Wow!!!

After what I will always refer to as the SIGGRAPH SCRAMBLE - I am here.

The show is off to a great start. I saw Solomon Grundy in the Animation Theater yesterday. It is always very exciting to see the audience reaction to your work!!! I have been running by the booths and bumping into lots of old friends….and of course making new ones and passing out business cards. SCAD has a great booth and it was fun to see Solomon Grundy on thier SIGGRAPH DVD the school is handing out. Off to more adventures! I will write more later today.

-Chris Myers

www.chrismyers3d.com

Savannah College of Art and Design

Steve Perlman wants to make 3D face capture as easy as possible. And not just ’sorta okay’ capture that might do for games, but sub-millimeter accurate capture delivered without the usual mini-ping pong balls or other markers that today’s pricey, high-end systems require.

Perlman, CEO of SF-based Mova, has a varied career as a top Apple engineer, co-founder of WebTV Networks, and Moxi, the innovative set-top box company. Now, with the release of Contour (currently offered as a service, but soon to be a turnkey product), users need to merely dab on common phosphorescent face paint (the same stuff kids use for Halloween) and stand in front of an array of capture cameras. more

Big show for these two together–bigger I think than anyone expected. In addition to taking advantage of Intel’s well-received Core 2 Duo chip for the new HP xw4400 workstation, HP has the new Intel-based HP xw8400 on the booth here. This is the follow-on from the xw8200 which is deployed widely in the industry (as is HP’s AMD-based xw9300). But this show it’s Intel’s turn again in that high-end industry sweet spot as HP shows off the 64-bit Dual Core Xeon based multicore box. It’s Vista ready and supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS4 (64-bit), which has to be installed after market (with HP’s help–Red Hat Linux 32- and 64-bit OS are available pre-installed). more

If you do anything that requires intensive GPU use, Nividia’s announcement this morning rocks. Claimed as the culmination of over a decade of continuous processing development, the Quadro Plex VCS (visual computing system) series of stand alone processing units deliver a compute density that runs up to a claimed 25x rendering power over SGI’s latest refrigerator-sized unit.

Compatible with standard x86 type 32- and 64-bit Intel and AMD microprocessor-based systems with a 16x PCI Express slot, the scalable, modular units can deliver up to 60 billion pixels/second fill rate. This enabled highly interactive demos of real world problems such as Google Earth’s familar map of the globe, but here it was projected at full HD res on 3 massive screens, and audience members were wowed to see that data from all the current flights in the air over the US could be visualized over a map of the country. You could even click on a dot representing a flight and get realtime info such as direction, flight number, air speed, and more. more

Dinner Excelsior (great). Company: Graham and Karen Hawkes (Hawkes Ocean Technologies), Jim Zafarana (VP and worldwide marketing manager for HP’s workstation global business unit) and his colleague Tom Salomone, plus my colleagues from Videography, Post and CGW.

While CG has finally mastered simulating the oceans, the real thing remains a mystery waiting to be explored, says Graham Hawkes of Hawkes Ocean Technologies. He’s an engineer and describes his business as a “skunk works”. He’s pusuing “underwater flight” via swift, manueverable vehicles that can go to great depths and in the process placing himself in an odd sort of arms race against the scientific programs of whole countries–China, Japan, and the USA’s own Alvin program–all racing to get to the abyss of the ocean before James Cameron does. more

I-Maginer, developer of three-dimensional, real-time collaborative online environments, and digital artist Jean-Marie Minazio are launching a highly novel 3-D, virtual art gallery, the Avat‘Art Project. Set to launch Aug. 1 in connection with the opening of the SIGGRAPH trade show in Boston, this project is a concept, an artistic performance, and ultimately a new medium, created with a recently launched online service called MyBlog3d. more

Red Giant Software, publisher of a line of professional digital video tools, including Magic Bullet announced the availability of Knoll Light Factory 2.5. This top selling After Effects plug-in was most recently used by John Knoll, software creator and Visual FX Supervisor at Industrial Light + Magic on the Imax feature Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D, and also by BLT Associates on the Dreamgirls teaser trailer. more

Autodesk, Inc. announced that plug-ins are available for use with the new 64-bit versions of Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya animation, modeling and rendering software, thanks to a partnership with HP and Intel. Plug-ins for these new Autodesk 3D software versions were created by members of the Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) Sparks program. more

Softimage Co., a subsidiary of Avid Technology, Inc., announced SOFTIMAGE|FACE ROBOT version 1.5 - an update to the industry‘s first software application dedicated to the creation of lifelike facial animation. This release offers a game export solution which allows artists to deliver high quality, in-game acting with detailed facial nuances, with support for all major game platforms. In addition, significant performance improvements to the software have also been implemented, and support for the new Mova Contour Reality Capture system is now included. more

Softimage Co., a subsidiary of Avid Technology, Inc. announced that it will demonstrate the new versions of its industry-leading character creation tools - including SOFTIMAGE|FACE ROBOT and SOFTIMAGE|CAT, plus the latest version of SOFTIMAGE|XSI - at the 2006 SIGGRAPH conference from August 1-3. Customer presentations from Softimage clients in the film, post and games industries will be showing samples of their projects, and free training classes from Digital Tutors and Centre NAD will be also offered during the show. more