With this first (and destined not to be the last) tech highlights overview, VirtualInnovations asked some technically savvy types from various areas of the industry to make their calls on the significant production technology moments from last year and to forecast the major issues of 1999 and beyond.

We sought opinion from an assortment of post/effects professionals on which facets of the vast technical arena made an impact: which products stood out (for better or worse), how the processes changed, what projects mattered and why.

Participants were also asked to provide their thoughts on what the near future of production technology holds – how the products, platforms and processes will continue to change and what it will mean to their own businesses and the industry.

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Among the noteworthy software products which will have an impact in ’99, say TOPIX/Mad Dog technical director Colin Withers and partner Sylvain Taillon, were Alias|Wavefront Maya and Softimage’s next generation rendering system, Twister.

‘Twister will make a big difference to us,’ says Withers. ‘It changes the way rendering gets done. The technology there will prove significant. There are a lot of speedups and instant feedback loops so you can make changes better. It will take time to get fast enough for production but the features and quality are there to make it one of the best professional rendering packages.’

While unproved, Softimage’s Sumatra architecture is interesting, says Withers, for its nonlinear animation concept, whereby animation is controlled independently of a time line and animators have more flexibility to work on animation sequences.

The projects that employed the available technology effectively demonstrated major gains in producing previously difficult or undoable imagery, he says.

Withers points to the DreamWorks/pdi feature Antz and its stunning portrayal of liquid, a facet of image making with which he is familiar through his own work, having developed a liquid software tool for use on a commercial project for topix/md.

‘It was one of the things people asked for and for a while was too hard to do,’ says Withers. ‘This film demonstrates that it can be done now.’

While technical strides continue to be made, Withers questions how many big effects projects actually will get produced in ’99, pointing to a backlash of sorts arising from issues of cost and delivery schedules for effects-centric features.

In the meantime, says Taillon, more facilities are undertaking commercial work, upping the competition level for shops of that ilk.

In general technical terms, ’99 will be a bigger year for the switch to nt, says Withers. ‘The people who were reluctant before – they’ve held back to see what would happen with the sgi products they had already. But because there hasn’t been any introduction of new unix processors, there’s no migration there, and the people holding back are going to start thinking about going to nt. You’re getting higher processor speed for cheaper on nt.’

Those changes, says Taillon, will happen largely for animation and design.

On the post side, the high-end Discreet Logic Flame and Inferno session work handled by the shop still needs Onyx-rate speed. The newer suite of Discreet Logic products like paint and effect, though, are democratizing the process and providing a viable option for more facilities.

‘It’s interesting to see the super packages becoming lighter and easier for people to use,’ says Taillon. ‘sgi joining the nt bandwagon is going to be a big sign of the times for a lot of people who didn’t look at nt as an option.’

The shop itself is ushering in the new year with investment in new releases of the cornerstone Flame and Inferno systems, and Taillon says these and other new generation software systems are providing, in theory at least, ‘new ways to do old things,’ as well as providing increased flexibility and editing functions.

One of the major missing pieces in ’98, says Taillon, was a concrete hdtv plan.

‘It seemed like this was the year it would be clarified; there was a lot of information but no clear answers’

It’s one of the things every industry player will be looking closely at in the coming year, Taillon says. While there is hd technology in place now, how it will pan out in a widespread way here is yet to be seen.

‘It’s scary to jump in now without knowing if it’s the right step,’ he says. ‘We have to think about new acquisitions and whether we are making a technology investment for the next six months or the next four to five years.’

Glut of digital media grads

On the talent front, Withers also points to the current glut of digital media programs and graduates.

‘I’d be interested to see where all these students are going to get jobs,’ says Withers. ‘They’ve flooded the market with courses and we get a ton of reels already.’

Two years ago, Taillon says, it was difficult to lasso a graduate before he/she headed to l.a. ‘That has changed tremendously,’ he says. ‘There are way more people than there are jobs; it will be interesting to see how schools react.’

Another pervasive technology change which will impact business in ’99 is the Internet as a production tool, says Withers. topix/md is currently working on a project out of Japan where the bulk of production and approvals are done over the Net. ‘It’s an important tool from a business point of view,’ says Withers. ‘I think this could be the year where you see more people actually doing productions out of Europe and other places.’