Register for SIGGRAPH 2009 by Friday and Save!

See, hear, and interact at SIGGRAPH 2009 with digital innovators, creative researchers, award-winning producers, provocative artists, energetic executives, and adventurous engineers. Join 20,000 of your industry peers at SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans, 3-7 August, for world-class technical presentations, creative exploration, and the industry’s largest marketplace of products and services: the SIGGRAPH Exhibition.

SIGGRAPH 2009 aims to satisfy all of your senses. Highlights include:

• Keynote Speakers: Steve Duenes, Graphics Director for The New York Times; Will Wright, famed videogame designer and creator of Spore^™ and The Sims series; and Randy Thom, pioneer in sound and two-time Academy Award^© winner
• Computer Animation Festival: The internationally renowned forum for presentation of the world's most innovative and stimulating computer-generated animated films, this year introducing two new focuses in Real-Time Rendering and Visual Music
• Emerging Technologies: Innovative technologies and applications highlighting a variety of research across the industry including alternative displays, robotics, input interfaces, game development, audio, haptics/VR, and experimental sensory experiences
• NEW! Games content: New programs focusing on the relationships among game design practices, technologies, and player experiences through the presentation of Game Papers, Talks, Panels, Courses and more
• Contests & Competitions: The return of FJORG!, the 32 hour international animation contest, and the introduction of the first annual GameJam!, a 24-hour videogame development competition
• Technical Papers: The premier global forum presenting groundbreaking research from today's leading international organizations
• SIGGRAPH Exhibition: Explore the products, systems, and ideas that are creating the next three generations of computer graphics and interactive techniques
• SIGGRAPH 2009+1 New Orleans Outreach: Attendees have the opportunity to give back to the community through a series of partnerships with local organizations; efforts will help educate local youth on enriching careers in technology and creative arts with the goal of strengthening the community by investing in this next generation.

Registration fees increase after Friday, 26 June. Register online today.

Microsoft Unveils Project Natal at E3

I'm not much of a gamer, but I do enjoy hacking my Homebrew Wii, messing with SPORE, tinkering with the Crysis Sandbox Editor, and I had a fleeting fetish with Bioshock ( I'm over that till Bioshock 2). I do however follow the game industry and I love to watch other people play. I love to see the limits of realtime being pushed, and the amazing imagery. You always get to see a great deal of this kind of innovation at E3.

There are always events that stand out in my mind whether at SIGGRAPH, CES or E3. This year there was, what I would have to consider, a pivotal moment in gaming. This was at the Microsoft press conference. They showed a future technology call Project Natal. It was stunning to see what MS has in store for users down the road. In an effort to combat the interactivity of the Wii remote, MS has gone several steps beyond the Wii with Project Natal. In essence PN turns a user's body into a remote. On the surface this seems really cheesy. Its been done before as far back as the Amiga. PN is lightyears different. PN has facial recognition, voice recognition, and 3d motion tracking of the entire body... for multiple persons no less! Your Xbox will recognize you over your other family members, you'll be able to recreate that cool computer interactivity in the movie "Minority Report", and bark voice commands at your Xbox.

Speaking of "Minority Report", Steven Spielberg was at the MS press conference touting project Natal... so you know there must be something to it right?





I am really oversimplifying the technology.


They showed a bunch of lame demos using the technology. The demos gave a glimpse into what was possible, but really it was a little dull and lackluster. There was one exception. The demo that truly proved the potential of PN was from Peter Molyneux, founder of Lionhead Studios. This video shows the potential for PN when in the hands of creative people vs programmers. That's not a slight to programmers it's just a Right/Left brain thing. In fact, the heart of Project Natal is in software. Check out this realtime demo below.








To put it in context, here are the rest of the E3 demos regarding Project Natal. This one is the coporate MS video type commercial for Project Natal.






This one will surely give Wii Fit fanatics a run for their money ... and cardio.





This last demo is cute... if your drunk and at a party, but it's no Photoshop.




Reading between the lines you won't see PN until 2010 sometime. Certainly not in 2009. Stay tuned...

Speaking of Pepe and Pepeland . . .

In the previous post I referenced "Pepe". I have come to the conclusion that you may not know to what I refer. Pepe was a test render by Daniel Martinez Lara using a secret BETA version of a renderer called The Arnold Global Illumination Renderer which was to be used in Project Messiah. I was amazed by the rendering, concept, and use of alternate means to fool the viewer into believing that it was all a completely real scene. It's not always about lighting. The use of sound, the handheld look, and the seemingly random auto-focus truly added to the piece. It was done in 3dMax circa 1999 (even more amazing). Check out Daniel Lara's site HERE.

Also, do yourself a favor and download and view "Pepe" HERE. I really thought it was brilliant and inspiring.

RandomControl releases fryrender RT/RC5

fryrender RT

I wrote about fryrender in Maya Plugin Power. Their realtime renderer is ready for a look. The video itself is very reminiscent of the way "Pepe" was done. The whole hand-held, auto-focus look really lends to the realism of animation. You can check out the whole RandomControl site here. I thought that their renderer was very comparable to Maxwell Render. This RC5 is a realtime renderer. Wow. We shall see.

In the mean time check out what they have to say...

fryrender RT is the first unbiased render engine with real-time visualization capabilities.

fryrender RT is an extended version of fryrender which provides the tools necessary to export your scene into a format that our real-time engine RC5 can navigate at interactive framerates.

We are aware that the wait for fryrender RT / RC5 has been long. Now that we are facing the final stage of development, we have decided to make the wait feel a bit shorter by using this frontpage to post content created with RC5 every now and then. This way, you will be able to see for yourself what fryrender RT and RC5 will be capable of.

First RC5 preview - 2009.05.20

To create the following preview we took a camera-animated scene made in fryrender using 3DStudio Max. We loaded the scene in fryrender RT and precomputed a .RC5 dataset. This dataset is a single file which includes the scene description (camera animation, geometry and materials) plus the Global Illumination information precomputed by fryrender RT. Then we loaded the .RC5 file in rc5player.exe in playback mode. When started in playback mode, RC5player plays the camera animation frame by frame, writing each image to the hard drive.

SIGGRAPH and SPORE ... Perfect Together.

Breaking News: Will Wright Selected as a SIGGRAPH 2009 Keynote Speaker

SIGGRAPH keynote speakers represent a variety of prominent industry luminaries and technology experts, who present on different aspects of the multi-dimensional computer graphics and interactive techniques industries. SIGGRAPH 2009 is proud to announce the selection of two of this year's keynote presenters:

Will Wright. Photo courtesy of Electronic Arts.

Famed video game designer Will Wright, creator of the popular Spore™ and The Sims series, was selected as part of the SIGGRAPH 2009 expanded focus to integrate gaming as part of the conference program.

Wright rose to prominence when he invented SimCity, the widely acclaimed, non-violent, open-ended simulation video game. Since its release 20 years ago, Wright has expanded his simulation realm with the introduction of The Sims series, and several other follow-ups that include, SimEarth: The Living Planet, and SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony. In all, the franchise has sold more than 58 million games and was the best selling PC game for five consecutive years.

In 2008, Wright unveiled his latest achievement: Spore™, an internet-based game that allows users to create a species of creatures and share their evolutions with other players interactively worldwide. The game garnered immediate praise including being named by Time Magazine as one of the "50 Best Inventions of 2008."

Export Spore to Maya, or your favorite 3D app ??

I love SPORE. I think it's a monumental acheivement in programming. After the SPORE Creature Creator was released last summer, and prior to the release of the full SPORE game, there were rumors that the package would include a Maya exporter. This never seemed to materialize.

Necessity being the mother of hacking as it were there are/have been attempts to export the SPORE models into other 3D apps. I have included a link to a tool Called SpView which will do just that. It requires a bit of hoop jumping but it will work. Check it out Here

It's SIGGRAPH time again !

Ahh Spring... when a young animators fancy turns to SIGGRAPH

Registration for SIGGRAPH 2009 is now open! There are several registration options available to help you customize your experience at SIGGRAPH in New Orleans.

Full Conference Access Pass: Includes admission to ALL conference programs and events, including the Exhibition, Computer Animation Festival, and Reception. Also includes the Full Conference DVD-ROM.

Full Conference One Day Pass: Admission to ALL conference programs and events for one day of SIGGRAPH 2009 and the Computer Animation Festival. Includes access to the Exhibition (Tuesday-Thursday) for the entire week.

Basic Conference Access Pass: Includes admission all days of the Exhibition and all Galleries & Experiences, Contests & Competitions, Performances & Special Events, and Community activities, as well as the Keynote Speakers and Exhibitor Tech Talks.

Basic Conference One-Day Pass: One-day admission to all Galleries & Experiences, Contests & Competitions, Performances & Special Events, Community activities, Keynote Speakers and Exhibitor Tech Talk on the day of attendance. Also includes access to the Exhibition (Tuesday-Thursday) for the entire week.

Computer Animation Festival Only: Includes admission to the Computer Animation Festival for days(s) attending and Exhibition for the full week.

Additional registration categories for Guests, Co-located Events, and Computer Animation Festival Day passes are also available. Visit the SIGGRAPH 2009 Registration page for all the up-to-date details on how to register for this year's inspiring conference.

Feversoft becomes RandomControl with updates

RandomControl - (formerly Feversoft) has updated several of it's products. They include:

1- fryrender one SP2
2- SWAP v1.1
3- frybench.com

fryrender

fryrender is the unbiased spectral renderer developed by RandomControl.

All the elements involved in the render (materials, lights, cameras, ...) are based on physically accurate models up to the point that when you hit render a simulation of the real behavior of light happens inside.

Moreover, fryrender is the first engine of its kind capable of transforming scenes into a format that can be navigated in real-time with the aid of our Virtual Reality technology RC5.

fryrender SWAP

SWAP is similar to the Multilight functions of Next Limits Maxwell Render both of these products in Maya Plugin Power

fryrender SWAP is a revolutionary product based on our proprietary physically-based render technology. Sharing a base concept similar to fryrender's Layer-Blending: "render once and get as many images as you need", SWAP enables you to change materials in your scene while keeping the photorealistic quality of the original image, in real-time.

frybench.com

Many customers and DEMO users have asked us which computer architecture would help them render faster. This recurring question led us to think that it would be a great idea to set up a public benchmarking chart that could provide a definitive answer...

...so we started the frybench initiative.

frybench is a minimal version of fryrender, with all the UI trimmed away, and restricted to just one demo scene provided by us. Anyone can download it, run it, and see how the performance of his machine compares to the results posted by other users.

We have strong reasons to believe that fryrender is in fact an extraordinary tool to determine the raw power of a CPU. Such a tremendous effort has been put into optimizing the rendering core at all levels that we are sure that it leaves no room for the CPU to breathe during a single cycle.

The frybench initiative is open to everyone, not just fryrender customers or DEMO users. Anyone, from hardware builders or reviewers to die-hard gamers can download the kit, run it, and see how good their computers are, and even post results in our public chart.

You will find the public ranking, the downloadable kit and an F.A.Q. at www.frybench.com

VFXWORLD features Maya Plugin Power

This month, VFXWorld begins a series of six excerpts of the Thomson Course Technology book Maya Plugin Power, which will give VFXWorld readers to learn how to take advantage of the myriad of plugins available to Maya users.

The first in the series deals with Syflex cloth simulation for Maya.

For my money the best way to get cloth animation from Maya is the cloth simulation plugin Syflex. It has great advantages over Autodesk nCloth. It is flexible and easy to use and is very useful for other softbody simulations. Here is an easy way to make a skirt in Syflex.