As the Siggraph show floor closed Wednesday, millimeter Senior Editor Michael Goldman had the opportunity to sit down for a chat with the creator of Massive AI software technology, Stephen Regelous. With Massive well on its way to becoming a ubiquitous tool in the visual effects world for realistic movement simulations in crowds large and small, they chatted about additions and improvements made to the software in its new version, 3.5, introduced this week at Siggraph. Listen to a portion of their conversation.

Team Grojf was chosen as the 2008 FJORG! winner at Siggraph for the animated reel “The Red Truck.” Composed of Jacob Patrick, John Nguyen, and Kevin Rucker, Team Grojf was chosen from a field of 16 three-member teams that competed for 32 straight hours to create character-driven animations under extreme pressure and multiple staged distractions. Watch the winning FJORG! animation.

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

Once again, the Siggraph party scene seems to be living up to all expectations–thanks to another blockbuster from Softimage. As is seemingly tradition from Avid’s professional 3D animation software division, Softimage in cooperation with Dell put their cool spin on Siggraph with a party at 740 Club in downtown L.A. where they promoted their new transformative open platform ICE with a 45-minute set by notorious hip-hop and reality TV icon Vanilla Ice. more

Following his Tuesday blog posting on new developments with NewTek’s LightWave software, milllimeter Senior Editor Michael Goldman sat down for a chat on the Siggraph show floor with Jay Roth, president of NewTek’s 3D Products Division to elaborate on those developments and discuss LightWave’s place in the animation world these days. Listen to Goldman’s conversation with Roth.

Last night may have marked the premiere party for Siggraph ‘07. Softimage, Vicon, and Pendulum–along with mova–held their celebration for the Siggraph community at the San Diego House of Blues.

Titled Visual Fxtasy, the event was the place to be, as marked by the nearly 1,000 attendees who lined up all the way down 6th street and even around the corner along a full block of G St. Luckily, Softimage hooked us up with VIP list treatment so we could bypass the wait, but bless those who did stand in the more-than-an-hour-long line, because they helped amplify the classic House of Blues ambience. more

The great Dan Garza has made his way back to Siggraph this year and we’re delighted to have him provide his thoughts on Siggraph ‘07. As you recall, Dan was one of our student bloggers back at the ‘05 show in LA and did a great job. So, we’ve invited him to give his thoughts on this years show, so, without further ado:

The last time my hawaiian patterned eggplant physique swaggered into SIGGRAPH was two years back. We had won a national competition and best in show at a film fest and were flown to LA. A lot has changed.

Quick recap LA ‘05 through my eyes:

-Sensory overload phase: Flashy lights, first rate hotel, VIP parties, gifts, industry give-a-ways, dancing, drinkin’ to the point of blurry and new friends. Woo-hoo! more

Finally got a chance to sneak over to the Electronic Theater at the San Diego Civic Center Theater last night for the 7pm showing. As with every Electronic Theater from Siggraph’s of yesteryear, the pre-show is just as entertaining as the actual clips.

For ‘07 the committee offered a tribute to some of the ground-breaking innovations in game technology–from the ’80s. They projected three different laser-based Atari games onto the huge movie screen and invited industry pros to try their hand at the joystick classics. more

SupaCam, which is backed in part by Panasonic, is selling their popular DVi handheld, tapeless, digital movie recorder for only $328 over at their booth (booth #853)-about $500 less than you would pay at B&H or other resellers. Up for grabs are black, white, and silver models.

The camera, about the size of your hand, does 24 bit color at 30 fps at 720 x 480, both NTSC and PAL, in MPG 4 or dvx formats. It can also serve as a webcam, with a 25 ft. remote and 180 degree motion sensor triggered when activity occurs within it’s optic range–and can stream online in HD quality. For digital photographers, 12 megapixels.

Pixellexis is gearing up for a new speedy rendering engine called Red Box. Aiming to launch the new processing solution by the end of the year, Pixellexis is clustering 16 or 32 floating point parallel processors to provide up to 8GB of raw I/O bandwidth–which they claim will significantly help rendering times for digital video and 2D or 3D imaging projects.

They’re currently setting up a few beta testers in the 2D broadcast market, which will help define the range of plug-in compatability. Pixellexis Prez Stefany Allaire says the Red Box will not only find a place in the 2D and 3D markets, but also in the HD realm–on digital cinema projects up to 4K. The high-end on just how many processing cores they’re going to build in their premium product is also yet to be determined–market, you will decide.

The Canadian-based company is still configuring what the first, basic offering will be (or be priced at) but any medium- to large-scale HD postproduction facility or animation studio should definitely stay tuned.