In a post digital world, effects and post-production facilities have concentrated on bringing their equipment and personnel to the highest possible grade while maintaining a vigilant lookout for ways to increase speed and productivity.

Industry gatherings like siggraph provide a lofty vantage point from which to survey trends and get the facts on must-have equipment. This year’s show, held in New Orleans Aug. 4-9, provided few surprises, rather it confirmed what players saw coming last year; that new platforms are promising to change the equipment terrain, that connectivity is more important than ever, and that eyes must be trained unblinkingly on what happens over the next two years.

‘There were incremental changes,’ says Tony Schoemaker, director of technical operations at Vancouver’s Rainmaker, of this year’s siggraph. ‘Nothing made me go, `Wow.’ ‘

That sentiment was echoed by many of the show’s Canadian attendees, with the wow replaced by wariness as shop managers and animators surveyed changes brewing like a cauldron of gumbo with the potential to change the flavor of newer as well as established facilities.

Representatives of Canadian facilities attended the event to meet and size up their peers in the industry. They also went to discern what is the actual status of the Microsoft nt operating system versus the Unix systems which form the basis of many Silicon Graphics-oriented facilities; to see if new hardware and software infrastructure deliver the necessary speed and performance to make an immediate investment worthwhile.

For many, events at siggraph and in the industry at large indicate something of a waiting game is in order to determine whether lower-cost, pc-based packages that promise high speed and versatility can deliver the high-end goods which shops are increasingly under pressure to produce.

Sylvain Taillon, head of Toronto’s Mad Dog Digital, says he is closely monitoring the developments in nt offerings and his trip to siggraph was motivated primarily by the desire to see for himself where platform hype met reality.

‘I wasn’t surprised at how promising the nt platform solutions were,’ says Taillon. ‘But it’s not a workable solution for us at this time.’

Taillon says he saw little in the way of high-end software or systems that could compete with Mad Dog’s sgi-based Discreet Logic Flame system, which meets the facility’s considerable demands for speed and performance.

‘It likely won’t take long, maybe two or three years, until we see something comparable,’ he says. ‘But in the meantime, do you keep going or do you wait it out?’ Taillon says that decision may be easier for shops starting up than for established facilities with enormous existing equipment investments.

The overall trend for developers is providing one-stop solutions and facilitating a smoother work flow, and siggraph attendees report the major players in high-end software are continuing strides made toward that end.

Toronto-based Side Effects Software used siggraph to announce shipment of its Houdini 1.0 3D animation product, which showgoers lauded and which reflects the integration of different elements within animation environments. Houdini provides a nonlinear animation tool, allowing 2D and 3D animation and non-sequential modeling, rendering and compositing.

‘It looks amazing,’ says Livo Passera, animator at Toronto’s Dan Krech Productions. ‘It has a totally new interface and integrates all kinds of elements. And it’s easier to use; it will allow people who are learning the software to learn it a lot quicker.’

Passera also points to Houdini’s nurbs modeling program as a major development. Side Effects also showcased its flagship Prisms 3D animation software. The package’s fur and hair rendering capabilities were key in creating the unnatural beasts in New Line’s just-released remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau.

siggraph attendees were also keeping an eye on the results of the mergers and acquisitions that brought together the technologies of Microsoft and Silicon Graphics with those of major Canadian software developers.

Softimage appeared to be flourishing under the framework of the Microsoft entity, with showgoers reporting Digital Studio demos becoming more compelling with each show.

The developer’s nt-based Digital Studio system was showcased at nab as an integrated environment for nonlinear editing, compositing, 2D and 3D painting, audio editing, special effects, and project management.

Alias/Wavefront’s Maya was also praised for the ground it has covered since it was glimpsed last year. Maya was developed from Alias/Wavefront’s Project Maya initiative as a character animation tool which promises increased speed, openness and streamlined work flow.

The highlights of the show, says Mad Dog animation director Frank Falcone, weren’t mind-blowing, single products but these work-enhancing developments.

Falcone says his goal at siggraph wasn’t to search for specific products but to gain a better overall perspective on industry directions.

As major studios co-opt computer graphics technology and put it to use in an increasing number of head-turning projects, there will be a demand for bigger and better, or conversely, less visible effects. In turn, Canadian facilities are challenged with producing ever more innovative film, tv and commercial work in a more cost-effective way.

‘What was apparent at the show, more than any specific product, was how much the industry has matured in the last three years,’ says Falcone. He cites the increasingly overwhelming presence of Hollywood driving all segments of the industry to loftier heights.

‘The entertainment business has become more a part of what post-production and commercial production has been for the last few years,’ he says. ‘It’s driving things to be bigger and more overwhelming. Our competitors are doing things on such a huge scale that we have to pay close attention to what our angle is.’

Falcone says siggraph was also fertile ground for upstarts, with unknowns showcasing new applications in scaled-down booths.

Schoemaker, who has made the trip to siggraph for 10 years, says the show is an important forum for seeing what Hollywood is up to and the directions taken by the major l.a. shops.

He says a close look is necessary before leaping to any of the available conclusions about the speed and capabilities of the pc-plus-accelerator card scenario, and points out that many of the benchmarks of comparison of nt versus sgi are based on different levels of technology.

Schoemaker places major emphasis on the emerging film technologies like Discreet Logic’s Inferno and Kodak Cineon. ‘There is a huge explosion in digital film applications,’ he says. ‘These wars are just starting and there are no clear winners yet.’

The next challenges, says Schoemaker, will be managing the colossal amounts of data involved in digital film manipulation and the economics of transferring that data over long distances. ‘With film, the size of files you’re pushing around is huge; for a 4K resolution image you’re talking about 50 megabytes. How do you move that around?’

Schoemaker says siggraph demos showcased technology which would ultimately allow users to place images stored on a disc drive into a ‘virtual network,’ where every operator has access, allowing scanned film to be composited and color corrected, and special effects added and then output to film. ‘If data could stay in one place and be combined the savings would be enormous.’

Traveling down the road further, post facilities are looking toward tapeless environments, the initial inklings of which are being offered now.

In the meantime, post facilities will benefit from advancements in gear which will come from all sides, with existing players like sgi devoting more energy to developing products to counter the encroachments of Microsoft into the computer graphics field. While this may mean increased software options and lower costs, it does mean post and effects facilities will be faced with demands for bigger and better effects and the challenges of finding artists to make it all mean something.