This year for the first time in many years Siggraph was held on the east coast, in Boston. This city is a great place for tech shows as it is a hub of research universities and tech companies, many which grew out of the universities. It is also easily accessible from the New York/Tristate area and Toronto’s 3D tech hub.

Many of my friends were surprised to hear this was the first Siggraph I have ever attended. I might add that it surprises me as well. However for those of us on the east coast, the pilgrimage west was usually hard to justify without a corporate underwriter.

So this year’s Boston based Siggraph was a real pleasure for many of us. While I am told it was not the largest one ever held, it was nothing short of overwhelming. Going on from Sunday July 30^th through Thursday August 3^rd, I made the most of my three and a half days there. And while a voice in my head chastises me for not attending the whole time, I have to admit to utter exhaustion from the time I was there.

LECTURE HOPPING

Why so tired? Like most computer and technology expos, Siggraph is made up of two prominent parts: The trade show floor, and the lectures/conferences. Many, if not most shows have become more trade show and less conference as the years have clicked by. Looking at a few invitations sitting on my desk for the coming fall I can tell you that some once major events no longer even bother with the conference end of the game. What a shame.

Siggraph is unquestionably different! If I had to choose, I would say Siggraph was more conference with a trade show attached. The conference, lectures, papers, seminars, new technology, art and animation sections to the event are overwhelming. There was rarely a day, or even part of a day, where I was not torn between two or more conferences happening at the same time that I wanted to attend. Yes, there were that many–all the time.

And while I know I would have been fascinated by attending a seminar on the inner workings or Renderman and how to program for it, I am not a programmer (at least not on that level) and instead pointed myself in more arts and educationally oriented directions.

Nimbleness in choosing your lectures was important on a few levels. One of the first things we need to be aware of is that the descriptions of the events, which by the way filled a 200+ page perfect bound book, are not always as accurate as we may like. This is normal and is nobody’s fault. You get a panel of folks together to speak on a subject, or different parts of a subject, and things go where they go. Remember, these are people coming from various parts of the world who quite often have never met–these are unrehearsed classes. Sometimes 3 out of 4 speakers came with almost the same things to say. That can make things rather uncomfortable for the second and especially 3 one to speak. But most speakers were nimble and well versed enough to fly by the seat of their pants and take the discussions in interesting new directions.

While the unrehearsed and impromptu elements of these lectures have their downsides, they also have some wonderful upsides. Getting to hear various perspectives from wide corners of our industries, getting into more heated and challenging talks that could never have been planned.

What I quickly leaned to do was choose my lectures in a first, second and third choice manner. If the first choice wasn’t working out (over my head? Boring?) then I had a second choice ready to jump to. Frankly, this was rare, and most jumping around was an effort to consume at least a part of multiple seminars going on at the same time.

The conference is available on optical disk from ACM/Siggraph in two formats, a CD containing select parts of the conference (Link) for $33/40 (member/non-member)

And a “Full Conference” DVD for $65/87 (Link)

Unfortunately none of their product descriptions outline just what is included on a disk, not even the selects version. So it is hard to know what to expect on these products. I would think it safe to say that anyone reading this article would find those disks of interest.

THE MAIN EVENT

For many folks attending Siggraph, it’s all good, but the main event is the Animation Theater. Called the “Electronic Theater” since it was presented on a 40 foot, 4000 pixel wide digital display. The theater was presented 4 times, twice as evening events, which was what I attended.

Some may find it of note that they ran a variety of semi-fun interactive audience participation games prior to playing the animations. Everyone received a red on one side and green on the other paddle which could be read from each person’s seat. Exposing one color would move a giant screen cursor in a north/south direction, and the other color would move it east/west. Which way the cursor moved was a factor of the average of the entire group. They created two teams and developed some clever games using these controls. The games were fun and one built on the previous with added complexity. I admit my reflexes were not up to it and am sure I did not do my team well.

The Animations. As expected, the animation shown that evening was wonderful. We were told they had over 800 submissions this year, and how dutifully they waded through each and every one of them. The final result was the acceptance of 5 hours of animations, representing 3D, 2D and a range of other techniques.

Of the 5 hours of accepted material, 2 hours were chosen to become the “Electronic Theater” presentation. The remaining 3 hours, which should not be thought of as second rate in any sense, were available to be viewed in the animation theater rooms set up alongside conferences. This made them easily accessible for people to drop in between lectures and view all the work.

That the animation was good is not an issue. What should be noted is what seeing all of that good work crammed together makes one feel. It changes our perspective and the criteria we use to establish our bar of acceptance. In doing so it makes us evermore aware of the subtle difference that differentiate talent, from extraordinary talent.

There were some truly talented works. Many done by independents which had the same look and feel of works produced by major shops using much higher budgets. So what differentiated them? As Da Vinci said, “God lay in the details”. It began to come down to little shifts of timing and pacing, where being off by a half second made all the difference in the world.

This is not unlike other areas of endeavor, and I tend to think of Olympic figure skating here. We know we are watching some of the top talents in the world. And yet even in that tight pack we can quickly start to see someone pull ahead.

AMC/Siggraph offers all 5 hours of animation on three DVDs. Two hours of the Electronic Theater (Link), and 1.5 hours each for two additional disks (Link 1 , Link2). Each is available for $40/60 (member/non-member).

And the Winner Is…

I bought a copy of the Electronic Theater to share with my wife. To my surprise it did not include the winning entry, that of Charlex’ “One Rat Short”. This was disappointing and I am sure there must be some contractual reason for it.

I was fortunate to get invited to see early snippets from the short up at Charlex about a year before it was unveiled. Its producer Bryan Godwin had invited me on a tour and explained how Charlex’ owner and Creative Director had syphoned off a healthy part of the commercial shop’s team to work on this short during any downtime. Later he would up the ante and devote full time staff to the project with a budget in excess of a million dollars.

While Charlex is not Pixar/Disney, it is a formidable commercial shop in the heart of NYC. Given this type of competition one must ask where the independent artist/animator fits in and how they can be competitive. Recall that not long ago most submissions were from independents. The same question has been raised about the Sundance festival in the last few years, and the truth is the landscape for competitions is changing.

Grist for another article perhaps?

ON THE TRADE FLOOR

For many, the trade floor with over 230 vendors was where the action is. What’s new, what’s hot, which company has trumped which in the never ending race to our pocketbooks. While there were many announcements and red carpet rollouts, the ones that caught most people’s attention were the big 3D announcements.

The award for biggest announcement had to go to Autodesk for is surprise announcement of Maya 8.0. A very well kept secret that seemed to surprise even those in the know. We will have a review on this new release in the coming weeks (ok, give us a month or two). This was Autodesk’s first branded release of Maya so we are excited to see what they did with it. Autodesk also released Max 9.0, as did Newtek with Lightwave 9. auto-des-sys’ release of form.Z 6.0 was released and now offers its first draft of animation toolsets. Book-sellers were back with a vengeance. Focal Press, Wiley and others were there with ever-expanding lists of new titles. This was nice to see!

Favorite New Product winner: One of the smallest items to be found in all of the trade floor ended up making the biggest impression on me. It was the 3D Motion Controllers from 3Dconnexion, a Logitech company. These little disk shaped controllers are covered in a dense foam rubber and easy on the hands.

The way they work is so simple yet ever so brilliant. Using two fingers you move the disk left or right, or forward or back, OR UP or DOWN! Full 3D space control in a simple to use and inexpensive item. We will certainly be bringing you some reviews on this item soon.

Overall here was the most important thing I took away from the commercial end of the show: All areas of product development have matured, so what is happening now is two-fold. We are seeing wonderful refinement, and we are seeing items that were once prohibitively priced come down to the no-brainer price points. Nothing like an economic turn-down to re-shuffle prices!

There was a real sense of an industry that has finally begun to get past the first decade of technological and economic spikes and plummets, and find a more even keel. The downside of this is that we are now a jaded group with WOWs coming fewer and farther apart. The upside is that the tools and talents we have spent years developing have found their way into everyday commerce, not just in Hollywood, but in large and small centers of commerce all around the world.

This is a good thing.