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SIGGRAPH 2004 Highlights
by Robin Rowe
8/20/2004

For everyone in animation or visual effects, SIGGRAPH is the big convention of the year. If you have the full conference pass to SIGGRAPH it is impossible not feel overwhelmed. Technical directors present how they created animation or effects for blockbuster movies, university professors present R&D that will become studio technology in a couple years, and vendors demonstrate on the show floor the technology available this year. All happening simultaneously.

At the NAB convention in April (the biggest television conference of the year) Apple stunned everyone -- including most of its own employees -- with the unexpected announcement of Motion. Four months later at SIGGRAPH Apple announced Motion is shipping (for $299). Apple Final Cut Pro has taken market away from Adobe Premiere. Everyone is wondering, is Motion an Adobe After Effects killer?

Motion is very different from After Effects in workflow and technology. "With Motion you get the feeling you're using a dedicated system, like on Quantel or Discreet", says Apple pro applications director Richard Kerris. The responsiveness of Motion is astounding. "Rendering is done on the GPU," notes Apple engineer Richard Salvador. "The core of motion is a GPU compositor." Motion includes roto tools, HSV color correction on the GPU, line art, and impressive text and particle-based effects - with key-frames and behaviors (that is, simulations of natural forces). Motion includes a simple cuts-only edit timeline or works well with Final Cut Pro. With no fixed limit for resolution or number of layers, you can work in HD -- but limited to 8-bit color depth. If not After Effects (which is 16-bit), look for Motion to be a Chyron killer

Wondertouch Particle Illusion has been used for special effects on television such STAR TREK ENTERPRISE and in films such as HELLBOY. "particleIllusion is real-time, not rendered like you would see in After Effects," says Aharon Rabinowitz, a graphics designer who teaches at Pratt Manhattan. "Performance is based on sprite images in OpenGL, not hardware shaders." Currently Windows only, wondertouch previewed particleIllusion 2 SE for Mac OS X at SIGGRAPH -- to be released in Q4 for $99. If particles is what you need, this is a less expensive alternative to running out to buy the top Macintosh G5 and graphics cards necessary to run Motion.

Discreet previewed 3ds max 7 at SIGGRAPH -- to ship in the fall for $3,495. Frantic Films used 3ds max animation software for pre-visualization of about 1,500 shots for CATWOMAN. Real-time compositing system Flint was released on Linux at SIGGRAPH, following the release earlier in the year of Discreet Smoke on Linux.

Maya's big announcement was the acquisition of Kaydara, previewing at SIGGRAPH their MotionBuilder 6 character animation software -- to be released in October. Maya also announced a new release of Maya PLE, the free student version of Maya 6. A great Macintosh tip from Peter Wiggens of Flick Pictures Ltd., "If you install the PLE version of MAYA from Alias, it will load the components into your system to enable the handling of IFF file formats." Then Apple Motion can open Maya and Shake files. For the first time on the Mac platform, Alias announced the release of Maya Unlimited, their high-end 3D tool ($6,999) that includes Maya Hair, Maya Fluid Effects, Maya Fur, Maya Cloth and Maya Live.

SketchUp is a simple-to-use 3D tool for Windows and Mac. "It's the 'anti-Maya'!", remarked E! producer Darren Jones. While Maya is an incredibly versatile tool, for small tasks it has been likened to flying a 747 to cross the street to get a ham sandwich. Available as a free eight-hour trial, because that's considered enough time to fully master the program ($495).

Avid announced an amazing price for SoftImage|XSI 4 Foundation -- $495, with a 30-day free trail available for download. SoftImage|XSI was used to create the flying vampire brides in VAN HELSING. Foundation includes extensive polygon modeling tools, advanced subdivision surface modeling, full cloth and particles, standard character rigs and a 2-cpu license for Mental Ray rendering. Also available, SOFTIMAGE|XSI Essentials ($1,995) and Advanced ($6,995).

Blender, although still limited to 8-bit, has become a surprisingly sophisticated 3D tool in the past year. Storyboard artist Anthony Zierhut used Blender for pre-production animatics on SPIDER-MAN 2. At the Blender birds-of-a-feather session at SIGGRAPH plans were formulated to enable 32-bit rendering in Blender, to work with the open source 32-bit paint program CinePaint (a project I lead) so Blender can read and write motion picture file formats such as OpenEXR. Blender and CinePaint are both free.

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