A lot of focus this year at Siggraph has been on stereoscopic 3D and its emergence as a new language of filmmaking. If 3D is a new way of making movies, then the vast visual effects team that worked on Speed Racer discovered a reinvention of 2D filmmaking.

Visual Effects Supervisor John Gaeta calls the style pioneered on Speed Racer many things. Among them: “virtual cinematography,” “photo-anime,” and “2 1/2 D” layering. When he and Dan Glass first started working on the project, it was a liberating experience to force themselves to let go of the need for any kind of photorealistic element. This quality is something ingrained into any visual-effects artist worth his salt from the get go. Letting go of that instinct is like asking a cat to ignore a mouse. 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

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. more

This year’s Siggraph Computer Animation Festival is an all-inclusive affair. Each standalone programmed screening runs approximately two hours and is made up of several short films and compliation works of varying degrees of length. Though they are the shortest of the short and often are promoting one thing or another, commercials and spots shouldn’t be overlooked as works of art worth celebrating, and the festival’s first program featured several worth mentioning. more

“Live-action 3D is the future/Teach it well and let it lead the way,” Whitney Houston once sang, I believe. Oops, wrong bad joke. The big joke among people who make 3D stereoscopic films is that it is way more work than making a regular 2D film because you have to make the same film twice.

This summer’s Journey to the Center of the Earth was shot in stereo with dual Sony HDC-950 HD cameras mounted on Pace Technologies‘ 3D HD rigs. The movie’s Visual-Effects Supervisor Christopher Townsend was on hand to explain that there is no cheating space when you’re filming live-action 3D. You can’t use any of the solutions normally associated with 2D movies, such as flat matte paintings for backgrounds, 2D compositing, or any 2D cueing traicks at all. Journey to the Center of the Earth is the directorial debut of longtime visual-effects supervisor Eric Brevig and the movie was the first ever full-length stereoscopic motion picture shot in HD to be released in digital 3D. more

One of today’s more pleasant meetings was with Autodesk Media and Entertainment group manager Maurice Patel, and not only because of the chocolate, cookies, and comfy couches. For one thing, I got to see old colleagues Dan Ochiva and Steve Katz after far too long during the meeting, and they might be reporting on this blog site about the Autodesk meeting, as well. more

It’s the same general approach, only with very different visual presentations.

Robert Neuman, stereoscopic supervisor at Walt Disney Animation, showed a trailer for the upcoming computer-animated feature Bolt, which is from the talking-animal variety of kids-oriented films. In this movie, John Travolta voices a dog who thinks the popular TV show he stars in is real life. Neuman stressed the importance of using 3D as an aid to storytelling and not as purely a gimmick, something echoed by all the presenters so far today. Having objects flying nonstop at the screen seems to be a William Castle-like relic from the past. more

I never thought about it like this before, but what we know as a close-up shot isn’t really a close-up at all. Phil “Captain 3D” McNally from DreamWorks Animation likes to instead refer to this staple of 2D cinematography as a “big-up.” The object isn’t any closer to the the audience, it’s just bigger.

That’s just one example of the redefining of traditional movie terminology that McNally peppered throughout his talk about discovering the difference between 2D and 3D moviemaking this morning during the Animated 3D Cinema: Imaginary Worlds Brought to Life panel. Because 2D techniques are so ingrained in filmmakers and audiences as the only way to make films, it is ironically seen as real life. In reality, 2D moviemaking is the art of converting a spatial world into a flat one. McNally showed a clip from the studio’s Kung Fu Panda that was quite impressive in 3D, but then revealed the process behind converting a 3D production through the 2D filter- about 1/3 of the clip was the same, 1/3 was slightly adjusted 2D footage, and 1/3 of it was new or extended edits. more

More Siggraph news from our ongoing virtual press conference

SAN DIEGO (SIGGRAPH Booths #1249, #127), Aug. 8, 2007 - Sony and Side Effects Software Inc. announced today that they are working together to provide Side Effects Software‘s award-winning Houdini server tools (Houdini Batch and Mantra) for Sony‘s new Cell Computing Board. This joint effort can empower a new generation of content creators with the seamless integration of high-performance hardware and software. more

If ever there was a community of manufacturers that listened to their end users and actively worked to implement their ideas, it’s those wacky plug-in guys. That was the message I got a short while ago from Todd Prives, product marketing manager at GenArts, makers of Sapphire plug-in products for most major platforms (including the new version 4.0, for Autodesk systems).

I asked Todd how formal and layered is the system that GenArts uses to solicit input from its users and evaluate that input for possible inclusion in future products or versions of products. “They call us up or Email us,” Todd replied simply, and he went on to tell me the story of how Angus Kneale, creative director and co-founder of The Mill in New York, got into his ear many months ago with all sorts of specific suggestions for useful tweaks to add to Sapphire.

“He wanted racking focus with his own custom lens shape rather than just the ones we included, and along with that, to boost highlight parameters, and other things like that,” says Prives. “We thought he had a good point, so we came up with ‘Convolve’ (a defocus plug-in that is part of the new V. 4 for Autodesk users which lets users create various blur effects using arbitrary filter shapes and colors) to address those concerns.”

That sort of back-and-forth is happening continually at GenArts, according to Prives. So, if you have some suggestions, pop over to booth 321 and let him hear about them.

–Michael Goldman