About 10 minutes before I visited the Avatar Reality booth (#727), someone on the show floor told me “people have been talking about virtual reality forever, but we never really get there.” In many ways, of course, he’s right. That notion of giant goggles and wacky gloves, or entering the holographic cube, while all technically possible more or less right now, have largely failed to take off as a consumer entertainment industry thus far. More successful in luring real people into different planes of digital existance have been those online 3D virtual games and worlds that are all over the internet. Some are more focused on being multi-player, online games that take place in virtual environments, like “World of Warcraft,” while a few others are trying to create real socially-based online societies largely designed and built by its residents, like “Second Life.” more

Demand for better graphics performance and programmability within the professional notebook market continues to increase as animators, designers and engineers work with larger 3D models, datasets and images. NVIDIA, a worldwide leader in visual computing technologies, continues to address the demand with the introduction of a new series of NVIDIA Quadro FX mobile GPUs, featuring an NVIDIA CUDA Parallel Computing Processor. Read on at The Briefing Room

More Siggraph 2008 news from The Briefing Room

The “Neurosymphonic Self Reflection” image posted by my pal, Amanda Fletcher, along with some of the other tripped-out images from the Slow Art Gallery is part of Kevin Mack’s burgeoning abstract digital art career. Mack, of course, won an Oscar for his visual effects work on What Dreams May Come (1998), which, if you remember, was itself a very early use of stylized, painterly CG along the lines of his growing roster of “digital paintings.” He’s still part of the Sony Pictures Imageworks’ stable of supervisors, and is also the guy responsible for creating the opening of this year’s Computer Animation Festival. more

This year’s Slow Art gallery features a nice mix of traditional artwork, sculpture, and interactive technology. It’s definitely worth a stop if you’re in Hall H.

Neurosymphonic Self Reflection Kevin Mack (USA) more

Creaform, developer and manufacturer of the well-known Handyscan 3D line-up of handheld and self-positioning laser scanners, once again pushes the limits of portable 3D scanning and introduces its newest and most innovative product: the VIUscan, a self-positioning handheld and high resolution portable 3D color scanner. Read on at The Briefing Room

More Siggraph 2008 news from The Briefing Room

Over at the animationmentor.com booth the company’s CEO Bobby Beck provided some fantastic insight into their online training methods. With over 700 current students from more than 50 countries worldwide, Beck has secured Teachers, a.k.a. “Mentors” from some of the best respected animation companies in the world–Dreamworks, Pixar, etc.

Students learn very specific animation techniques over an 18 month curriculum (Beck says a new, updated curriculum is launching in 2009) in which students can learn at their computer via live video webcasts where students get more individual exposure and training to their Mentors than can be found in traditional classrooms. more

The only thing more popular than laptops and Starbucks at Siggraph this year is the double-feature panel featuring the visual-effects wizards behind Cloverfield and Iron Man . Tippett Studio and Industrial Light & Magic split the bill to reveal some of the secrets behind two of 2008’s biggest FX-heavy blockbusters.

The Tippett team, headed by Eric Leven, gave the impression that the best kind of movie to work on is one with a limited budget and nothing to lose. Such a project was pitched to them as a kind of “Blair Witch meets Godzilla.” Originally Cloverfield was budgeted at $25 million when they got the call from J.J. Abrams’ team to work up the monster, known affectionately as “Clover.” Once the filmmakers got the original tests back from Tippett, the excitement they generated resulted in more money. more

It is day 3 for me here in LA; and I have barely slept there has been so much to see. My first day was the setup day, which as far as the actual conference go, was pretty uneventful. Afterwards however, I attended the Autodesk user’s group party. In short, it was amazing. It was held at the Shrine Theater (not a shabby establishment), and was host to an amazing after party that included free food and an open bar (if you actually got up to it). During the presentation Autodesk gave us some in depth looks at things like the new version of mudbox; which was incredible to say the least. There was a plethora of great information, and up-close looks at things not many people have seen. I would say the most interesting part of the entire show was the stereo film presentation. It was was 3D that on more then 1 occasion I actually ducked when something flew at me. This is definitely a great advancement of the film industry. more

Massive Software announced Massive 3.5, a new upgrade to Massive, the artificial intelligence (AI) driven animation system. Massive 3.5 follows up on Massive 3.0 with new features, including Agent Fields and improved integration and hair and fur dynamics. Read on at The Briefing Room

More Siggraph 2008 news from The Briefing Room

Having covered the motion capture beat for years, I have found in recent years the most interesting stories for our magazine(s) have always been application-specific stories–how it was used on a particular project like Beowulf , Polar Express , etc. In terms of the technology specific stories, I’ve felt we havent’ received earth-shattering news from the industry in a long while–either the technology was optical or it was tethered or it was some kind of wireless gyroscopic transmission system. Either it was high end or it was low end, and either it was put to good use or it wasn’t.

While it’s still not earth-shattering given the rapid pace of today’s IP-based developments, I did see today something on the technology side I had not seen before, and something that I think has some interesting applications. That something was Animazoo’s IGS-190 system, which the company dubbs “live Internet animation.” By that, they mean that they have come up with a pretty seamless approach for live streaming of motion-capture data in real time, creating all sorts of interesting possibilities on the remote collaboration front. more