Though appearing smaller, SIGGRAPH actually drew a larger crowd. All images courtesy of SIGGRAPH.

While there were few technological leaps on display at SIGGRAPH 2005 (though Boxx’s 4-way dual-core Opteron prototype workstation was certainly touted along with SOFTIMAGE| Face Robot) we seem to be in an incremental period of change. Now that we can do just about anything we want with CGI, it’s a matter of processing and managing all of those huge digital assets faster, cheaper and more efficiently. In other words, freeing the artists to work more creativity and productively. That was the theme of SIGGRAPH 2005, which appeared lighter in attendance yet reportedly drew more than 29,000 participants, up 1,000 from last year.

In a way, George Lucas set the tone in his keynote Q&A with Bruce Carse: “Anybody who works in the arts eventually faces running into that technological ceiling, whether you’re doing cave paintings on a wall and you want to add color — or you’re painting the Sistine Chapel... You’re constantly pushing that technological envelope. Art is technology...You need to know how to use technology... I’m not afraid of risks as long as I think I can win. The problem with the leading edge of technology is the one thing you can be sure of is you’re never going to win.” The first guys out of the box — the ones who demonstrate their breakthroughs at SIGGRAPH — aren’t always the ones with solutions that are ready for the real world.”

Lucas also referred to how he is moving away from the “assembly line process” with his new Zeno system at ILM in terms of getting artists to become less specialized and more collaborative with better, realtime tools, including a simple previs system that is going to change the way directors make movies.

No studio was more aggressive than Disney in touting its conversion to 3D animation and in recruiting artists to become part of the newly invigorated Walt Disney Feature Animation division, including the Circle 7 unit currently developing Pixar sequels. Not only was there a trailer for Chicken Little (along with rigging demo on the computer) but also plenty of concept art from American Dog, A Day with Wilbur Robinson (both of which had some clips too), Rapunzel Unbraided and Toy Story 3. Even Glen Keane, the famed animator (Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin) was on hand during the special “Disney Legacy” session to discuss his conversion to 3D animation as director of Rapunzel Unbraided and how Disney is trying to artistically bridge the gap between 2D and 3D with its latest fairy tale adaptation.

And there was a lot of evidence on display of changes in hardware and software to empower artists and simplify the use of technology. Touting 24% overall growth last year in 3D software, much higher than the 8% average, Alias introduced Maya 7 and MotionBuilder 7, which include new and improved connections between each other and other tools. Additionally, Maya 7 offers faster animated characters, new polygonal modeling and mapping tools, re-architected Render Layers, new toon shader, fluid, hair and cloth effects.

MotionBuilder 7, meanwhile, offers new and enhanced character animation functionality, productivity enhancing tools and improved pipeline interoperability between 3D content creation apps.

Adhering to SIGGRAPH tradition, Autodeskesk launched its very impressive 3ds Max 8, with improved character animation (including Biped controls), skin, modeling, unwrap, rendering, asset management (Vault), new Maxscript debugger and other architectural features.

Not to be outdone, Avid demoed SOFTIMAGE|XSI 5.0 along with Face Robot. XSI 5.0 offers Ultimapper, a map generation tool for producing movie-quality maps in a few clicks; and Gator, a property transfer system for merging fully textured and animated 3D models. Plus there are a host of other advanced character tools and Maya migration features for ease of use those who wish to transition to XSI.