With the announcement of Maya 7, all things Maya were hot at the event.

In terms of rendering, Pixar’s RenderMan for Maya drew crowds for its seamless integration into the software’s unified rendering interface. And so did NVIDIA’s Gelato 2.0, which offers volumetric shadows for hair and smoke, simultaneous rendering of stereo images, shader metadata, physical units in shaders, among other new features. It also boasts Sorbetto, a new interactive tool that significantly accelerates realistic lighting and relighting capabilities.

SplutterFish not only offered Brazil 1.2 for 3ds Max, which has been adopted at ILM, The Orphanage, Pixar, Blizzard and Blur Studio for large data sets, but also gave a sneak peek at v. 2.0 coming this fall, which boasts even larger data sets, 3D motion blur, global illumination and more.

Representing the thriving New Zealand community, Stephen Regelous discussed Massive Jet, the new streamlined version of his Oscar-winning Massive program: high quality, modular, final rendering AI crowd simulation “without all the brains.” However, the newest version 2.0 of Massive is being used on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and King Kong. For Narnia, Massive is addressing greater rigid body dynamics and more physical and reactive characters. And for Kong, Massive is helping to create large crowds in New York City, including faces, midgets and cars.

Meanwhile, over at Box Rocket Animation, co-founded by Lord of the Rings vets Steven Upstill, Bay Raitt (who works out of Seattle) and others, they are trying to free artists from the computer with their own distinctively faster and cheaper system. They use “state-of-the-art graphics hardware and software technology to craft high quality computer animated films, with a unique visual style: the bold look of a modern graphic novel. The studio’s…methods also reduce the cost of production to a fraction of the Hollywood norm, making Box Rocket films — from minutes-long shorts to low-cost features — suitable for new channels of distribution like cell phones, portable games consoles and other non-standard outlets.

“With its low-cost and vibrant look, Box Rocket engages in production partnerships [such as Valve, makers of the Half-Life computer game franchise] to acquire, develop and produce hard-hitting material aimed at older teens and young adults — high-impact, mature ‘animated comic books’; tales of horror, action and adventure that blast far away from the family audience…extreme entertainment for the 21st century.”

Added Upstill: “How can we constrain the process so work happens with shorter feedback, hitting that sweet spot between high-end graphics and gaming graphics?”

Bill Desowitz is editor of VFXWorld.