Siggraph 2010: Los Angeles
Back from Siggraph in Los Angeles! It was a great trip even though Siggraph wasn’t the same as previous years especially being in Los Angeles. The expo seemed to be a fraction of the size of what the Expo use to be. I’m guessing probably a quarter of the normal expo floor. It was quite disappointing but mostly due to the lack of schwag which had become a Siggraph tradition to get all the schwag you could!
Off the top of my head, some notable no shows to this years conference Expo are:
- DreamWorks Animation
- Digital Domain
- Digital Tutors
- The Gnomon School (Present at the Job Fair)
- Hewlett Packard
- Epson
- Adobe
Everyone had smaller booths this year with the exception to perhaps the NVIDIA booth. They had one for their new technology they were showing off and another they used for their Sketch Competition.
A cool appearance though at this years expo was Shapeways. Shapeways is a service that allows modelers to upload their 3d models to print and then have it shipped to them! The models are printed on (I believe) a ZCorp machine which allows them to rapidly print models according to their volume. They even have added new materials to their list of offerings! You can now get your models gold plated, in stainless steel and more! Pretty sweet if you ask me! I got to touch and feel their new products which are very sturdy and solid. Of course the original 3d print versus the gold plated print has a significant weight difference. The products are very nice and at a fraction of the cost of most printing today.
The Shapeways service also acts as a marketplace for artists to have their own shops so that people can buy their creations and have it printed/shipped to them! The creativity doesn’t even stop at models alone, you can make functional puzzles, things with moving parts, jewelry, the sky’s the limit! Shapeways is an excellent way for people to test out their creative ideas and is an outlet for people who always wanted to try to create functional items or prototypes.
One interesting application that is making a breakthrough in new and innovative technology is 3d Coat.
I was thoroughly impressed by the new Auto Retopology features that the program contained. This feature alone is worth the price of the program itself I think! It can speed up workflow tremendously allowing the artist to concentrate fully on sculpting the details.
After mentioning 3d Coat, I can’t forget the Pixologic booth. Their booth can never be big enough for everyone to sit at! That’s the truth. With ZBrush 4.0 nearing it’s long awaited release, there’s just too many cool things coming our way! Shadow Box, new brushes, it’s going to be pure awesomeness on 8/9/2010!
Aside from what I’ve mentioned, there wasn’t really anything that spectacular going on. Autodesk didn’t have their huge user group meeting, going on 2 Siggraph’s without one now? I don’t know, since I wasn’t able to attend Siggraph 2009. But I did get my 3ds Max 20 year anniversary t-shirt! The booth however was less than interesting this year so I didn’t spend very much time there.
Of course, the Electronic Theatre was awesome as always. A lot of cool work to be seen as well as awesome dedication to the art of CG and VFX. It was great to see such great work put together by individuals as well as companies big and small.
The Studio had some cool things going on as well as a dedicated Wacom area which was awesome to sit down at and just ‘doodle’. Along with the rest of the innovative and creative things going on such as Robotics, Mocap, and other things, the 3d Printing was a huge attraction. We could model our own models and then have them printed on different 3d printing machines to take as a souvenir.
Aside from the expo floor disappointment, the sessions weren’t all that great themselves. Probably since a lot of the good ones overlapped other things. So we ended up missing a lot or going to ones that ended up to be completely boring. So I can’t really report on any Papers or Sessions due to lack of interest. Although there was an interesting talk about a search application for 3d models that involved a Google like search but used with an interface that you could sketch your model or drawing in order to find the model. They called it Sketch-based 3D shape retrieval. As with all technical papers though, this one could’ve ended in the first 15 minutes and been a great presentation but as it dragged on it became completely boring. If you’re going to present at Siggraph, practice your presentation in front of people before hand and then get rid of anything you don’t need to say to keep the talk short and informative. You really lose people when you make things too long, monotonous and boring.
I’ll end this post with a yeah…it could’ve and should have been a bad ass Siggraph but I hope it’s just because the economy is trying to rebound. I look forward to next years Siggraph 2011 in Vancouver Canada and hope that it will be an awesome event to attend. Especially with Pixar Canada now open there as well as other studios who have new locations there. Not to forget, the trip was a great success in meeting new people and having a fun time around a town. Which in essence, is what Siggraph is all about. Making connections and having a great time.
Oh yeah, and this years limited edition Renderman Walking Teapot from Pixar wasn’t the greatest looking design. Yet, it’s tradition to get your Walking Teapot when you go to Siggraph!
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