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What's SIGGRAPH Without Shopping?

THERE ARE LITERALLY HUNDREDS OF PRODUCTS on the show floor atSIGGRAPH, and some of the coolest appear with no advance press,hovering hopefully in tiny booths on the outskirts of the name-brandmarketplace. If you went to NAB, you might have noticed the characteranimation software from NaturalMotion at one of the card-table slotsnext to the far wall. Similar discoveries will undoubtedly be waitingat SIGGRAPH. We encourage you to seek out the unexpected: Walk theperimeter and look for tomorrow's anchor tenant.

As for today's anchor tenants, here's a preview of what to expectfrom familiar companies, many of whom have managed to keep R&Dafloat in brutal economic times.

Alias Upgrades Maya, Receives Oscar

With the release of Maya 5 at NAB 2003, this eighth major upgradeadds even more ways to create digital content, including impressivefluid effects generation. Meanwhile, productivity gains abound, as thecompany says it has incorporated hundreds of customer-suggestedenhancements. The company must be doing something right. In March,Alias|Wavefront accepted a technical Oscar for its development ofMaya.

Maya 5 features extensive changes to animation constraints, one ofthe most widely used tools for everyday character animation. Thecompany says the improvements will save animators time while providingimproved flexibility when working with characters. Also new is an FK/IKblending interface that's described as an improved method forvisualizing the blend process. Productivity also improves via the newghosting and channel muting options, which speed up animation tasks,according to the company.

Since Maya Paint Effects can now be drawn as or converted topolygons, users can rely on their regular polygon tools and output toother renderers, including Mental Ray. Enhancements in Maya FluidEffects include true dynamic computation of wakes and accuratesimulation of ponds and lakes.

Maya 5 offers four options for rendering: the Maya softwarerenderer, Mental Ray for Maya, a new Vector Renderer, and a HardwareRenderer. As of Maya 5, the coders unified all rendering optionsthrough a common rendering user interface and workflow.

Don't miss Alias SketchBook Pro, a neat sketching program that mightbe one of the best reasons to buy one of those new Tablet PCs. Thisinexpensive, pen-based software really does change a Tablet PC into adigital sketchpad. Users will recognize many of the intuitive paint anddrawing tools first deployed in Maya StudioTools. www.alias.com

Softimage|XSI 3.5 Adds Improvements, New Capabilities

Softimage, which introduced version 3.5 of Softimage|XSI at NAB2003, doesn't call it an animation and graphics package anymore. AsXSI's capabilities have increased at a seemingly exponential rate theselast 18 months, the Avid division now describes the product as a"nonlinear animation production environment."

Sure, the graphics, animation, compositing, and rendering chops areall there. Check out the automatic symmetrizing of polygons, greatlyexpanded support in the interface for Direct X and Cg vertex and pixelshaders, and complete integration with Mental Ray through version3.2.

Other useful features include the ability to link and transfermultiple render passes through the integrated compositor and anenhanced SDK. New rendering features include accelerated scan linerendering, a Rapid Motion blur feature, and OpenGL-accelerated shadowmaps.

Meanwhile, the show will see version 1.1 of Softimage|Behavior, anapplication that creates "intelligent" characters and realistic 3Danimated crowds. www.softimage.com

Discreet Debuts Color Grading, Upgrades, New BusinessStrategy

Discreet Lustre

Discreet describes Lustre as the world's first non-proprietary,realtime 2K digital color grading system for digital intermediatework.

The company partners with software creator Colorfront out ofBudapest. The Hungarian company's original color grading software wasincluded in now-defunct 5D's Colossus product. However, Discreetreworked those color grading functions to integrate with itsestablished workflow and interface, while adding a number of features.Based on Windows 2000 and standard PC workstations, the turnkeysystem's price is lower than those of Discreet's other majorproducts.

The Lustre debut joins recently announced upgrades to Inferno 5 andFlame 8 visual effects systems, the Flint 8 effects system, and Smoke 5and Fire 5, which handle online creative editing, conforming, andfinishing.

Don't miss the very reworked Cleaner XL for Windows either. Fasterexecution, an improved feature set, and new interface make thismastering, encoding, and delivery program much more than just anotherupgrade.

At NAB 2003, Discreet announced a new product development strategythat addresses system costs and partnering. This new approach focuseson lower prices, lower total cost of ownership, and new partners suchas storage manufacturer Maximum Throughput, SAN and asset managementprovider ADIC, and SGI. Discreet plans to provide customers withone-stop shopping, offering products and services that the companyguarantees will work together. www.discreet.com

Side Effects Delivers Houdini 6

Side Effects Houdini 6

With the release of Houdini 6, Toronto-based Side Effects Softwareaddresses the most compelling aspect of graphic designtoday—asset management. What good comes of all that creativity ifyou can't track the latest version of files strewn across a hard drive?Houdini 6's digital asset handling feature enables technical directorsto create and manage libraries of re-usable characters, effects, andother elements. This allows an animator to bring together geometry,bones, shaders, and motion into a unified custom asset.

Don't worry about the underlying procedural networks, sincetechnical managers can create high-level controls for artists andanimators, who won't need to learn the details. Managing these assetsvia special libraries makes it straightforward when you need to insertupdates or re-use assets across a production.

Other new features in Houdini 6 include global illumination,embedded online help, and enhanced animation, interface, lighting,compositing, and particle tools. Global illumination is now supportedin Houdini's built-in Mantra renderer. The company says this toolallows realistic renderings that simulate the way light inter-reflectswithin a scene. A new hotkey-driven keyframing system speedsproductivity, while added character tools include forward and inversekinematic blending and dynamic parenting. Houdini Apprentice, a freenon-commercial learning edition of the application, is also available.www.sidefx.com

Arri Speeds Film Printout

A high-speed package for the Arrilaser speeds output of the digitalfilm recorder by up to 30%, according to Arri. Printing 2K frames (1.85aspect ratio) out to any film stock now takes about 1.7 seconds perframe.

Arri will also announce a move from HMI to Xenon bulbs for itscompact 35mm LocPro screening system. Feature film productions take theLocPro on location to screen film dailies. The device functions in asimilar way to traditional film flatbed editing devices, but can alsoproject images onto a screen.

It may not sound like big news to change the type of bulb, but Arriwas responding to a steady stream of requests from U.S. postproductionhouses that work on features. The color output of the HMI bulb shiftedvery slightly over the width of the LocPro's projected screen image.The Xenon source better matches that of typical movie house projection,so colorists and others can have more confidence in their film prints.www.arri.com

Kaydara's 5 & 10

Kaydara MotionBuilder 5.0

At SIGGRAPH, Kaydara will celebrate its 10th anniversary while alsolaunching MotionBuilder 5.0, the latest version of the company's 3Dcharacter animation software.

MotionBuilder's layout is entirely new. The Storytelling Timelineintegrates 3D animation with audio, video, and camera shots. Thislatest version also includes improved character animation tools, whilecustomizable shortcuts improve workflow. Working with nVidia'sprogrammable graphics processors allowed the coders to improvephotorealistic-rendering throughput. www.kaydara.com

3Dlabs Boosts Memory and Bandwidth

Milpitas, Calif.-based 3Dlabs offers the latest in card design,building its Wildcat VP990 Pro and VP880 Pro cards around its VisualProcessing Unit (VPU). These programmable cards come with 256MB of RAMon the lower-cost 880, while the flagship 990 bulks up with 512MB ofRAM. (According to the company, that's the largest memory configurationcurrently available on a workstation graphics accelerator.)

Also look for more news on 3Dlabs' and ATI's joint collaboration onthe latter's RenderMonkey shader development tool suite, a counter tonVidia's Cg development. In a March announcement, ATI said it willcontinue working on the core RenderMonkey framework, and both companieswill develop plug-in modules that support the Microsoft HLSL and OpenGL2.0 high-level shading languages (HLSL). The idea? To provide enhancedfunctionality to game developers and content creators who useRenderMonkey to create complex shader programs in 3D apps. www.3dlabs.com

Curious Software Launches Integrated OS X GraphicsPackage

Da Vinci Revival interface

London-based Curious Software made a name for itself by deliveringfast, accurate software products for broadcasters that let them createinteractive maps for news and documentaries. The recent release of theCurious gFx software isn't so surprising to those who also knew thatthe company's principles coded compositing software used at places likeILM.

Designed for Mac OS X, gFx integrates paint, rotoscoping, andcompositing into a single interface. Various configurations addressvideo, HDTV, and film use.

Curious Software recently announced the development of gFx Pro, aconfiguration tailored specifically for professional video painting,rotoscoping, matte creation, and animation for Apple Final Cut Pro. www.curious-software.com

Da Vinci Offers Software-Based Color Corrector

Well known for its popular turnkey color correction systems, daVinci Systems will show a new standalone, realtime software colorcorrector. 2K Soft debuts as the company's first foray into asoftware-only product. Unlike the company's other color correctionproducts, 2K Soft doesn't work in conjunction with a telecine, butprovides color grading after the images are already digitized.

2K Soft reads DPX and RGB files of any resolution. The software alsoworks directly with products from Discreet, Quantel, and Thomson. 2KSoft's interface will be familiar to users of the 2K Plus colorcorrector, since it employs the same Joyball Panel. Somewhat like abilliard ball, the Joyball allows more subtle color control than amouse. 2K Soft runs on an Intel platform, as well as off-the-shelfstorage, if desired. This hardware/software combo integrates well withthe da Vinci Powerhouse renderfarm, according to the company.

The software color enhancement system offers the company's widelyaccepted color correction toolsets, including primaries with CustomCurves and Power Windows. New software features include auto windowtracking, auto balance, and auto scene match. www. davsys.com

Short Takes

NXN Software shows a new version of NXN Alienbrain Studio,its flagship project management system. The software helps managePC-based digital entertainment and content creation projects, providingefficient asset and configuration management for 3D models, textures,video, audio, and source code. www.nxn-software.com

The active area on Wacom's CintiqPartner pad measures only6"x8", but it allows Wacom interactive pen displays to more easilyintegrate into multiple-monitor systems. Using it speeds operations,since the artist uses the same Cintiq pen to draw and paint directly onthe Cintiq's LCD screen and then jump to a second monitor to get topalettes and tools. www.wacom.com

Eyetronics plans to demo the workflow benefits of its static,facial motion capture, and 3D reconstruction scanning services. Thecompany's new facial motion capture service works via a variation ofits still ShapeCam technique. The setup records a performance using adigital video or HDTV camera joined by a device that continuouslyprojects a fine grid on the actor's face. A quick-to-set-up mobilesystem, Eyetronics says the rig makes it easy to arrange a capturesession at any location, reducing overall costs and logisticalcomplexity. www.eyetronics.com

Curious Labs debuts the Poser 5 PLUS BodyStudio 2.0 plug-in.Described as a "next generation" plug-in, the software allowspre-rigged characters and props from Poser to be imported into Maya,3ds max, and other high-end 3D apps. With its worldwide group of users,Poser's 3D character design and animation software continues to gainadherents for its fast, straightforward figure design, posing, andanimation. www.curiouslabs.com

Eyeon Software debuts the Linux version of Digital Fusion 4,its flagship 2D/3D compositing app. The Linux version of DF4 containsthe same tools, features, and functionality offered by the existingWindows version. Eyeon cited user requests as the main reason forcreating the Linux version. Users liked the stability and lowerhardware costs of the Linux OS. www.eyeonline.com

BOXX Technologies joins the digital intermediate competitionwith the dual Xeon processor-based CineBOXX. How does it work? Usersimport high-resolution, rendered sequential images directly to thenetworked storage and review them instantly. This eliminates the needfor file conversions or imports into a proprietary frame store.Realtime file formats can run up to 2048x1556. www.boxxtech.com

While nVidia remains quiet about what hot graphics cards itplans to debut at the show, this past May saw the release of Quadro FX500, an "entry level" PCI slot card that, if the specs hold up, lookslike it outperforms practically every card presently on the market. Atan estimated $300 street cost, nVidia describes the FX 500 as "thefirst fully programmable entry-level workstation card." Even with theoverhead of an outstanding 128-bit floating-point pipeline,32-bit-per-pixel color depth, and full-scene anti-aliasing, the cardruns up to 60fps for all but the most compute-intensive graphics. ReadJuly's millimeter for a more in-depth look at Nvidia's ongoinggraphics revolution. www.nvidia.com

Thank you: SIGGRAPH would not be possible without thetireless volunteer efforts of GraphicsNet leader Steve Van Frank andhis team, who wired (and wireless-ed) the entire conference fueled onlyby pizza, beer, and IT passion.

Click here to register for SIGGRAPH.