Other Events

Exhibition Floor

The Exhibition Floor at Siggraph as usual was a frenetic display that included all the top vendors. There were a total of 235 exhibits this year, an increase of 12% from the previous year. Joe Marks, the conference chair, commented that technology seems to go through highs and lows and that this increase seems to mark the beginning of a dynamic growth period.

Most of the larger booths were filled with the software tool companies including Softimage, Autodesk, Pixelogic, etc. Hardware systems including AMD, Nvidia, and Intel were also a strong presence. Other key booths included a number of schools including the Art Institutes, Savannah College of Art and Design, and Ringling College; and a number of studios including Pixar, Blue Sky, Rhythm and Hues, Digital Domain, Sony, Disney, etc.

The recruiting team for EA games invited all attendees that passed by their booth to their hosted room where they threw out games and t-shirts to a wild crowd before selecting a grand prize winner to receive a cool EA backpack filled with a game console and several accompanying games.

Also of note were several new motion capture companies that designed system around the new inertia sensor that enabled these expensive systems to be built for a fraction of the cost without the expensive gear.

Job Fair

The Job Fair was located in a separate room from the exhibition and was organized and run by CreativeHeads. The fair included several key studios and game recruiters including Vivendi, EA, Animal Logic, Blizzard, CafeFX, Insomniac, Microsoft, Intel, Radical, Red 5, Sega Studios, Sony, Disney and many others. Most were accepting resumes and demo reels and several were scheduling interviews throughout the week.

Guerilla Studio

The Guerilla Studio venue provides attendees with a chance to go hands-on. With donated software and hardware coupled with several experienced tutors, attendees can spend time creating art. The atmosphere is friendly and inviting and even included several 3D printers to try out.

Also new this year were 6 artist-in-residence tutors that were invited to live in the Guerilla Studio during the show. 3 of these artists were new to digital technology and the experiment was to see how their traditional skills translated to the new media.

Art Gallery

The theme for this year’s Art Gallery display was “global eyes.” The exhibit included submitted works as well as several curated works from well-known popular artists. Many of the artists in developing countries were represented.

Special Sessions

Several special sessions were held at Siggraph where some of the best visual effects for the year were explained by the experts. Special sessions were available for Happy Feet, Shrek 3, Transformers and Spiderman 3.

I was able to attend the Spiderman 3 special session presented by Spencer Cook, Ken Han, and Peter Knoffs. Spiderman 3 included 900 visual effects shots, but many of these shots were quite advanced shots when compared to the previous two Spiderman movies. The director, Sam Raimi, believed that you should shoot as much as possible and use it when you can. The availability of high-speed winches made a lot of shots possible that weren’t possible before.

Some of the tricks used on this film were to use where possible face replacement. By scanning and texturing CG faces, the actual filmed faces could be replaced with its CG duplicate if the expression or look of the character wasn’t what the director wanted. This was also used to change costumes such as the design of Spidey’s black suit, which changed late in the production. Another place this was used was to replace limbs to create smooth effects as the characters moved about.

The environments were another challenge tackled by the VFX team including the airborne battle between Spiderman and Harry, which took place in the “world’s longest alley.”

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