Siggraph

Robert Baker product marketing manager commercial notebooks is here with HP’s new line of Elitebook mobile workstatsions–you might remember the splashy Elite brand launch in Berlin earlier this year. For me, the design does live up to the Elite marketing, but I have very pragmatic, mid-century-modern tastes. The brushed/anodized aluminum aircrafty-design feel that HP has pursued appeals to me, as do little touches like keypad coatings that prevent shiny spots. I like the two-pin locking system, because there’s something classy and solid about not having the cover wiggle around when you close your laptop.

Baker wants me to say that the design comes with “the tangible asset of durability” and supports that statement with a few additional features. So, I’m willing to share his assertion on the chance that my IT department is reading this post. They don’t decide based on my design tastes, but they understand durability, especially after years of watching how we beat the crap out of our laptops. more…

Suddenly it seems there’s a graphics card horserace again: At the show, ATI jumped back into the race with Nvidia, announcing two strong contenders in its pro line of graphics cards (Radeon is the consumer/gamer card line), the ATI FirePro V5700 and ATI FirePro V3700.

Also new: a re-branded name, from FireGL—the name kept from the purchase by ATI of the pro card line from a German graphics card manufacturer in 2001—to ATI FirePro.

For quite some time, ATI had made graphics cards that other manufacturers could take aim at as the best of the bunch. Most card makers dropped off though in the tough economics of that market, leaving Nvidia and ATI to challenge and leapfrog each other throughout the late 1990s and into the new millennium. Things got a little shaky after AMD’s purchase of ATI in 2006, however, with AMD’s troubles threatening to pull ATI down. more…

Frantic Films Software, the R&D arm of award-winning visual effects studio Frantic Films VFX and a division of Prime Focus Group, announced that its high-volume point-based particle renderer Krakatoa was used by The Syndicate throughout director James Frost’s groundbreaking “House of Cards” music video for the band Radiohead. Read on at The Briefing Room

More Siggraph 2008 news from The Briefing Room

I have to wait at the Siggraph Cine-tal booth while some guys from Tippett drill president Rob Carroll about the Cinespace software, etc. Once his real job is done, Carroll turns to me with one of the simpler high level messages you’ll hear at this year’s Siggraph (more than a monitor company).

The Siggraph news for Cine-tal is the acqusition of Cinespace and the integration of the respected Cinespace color-management system with the popular Cine-tal hardware (integrated displays, display processing engines). more…

Siggraph 2008 covers a wide spectrum of educational topics concerning animation, so it’s no surprise that the conference isn’t always looking into the future if there’s something important to glean from the past. The storied history of classic animated movies from the Walt Disney Animation Studio still holds so much for the animators of today to learn from. This morning’s panel “A Tribute to the Life and Work of Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston” featured seven top animators of today sharing memories and discussing why these two of Disney’s famed “Nine Old Men” continue to serve as inspiration. more…

Duiker Research, creator of the Color Symmetry plug-in suite, announced Color Symmetry 2.0. Version 2.0 encompasses new capabilities that make it possible to create and emulate production looks, accurately view color and correctly exchange color data across a variety of film- and emerging all-digital production pipelines in motion pictures, television, commercials and games. Read on at The Briefing Room

More Siggraph 2008 news from The Briefing Room

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…

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…

Far from the Siggraph show floor, on the third floor of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, I saw the best 3D display demo I’ve encountered to date from a company out of Paris called Alioscopy. What particularly intrigued me about what they showed me was the fact that the technology has great crossover potential for all sorts of markets as the professional and consumer 3D revolutions march onward. In fact, and although I didn’t ask, this is probably one reason why Alioscopy is demonstrating its technology away from the show floor—the Siggraph market probably is far from the biggest potential market for Alioscopy’s technology. more…

Tomorrow there will be a panel worth getting up early for. At 8:30, room 408 AB at Siggraph, you’ll find that Jeff Lander, Steve Sullivan, Martin Walker, Lyle Hall, and Steve Theodore will already be awake and bringing their combined wisdom to the subject of rapidly evolving pipelines for games production. For those who don’t know these guys, here’s the bio lineup.

-Jeff Lander: Technical Director at Electronic Arts. Runs his own R&D company of his own (Darwin 3D); journalist for Game Developer Magazine.

-Steve Sullivan: Director of R&D at Lucasfilm and two-time Sci-Tech Oscar winner. Charged with unifying ILM film technologies and LucasArts game technologies.

-Martin Walker: CTO of Canada’s A2M. Big game developer

-Lyle Hall: VP and Executive Producer of THQ; oversees THQ subsidiary Heavy Iron Studios. Exec producer on The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Wall.E.

-Steve Theodore: Technical Art Director at Bungie Studios where he designs the content tools for the Halo engine.

If you’re running late, it goes to 10:15.

And here’s the panel description and discussion points c/o the organizer. more…