Siggraph

Eyeon quietly doubled its product line at Siggraph with the announcement of its new Generation product line, which includes all sorts of management tools for artists, integrated composting/editing tools, and so forth.

“We’ve been pretty busy,” marketing chief Donovan Zulauf conceded. And the company’s reliable compositing technology, Fusion, has been in the thick of that frenzy. Eyeon is showingFusion 6 at Siggraph, expected to be shipping later this year, and now incorporating a stereoscopic and multi-layer imaging system, and a new 3D system that Donovan was particulary proud of.

a href=’http://blog.digitalcontentproducer.com/siggraph/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/08eyeon1.jpg’ class=’thickbox’ >He pointed out that the incorporation of more sophisticated 3D tools into a compositing package was necessary largely as an homage to the Fusion user community who want and need to be more efficient. The option of addressing more 3D issues without moving into other packages, he argues, is something users had been asking for.

That got my mind remembering that, yesterday, I was impressed by Lightwave’s rendering tools, and every specialized software around from major manufacturers these days seems to have strong tools to do jobs in other categories. So, I wondered, will we ever see a day when 3D and compositing are fully integrated in a single, powerful software package—where those jobs can be done in the same place by the same person?

Donovan reminded me that many compositing artists have strong 3D skills, and vice versa, and many smaller operations routinely cross people into and out of both worlds already, since not everyone can afford to run separate departments for such things. So, down the road?

“Why not? I could see compositing and 3D converging more. I’m sure someone will bring it to the table,” Donovan postulates. “Maybe us, or someone else. But some of these guys are tremendous 3D artists and would probably love that capability. Not everyone can afford to be a specialist.”

–MG