SIGGRAPH 2008 showed less glitz and emphasized organizational precision and the freeing up the artistic process. All images courtesy of SIGGRAPH.

SIGGRAPH 2008 kicked off last week in L.A. with an insightful address by Ed Catmull about "Managing the Creative Environment." The Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios president -- truly the Yoda of the CG industry -- posed a question about which is more important: Good people or good ideas? He then proceeded to explain why the former is more important by recounting the ups and downs throughout the history of Pixar and what he's learned about managing people as well as technology and storytelling. It's a wise story that we could all benefit from. Catmull and his Pixar colleagues have built an extraordinary culture and community that is healthy and vibrant. The idea is not to let a company "go off the rails." Catmull believes organizations are inherently unstable. Now that he's taken over Disney as well, he's still learning and still introspective. But you still need to establish a set of principles and challenge the status quo, and build the capacity to recover from failure. The real secret: "Be honest."

Well, as I made my way through SIGGRAPH last week, taking meetings, checking out the latest tools throughout the exhibition hall, viewing some of the demos, conducting interviews and even moderating a Speed Racer panel as part of the expanded Computer Animation Festival, I couldn't stop thinking about Catmull's address and how it pertains to the industry as a whole. Just judging by the smaller size (by L.A. standards), 28,000 vs. 24,000 in San Diego last year, you can sense that the industry is going through a leaner and meaner phase -- less glitz and more attention to organizational precision and freeing up the artistic process. And that's exactly what the message was over and over again, whether it was from an industry heavyweight or a new startup. I got such a kick out of running into Massive's Stephen Regelous in the hall and listening to him excitedly describe how WALL•E used his industry-leading, AI-based animation solution in such creative ways for the crowds of robots aboard The Axiom.

Yes, there were plenty of exciting new developments, including many from Autodesk, not surprisingly, such as 2009 editions of Maya, MotionBuilder and Mudbox; Softimage's XSI 7 with new ICE technology; mental ray 3.7; NVIDIA's new CUDA-laden Quadro Plex visual computing systems along with the launch of Quadro FX mobile GPUs; HP's introduction of a new mobile workstation, the EliteBook 8730w, with a DreamColor display option; Massive 3.5; and MAXON's fully-loaded CINEMA 4D R11. And there were many others, of course, that we've already noted on VFXWorld. However, the overarching theme again at this year's SIGGRAPH was maximizing productivity, optimizing workflows and providing new creative possibilities.

And at Autodesk, they continue to pave the way in this regard, in addition to taking the lead in providing full stereoscopic production solutions in their 2009 offerings of Maya (where you can view 3-D in the viewport), Toxik (where you can work with left and right eye layers) and Lustre (where you can do stereo color grading).

"CG is the real drive for 3-D," asserted Autodesk's Maurice Patel. "[What is required] is more flexibility and control. It's a workflow problem: making the right decisions along the way. It's akin to color management. We need applications through the pipeline that speak a common language. There are no standards. Stereo is an integral part of the story. We are trying to make that easier. The stereo roadmap is important to see where it's going."

Ed Catmull.

Rob Engle, who is the 3-D guru at Sony Pictures Imageworks, and who organized the SIGGRAPH panels devoted to the topic, admitted that 3-D viewport functionality in Maya 2009 is an outgrowth of what they did on Beowulf with Disney-supported analglyph display. "How do you bring 3-D into the production mindset? It's a transformative technology. And you can't think in 2-D."

Engle said he experienced stimulating dinner conversation with several of his colleagues from DreamWorks, Pixar, Blue Sky and Imagemovers. "We all recognize that for us to be successful there has to be good experiences." We trade ideas. We believe it is a revolutionary experience. Know your audience, but we don't want to give 3-D a bad name. It's representational of a real world so far, but there is so much more to explore."

Meanwhile, Imageworks is evolving and expanding in India and New Mexico, with Bob Osher as the new head of Sony Digital. But Imageworks President Tim Sarnoff stressed that sharing the workload with New Mexico and India will allow for a much more open and robust pipeline, and that Autodesk is helping in this regard. Plus, the recently announced partnership between Sony's IPAX education program with Animation Mentor should help launch an invaluable online mentorship. Sony's Barry Weiss (the IPAX chair) said it's the first give-back from IPAX. For example, "students at the University of New Mexico talking to MIT talking to Animation Mentor."

Animation Mentor Co-Founder Bobby Beck added that it was quite an endorsement for Sony to embrace their model. "We can teach a variety of disciplines [including story and vfx]. It's a test platform mentorship program with Sony employees to pair them up with our platform."

And while the "Emily" CG demo was wowing visitors at the Image Metrics booth, the company divulged that it has launched a self-service beta program with space for six key vfx studios (to be named later). The studios will provide the videos and Image Metrics will supply the technical/analytical part. This way the studios don't have to supply their IP for animation retargeting. Image Metrics then provides animation curve data that plugs into Maya. This will help Image Metrics shape its markerless facial animation solutions before rolling it out commercially.