Siggraph 2008 drew to a close with a bang Thursday night as ILM hosted a screening of its new Star Wars: Clone Wars animated feature at the Nokia Theater following the final run of the Electronic Theater. The screening featured an intro with the film’s director, Dave Filoni, being interviewed by ILM Academy Award-winning visual effects supervisor (and co-inventor of Adobe Photoshop), John Knoll, about their Star Wars experiences. At the private ILM party before the screening, millimeter Senior Editor Michael Goldman had the chance to have a quick chat with Knoll about his impressions of Siggraph 2008 and what parts of the show interested him the most. Hear their conversation.

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.

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.

As mentioned Monday by Senior Editor Michael Goldman, Pixar and Disney Animation Chief Ed Catmull met with the press Monday to celebrate the 20th’ anniversary of the debut of RenderMan and its subsequent impact on the computer graphics industry. Hear a few of Catmull’s comments about the anniversary and the software’s many accomplishments.

Millimeter Senior Editor Michael Goldman sat down with Pixar’s Brad Bird, director of Ratatouille, to discuss that film and the challenges of making and executing color palettes for animated films in general. To listen to their conversation, click here .

Read the accompanying story on digitalcontentproducer.com.