Siggraph

On the convergence trail once again this afternoon, I learned a bit of the Bunkspeed story (booth #311). What intrigues me most about the company’s 3D rendering engine, created specifically for product designers and engineers (starting with the auto industry folks in 2002), is that it has potential to be a pre-viz tool for Hollywood–another example of technology crossing over from one application to the next.

Bunkspeed marketing chief Thomas Teger told me the company’s HyperShot technology, introduced last year as a simplified and way to render and move photographic images in real-time was used a while back for pre-viz and storyboarding work by a freelance artist who worked on Transformers, for example. He adds that the focus of the company remains on design applications, but increasingly, that world requires movement, and so, this year, Bunkspeed announced the addition of enhanced animation capabilities with its new HyperMove tool (slated for an October debut). HyperMove is basically a tool for moving photo-real imagery rendered in the Bunkspeed world for display purposes (driving a car, posing a cell phone on a turntable, etc), without requiring the artist to have any significant computer animation skills particularly.

Although companies like Ford (Bunkspeed’s largest customer), other auto manufacturers, and cell phone, computer, and all sorts of other tech product manufacturers will likely always remain the core of the company’s business, Teger fully expects the company’s products to become more involved for storyboarding and pre-vizzing work in Hollywood. Certainly, even on the last day of the show, the booth was plenty busy this afternoon, and I’m pretty sure I recognized some Hollywood types in the crowd.

–MG