Chris Landreth's The Spine

Naturally Autodesk had some big announcements, including 2010 versions of Maya, MotionBuilder and Mudbox and along with new suites for digital entertainment creation and new education initiatives.

Maya 2010 has all the features of Maya Unlimited 2009 and Maya Complete 2009, including the Maya Nucleus Unified Simulation Framework, Maya nCloth, Maya nParticles, Maya Fluid Effects, Maya Hair, and Maya Fur.

Fjorg gets saucy!

Day 2 of the animation competition kicked off at 9am with a loud drumbeat and Afro Brazilian performers. The sound drew a large crowd in to watch the performances. The animation teams had worked through the night on their films so the very lively dancers lent some much needed energy to the competitors.

SIGGRAPH 09 Winner French Roast

Monday nights' Evening Theater began with the introduction of host Miles Perkins, senior staff at Industrial Light and Magic. He kicked off the award ceremony by paving the way for Scott Farrar, visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic. Scott presented the awards for SIGGRAPH's 2009 animation festivals. Out of 770 submissions the following were selected for three categories.

Day 1 and the contestants are already tired.

SIGGRAPH 2009 Fjorg! competition started at 9am Monday, August 3 in New Orleans. In it’s third year, the event attracted many talented animators both students and professionals.

The competition, created by Patricia Beckmann as an Iron Animator event challenges the competitors to create a short film (15-45 seconds) from concept to finish in the short time span of thirty-two hours. To make the task more demanding, distractions are scheduled throughout the day to entice them away from the film making process.

Half-Blood Prince's fire sim isn't the the only talk of the town at SIGGRAPH.

The exhibition opened today and, as expected, the show is small but quaint -- similar to San Antonio a few years back. Nothing wrong with that: it's manageable and in keeping with the New Orleans flavor. While the number of exhibitors is smaller than usual, it's a nice mix. You can traverse the floor in about half-an-hour. And there are plenty of students flocking the job fair, which is where most of the action is -- and rightly so, considering the job market. In fact, a few of the large studios such as Lucasfilm and Sony Pictures Imageworks, opted to have a presence solely at the job fair.

SIGGRAPH winner - Wojciech Matusik

Well, there’s been a lot of anticipation and curiosity about SIGGRAPH returning to New Orleans (or Nola), not only since this marks the first major conference since Katrina but also because of the severity of the downturn. Yes, attendance may be sparse, but, you know what? A light turnout is in keeping with the quaint vibe here. And, despite the predictable heat and humidity, it’s not as bad as I remember growing up in nearby Ocean Springs, Mississippi (near Biloxi) back in the early '70s. And this new Convention Center (though very long) is beautiful, clean and easy to navigate -- so far.