Siggraph

Siggraph 2008 CAF Award Winners

Eric Melin — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 20:41:28 +0000

Well, I hate to say I told you so, but…a couple of days ago I wrote this entry, France dominates Computer Animation Festival, which is pretty self-explanatory. Now, I’m writing to tell you of the winners in the Siggraph 2008 Compuater Animateion Festival, and guess what?

France dominated.

Here’s the list, all deserving winners. Congratulations to all the nominees on a great exhibition!

Best of Show Winner

Oktapodi

Gobelins l’école de l’image, France (more…)

A look back at the SIGGRAPH CAF from a contributor’s perspective.

Mike Stern — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 19:03:59 +0000

It was an exciting day when I found out that my short film “Distraxion” was going to be featured in the 2008 SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival. I had spent the last two years bringing it to completion and I was constantly motivated by the goal of a screening at the CAF. The first year, I was a student in the short film curriculum at AnimationMentor. The next year, I had landed my position as staff animator at DreamWorks Animation and had dedicated my nights and weekends to completing the remaining work on the project. As exciting as it was to learn about my acceptance to the festival, it was even more exciting to learn that in 2008 a new format was being introduced. This new format combined the festival with what was in previous years known as the Electronic Theater. The two showcases would be shown intertwined in high definition digital projection at Los Angeles’ Nokia Theater. (more…)

My last blog for Siggraph 2008

Dan Ochiva — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:43:36 +0000

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…)

BlogLive @ Siggraph 2008 Podcast: John Knoll

Jessaca Gutierrez — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:51:05 +0000

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.

Dell’s future on the road

Dan Ochiva — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:22:35 +0000

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…)

A New World

Michael Goldman — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:46:55 +0000

I’m sitting in the Electronic Theater with my old pal Dan Ochiva blogging on my iPhone. I mention this only to indicate how trippy it is to realize how fundamentally the world has changed with the technology revolution that entertains us and let’s us communicate in new ways. The festival BTW is amazing … Glad I made it over here…

MG

GPU throwdown

Dan Ochiva — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 23:59:11 +0000

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…)

Simple 3D

Michael Goldman — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:44:05 +0000

The guys at Reallusion gave me a look at iClone3 a little while ago, as well as their philosophy that there is a market for “simple 3D” work and a merging of the ergonomics that video gamers are used to with the requirements and mindset that animators have. They call iClone3 an affordable and “complete 3D movie machine with real-time animation and actor creation tools for rendering movies with ultimate detail.” The software has a library of characters, bodies, limbs, faces, expressions, sets, and so forth, and is designed for ease of import of elements from places like the Google’s 3D Warehouse, as well as other software packages. Users can animate out of a library of movements, or do basic keyframe work, as well. (more…)

Traveling at Bunkspeed

Michael Goldman — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:29:04 +0000

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. (more…)

Festival Awards Ceremony Preview

Eric Melin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:25:33 +0000

The Nokia Theater hosts the Siggraph Computer Animation Festival’s awards ceremony today at 3:45, when the winners of the Audience Award, the Student Prize, the Jury Award, and the Best of Show award will be announced. I’ve covered many of the films up for these awards in previous blogs. See France dominates Computer Animation Festival and Commercials and Promo Spots are Shorts Too for details and links to some of the actual films themselves.

I’ll take this chance to spotlight some of the nominees I haven’t covered. Carbon Footprint is a time-lapse movie depicting 50 years in the life of a discarded aluminum can and is enough to make you vocal the next time you see some jackass throw something away on the street. It comes from the U.K.-based Jellyfish Pictures, and despite its very short running time, is a strong contender for Best of Show. (more…)