As Siggraph 2008 winds down, it’s time for me to take one last, brief mention of some of the more interesting technology and developments at the show. Be sure to read upcoming issues of millimeter and Digital Content Producer magazines for more in-depth information.

While some may claim that there is nothing new at the show, if you walk the aisles with an open mind you’re sure to find trends and new gear that fits the bill. more

Laptops are on track to soon replace desktop units as the most popular personal computer type. Over the past couple of years, more powerful mobile CPUs and GPUs have made lighter weight laptops prime candidates to become the machines of choice for pro graphics and NLE users too.

While they didn’t have a booth on the show floor, Dell still garnered interest by the introduction of two potent new members of its line of pro-oriented, ISV-certified mobile workstations, which turned up on display in Intel’s and NVIDIA’s booths. more

Unlike the slowly changing, monolithic market for CPUs, the development of graphics chips and cards looks chaotic, with chip designs, products, and companies coming in and out of the market at a near furious pace over the decades since the first graphics technology delivered in 1960.

Over the past eight years or so, however, two companies have come to dominate the market for discrete chips and cards: ATI (since 2006 a division of AMD) and NVIDIA. While the companies continue to slug it out, most everyone else had fallen to the wayside. Now, the two companies own 98 percent of the discrete GPU business, according to on Peddie Research. more

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

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

In scheduling a 9am press conference on the opening day of the Siggraph, Sony lost no time in providing an answer to the many who–over the years since technology was first announced—questioned the value of the Cell processor initiative.

The joint venture with IBM and Toshiba to develop a new type of media-savvy processor initially appeared in the PlayStation 3, but seemed adrift for any other applications, since the hardware design was significantly different from the legacy x86 the computer industry has grown comfortable with. (The Cell processor—referred to by the consortium as the Cell Broadband Engine microprocessor , or Cell/B.E., is a relatively unusual design that combines a general-purpose IBM POWERPC processor core that communicates with eight special-purpose, on-chip DSP cores.) 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

Be sure to check out the New Tech Demos, which presents innovative technologies and applications in several fields, including displays, robotics, input devices, and interaction techniques. These displays can be found throughout the convention center in Hall H, Hall G, the Hall K entrance, and the South Lobby.

Ants in the Pants

Ants in the Pants combines a new wearable tactile interface with a visual display to deliver realistic insect sensations. 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

Avatar Reality, a development entity dedicated to the advancement of online community building, announced San Anselmo, Calif.–based virtual world developer Virtual Space Entertainment (VSE) as the newest addition to their Third Party Developer Program. VSE’s team of talented designers, led by renowned futurist Syd Mead, will create an entirely new, unique attraction that will serve as the first fully functional city for the upcoming massively multiplayer virtual world (MMVW) Blue Mars, which will launch in beta format at the end of 2008. At SIGGRAPH 2008, VSE will preview the development of their Blue Mars city at Avatar Reality’s booth, number 727. Read on at The Briefing Room

More Siggraph 2008 news from The Briefing Room