow ranks high inthe new feature set. Templates for character construction and setup,for example, help to quickly generate fully customizable, film-qualitybiped and quadruped set-ups and rigs, according to the company.

One neat new feature: a behavioral animation and crowd simulationtoolkit featuring behavioral scripting, visual state-graph editing, anddynamic motion synthesis.

Graphics Software & Systems
While 2d3 wouldn't go into too many details, the British companywas previewing Pixeldust, described only as an "automated compositingassistant". The program builds from the capabilities developed in itswell-regarded Boujou motion-tracking package, but this time itautomates time-consuming compositing tasks while synthesizing thecorrect background 'behind' the object.

Cebas Computer and Trinity Animation announcedFinalRender Stage 1 rendering/global illumination 3ds max plug-in.There's many new capabilities including networked global illuminationand raytrace rendering, new displacement mapping, light particlemodels, and 3D motion blur. Flat out rendering speed improvement oflarge scene files made quite a demo as a three billion polygon scenerendered out within a few seconds.

Realviz launched MatchMover 2.5 Professional, an updatedversion of its automatic 3D camera and motion data tracker. Newfeatures include a matte drawing tool, an ability to work with colorinfo, a refined set of filtering parameters, new camera constraints,and support for anamorphic lenses.

Splutterfish drew crowds to the Discreet booth for its longawaited Brazil Rendering System. Initially designed as a plug-in to 3dsmax (an Alias Maya plug-in is next), Brazil brings a point-and-clickinterface to an extensive feature set that includes camera and filmeffects, motion blur, depth of field/bokeh lens (out of focus)simulation, filtering, and anti-aliasing. For many, it's the highlyevolved illumination and shading models that attract, including'super-fast' raytracing, 'over-the-top' photon mapping/caustics,task-specific accelerators and shaders, global illumination, andnon-photoreal capabilities.

Vicon's new iQ product delivers what could be the holy grailof motion capture: automatic processing of motion data from capture toanimation with no need to worry about occlusions. How's it work? Eachactor has unique body measurements that are first keyed into thesystem. After that, the system-which can measure down to themillimeter--extrapolates which arm or other body part belongs to whatactor or creature throughout the whole session.

Graphics cards
3Dlabs didn't debut a new card at the show, though you canexpect an announcement in October about the next generation Wildcat IV.The company did showcase its new Wildcat VP mid-range cards, whichoffer good price/performance along with the latest trend of on-the-flyprogrammability. That capability supports the new generation ofgraphics software advanced shading algorithms, bringing the holy grailof interactive RenderMan-class rendering a step closer.

Usually playing second fiddle to Nvidia, ATI jumped to thehead of the pack with the debut of the AGP 8X Fire GL X1 workstationgraphics board, basically a larger memory (256MB) version of the Radeon9700 consumer line introduced in July. It's fast-ATI claims anywherefrom a 2X to 4X advantage over anything currently delivering. Anotherclaim is that the GL X1 is the first card to offer a fully programmablefloating-point architecture.

Although Nvidia didn't show a new card, it did talk about itsAGP 8X NV30 GPU architecture, another considerable step up from itscurrent product line that's due out this fall.

Not part of the show announcements: Nvidia acquired 'look' developerExluna, a new company that was creating advanced rendering software.Nvidia is expected to incorporate Exluna's feature-film shader writingexperience into its Cg initiative.

Workstations
HP helps the next stage of Linux implementation by working withleading Linux vendor Red Hat Software to create a 64-bit Linux versionthat ships this September.

DreamWorks now has two of HP's new Itanium-based zx2000 workstationsin house to evaluate for desktop graphics use. HP is also working withDreamWorks to port their graphics software to a 64-bit Linux format. HPclaims a 15% to 20% speed improvement over other implementations of theItanium 'glue' chipset by IBM and Intel.

SGI officials made no bones about moving out of the lower-endof the graphics business. As ever higher-speed CPUs and GPUs becomecommodity items, SGI knows it can't compete with its proprietaryhardware, so the company is going upmarket.

"Film mastering is the next challenge," according to Chris Golson,senior director, media industry marketing at SGI. The company alreadyinterfaces its Onyx2 with all the current telecine, but a new push ison to further integrate it with other mastering gear including outputto film recorders. SGI is pushing SAN CXFS, an extension to its filesystem that enables high-speed transfers between heterogeneousoperating systems as well as non-computer devices such as the filmrecorder.

A dearth of graphics and animation products for the Solarisoperating system has kept Sun Microsystems a distant player inthe DCC market. But at Siggraph, the company sketched out plans forfurther involvement in high-end post with a number of productannouncements, including the $30,000 XVR-4000 3D graphics acceleratorcard for 'workgroup visualization'.

Sun also touted the new graphics technology included in Java 3D, theintroduction of Sun Grid Engine software (allows Side Effect's to nowoffer a render farm for Houdini that lashes together as many freecomputers as possible), and a project with Christie that developed a 3DCinema Server that uses a single projector and server.

Digital Asset Management
Munich-based NXN Software, a maker of digital asset managementsoftware, announced Pixar will be using NXN AlienBrain VFX, which notonly handles asset management but also incorporates productionmanagement. NXN describes AlienBrain as the first such system designedspecifically for high-end computer graphics projects.

"No major studio uses an asset management system because none of theavailable products really understands and works with the industry'sworkflow methods," says Gregor vom Scheidt, founder and CEO of NXNSoftware. Pixar president Ed Catmull said he expects the software toenable staff reductions even as the studio ramps up to deliver moreprojects.

Avtoma, a special effects production company moving intodeveloping asset management products, announced Evolution at the show.Working with Softimage and motion analysis companyBTS/eMotion, Avtoma spots Evolution as a method to bridge thegap between physical production pipelines and digital production.

The SIGGRAPH 2003 Call for Participation is already out for thesubmission of art, video, papers, and proposals. For more information,visit www.siggraph.org/s2003.SIGGRAPH 2003 runs from July 27th to the 31st in San Diego,California.