SIGGRAPH 2007 saw 24,000 people arrive in San Diego to see the latest in computer graphics. Image courtesy of SIGGRAPH

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The good news is that the recently concluded SIGGRAPH 2007 saw a slight rise in attendance in San Diego from last year's conference in Boston: 24,000 vs. nearly 20,000, with a slight rise in exhibitors as well. Though still not nearly the draw that SIGGRAPH gets in L.A. where it returns next year, the vibe was again intimate enough to remind people of the good old days. One exhibitor even remarked that there were enough artists among the attendees that made it worthwhile for business.

Still, there were some grumblings about SIGGRAPH losing the power of its brand with all the competition from NAB, GDC and other conferences. Plus not enough big product launches -- besides Autodesk making its usual splash by introducing new versions of Maya, Max and MotionBuilder, and "Massive for the Masses" with version 3.0 for Windows and offering dynamic hair and fur and lanes. And the conspicuous lack of attendance from Europe and the Pacific Rim. Well, rest assured that the powers that be are already doing what they can to improve SIGGRAPH. In fact, they've just announced a host of upgrades and improvements that will impact submission deadlines and enhance overall attendee satisfaction, including "a content selection process that affords focus on timely industry themes rather than strictly on presentation type."

The Overview
So what was new at SIGGRAPH 2007? Well, the biggest news, of course, was Autodesk's acquisition of Mudbox 3D from Skymatter, filling a void with a sculpting tool that will fit right in with Maya and Max. Not only will Mudbox offer more integrated workflows in entertainment but also in the automotive and industrial design sectors as well. According to Skymatter's Tibor Madjar, who now joins the Autodesk Media & Ent. division along with co-founders Andrew Camenisch and Dave Cardwell, they can now "concentrate more on developing the tools instead of running the company." Plus they will be able to take advantage of Autodesk's IP and programmers. As for XSI users, who were concerned about the acquisition, Madjar said he assured them that they would not be abandoned.

Speaking of Softimage, they unveiled XSI 6.5, with some new production efficiency and specific workflow enhancements, and Face Robot 1.8, which has been enhanced for game development pipelines, including a new shape rig export system, among other things.

Not surprisingly, performance capture arguably had the largest presence at SIGGRAPH 2007. There were a host of new players, including Image Metrics, which prides itself on markerless, makeupless technology capturing "the minute details in each pixel of a particular individual's performance, allowing the actor's personality to shine through the digital character." There was also Xsens Technologies' "Moven," which captures "human motion in realtime with unprecedented life-like fluidity and ease-of-use." And Organic Motion launched "the first turnkey markerless motion capture system."

Of course, Vicon was back in full force with Blade, which "provides a single unified toolset that supports the growing demands of full performance capture, on-set visualization and makes capturing and processing motion capture data for the 3D animation pipeline simpler and more direct."

Mova was also back with its Contour Reality Capture System along with Gentle Giant Studios, unveiling a new 3D Zoetrope that uses persistence of motion to bring to life a series of 3D models of an actor's face captured live.

Motion capture was a hot topic at the show as displayed by live floor presentations of various mocap technology. Image courtesy of SIGGRAPH

After the success of ILM's Imocap system on the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and its ongoing development of a realtime facial capture system, several other prominent studios are developing their own proprietary systems for CG humans as well. However, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, so each system offers its own way of solving particular challenges.

Meanwhile, "new ideas, new solutions" was the rallying cry of Side Effects' president/founder Kim Davidson, who touted the recent launch of Houdini 9, with its redesigned UI and lower price point: "pipeline in a box." Davidson said they are now targeting boutiques without programming teams and that "users don't perceive pain as much anymore."

Luxology's upcoming modo 301 later this summer includes "comprehensive improvements to modeling, painting and rendering and the addition of two new core capabilities: sculpting and item animation." Coupled with the launch of Luxology TV, a new online hub that allows the 3D community to exchange and view high-resolution video clips on Luxology's website, the company is certainly trying to expand its reach.

On the hardware side, AMD offered five new ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators (FireGL V8650, FireGL V8600, FireGL V7600, FireGL V5600 and FireGL V3600) with more next-gen GPU product to come from AMD. NVIDIA introduced improved Gelato, "capable of re-lighting 60 frames of a complex scene in 60 seconds," as well as the Quadro Plex Visual Computing System (VCS) Model S4, a graphics server featuring a record number of GPUs in a standard 1U server form factor. Mental images showed off the mental mill Artist Edition breakthrough for hardware shaders, enabling artists "to develop, test and maintain shaders through an intuitive graphical user interface with realtime visual feedback -- without the need for programming skills."