Expo

One of the most common questions asked of me on the expo floor: "What's the most exciting thing you've seen?" My answer: "Uhhh..."

That isn't to say there was nothing exciting at the expo, but nothing in particular stood out to me. I didn't see anything that I'd consider revolutionary, which isn't necessarily bad. What I saw were incremental improvements almost everywhere. Tools are getting better, hardware is getting faster and more affordable, education is maturing, and there is considerable diversity in the products being offered. Everyone I talked to said that they feel like the industry as a whole is stronger than it was a year ago, and everyone has a positive outlook for the future.

As usual, I had some in-depth meetings with a number of companies presenting at the expo.

discreet

Prior to the show, discreet announced the launch of 3ds max 7, so as you'd expect they were promoting it heavily on the expo floor. I'll let you read about it on your own, if you're interested, but two things were particularly noteworthy.

The first is that max will include native support for M3G, otherwise known as JSR184. For those unfamiliar, M3G is a Java-based gaming API for cell phones and other mobile devices which is fairly new but already widely supported. The integrated support in max will allow mobile game developers to be able to easily preview their work.

The second is that ATI's Ashli shading technology will be integrated into max as well. If you're not familiar with Ashli, check it out.

MAXON

We met with MAXON back during GDC, where they were promoting BodyPaint3D, which we should be reviewing here soon. At SIGGRAPH, they launched Release 9 of Cinema 4D. MAXON often gets overlooked by game developers, but they have a solid and powerful product line that definitely deserves consideration. Find out more about BodyPaint3D and Cinema 4D at their website.

Softimage

Softimage has had a great year, with the launch of XSI 4 and XSI EXP - which will be included with Half-life 2. Their big announcement at SIGGRAPH was what they are calling "3-Democracy", which is essentially a plan to make professional grade 3D tools available for everyone. They're now offering a version of XSI 4 called Foundation for $495. They are also offering a version called Essentials for $1995, and Advanced for $6995.

Not being an artist, it's not clear to me how Foundation compares to Essentials and Advanced, to similarly priced products from other vendors, or to other high end packages. They do have an FAQ on their website with more details that I'd recommend checking out. It's definitely encouraging to see one of the high-end packages being offered at low-end prices.

Immersion

Immersion was at the expo showing several new haptic and design products. Immersion is probably best-known to gamers and game developers for the haptic technology they provide to input device manufacturers.

The product on display that will be of most interest to game developers is a wireless version of their CyberGlove® system, which is now supported in Kaydara's MOCAP. Priced at around $20K for the glove and the associated plugin, it's not cheap, but it is considerably more affordable than other mocap solutions.

3Dlabs

3Dlabs had a strong presence at the expo, showing off their new Wildcat Realizm line of professional graphics accelerators. They showed these cards effortlessly handling huge and/or complex scenes in max, Maya, XSI, and Lightwave. Particularly impressive is the high end Realizm 800, which is x16 PCI Express based, comes with 640 MB GDDR3, dual VPUs and a VSU (vertex/scalability unit), support for OpenGL 1.5 with OpenGL Shading Language (with full 2.0 support coming soon), and support for DirectX 9 with VS 2.0 and PS 3.0. Okay, it retails at $2800, but what do you expect from a professional card? In any case, I'd really love to see these guys take a crack at the consumer market.

Conclusion

I'm again impressed with what SIGGRAPH has to offer. The material covered in the presentations is generally cutting edge, and there is a substantial amount of information directly applicable to game development. I've been to a lot of conferences, and it's safe to say that SIGGRAPH offers the best bang for your buck, especially for graphics programmers.

When attending, I'd recommend doing what I did: Spend some time in advance reading through the program and finding the presentations that interest you. In addition to the courses and papers, don't neglect the sketches - they provided some of the most interesting ideas I saw this year.

I'm looking forward to going again next year (despite it being hosted at LACC again).