SIGGRAPH took place this year Aug. 8-13 in l.a. Once again, the Ontario Film Development Corporation, together with the Toronto Film Office, led an Ontario delegation to the show.

Three Ontario educational institutions – Sheridan College School of Arts and Design, Seneca College Digital Media Centre and Algonquin College – occupied the booth at the show, showcasing the animation training vigor of the province.

Nine Ontario production companies also attended: Calibre Digital Pictures, C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, Dreamweaver Film & Illusion/The Post Group, LunchBox Post & Effects, gvfx, Keyframe Digital Production, Spin Productions, TOPIX/Mad Dog and toybox.

Following are some of the post-related announcements made by some of the exhibitors at the show.

*Quantel scOREs Alias

Quantel and Toronto-based Alias|Wavefront announced a technology partnership which will facilitate integration between the 2D and 3D environments of their respective products. Under the agreement, Quantel will offer oem a|w’s Maya Unlimited 3D animation software for implementation on Quantel’s Open Render Engine technology.

The Open Render Engine, launched at NAB 99, is an nt-based external platform which provides a link to third-party plug-ins and other applications – in this case Maya – which will run on the ore under direct control of the Quantel workstation.

Quantel editing systems will be able to send live-action clips to Maya, allowing the 3D artist to previsualize models and images, which can then be sent to the Quantel system for modification of camera angles, geometry, motion, lights, shadows, color and textures.

The Quantel a|w deal is the result of the Quantel Software Applications Team, which works to establish third-party application integration. Maya on Quantel will ship an option on Quantel’s ore in December for about us$10,000.

Quantel also announced that sapphire plug-ins from GenArts will be made available on the Open Render Engine. The sapphire plug-in suite of tools includes image processing and synthesis effects such as lens flares, edge rays, glows, flicker tools and so on.

*dpsReality check

digital Processing Systems introduced a new animation and compositing solution, dpsReality. The product is a Studio Digital Disk Recorder, designed for animators, 2D compositing artists and broadcast designers. The system provides capability for uncompressed recording, integrated work-group rendering, and native 32-bit file handling.

It incorporates the functionality of the DPS Perception Video Recorder as well as a special version of eyeon Software’s Digital Fusion compositing software, Digital Fusion dfx.

dpsReality hardware includes an onboard UltraWide scsi disc controller, flexible composite, component and y/c video i/o, together with mixed-mode compressed and/or uncompressed video and alpha channel storage, simultaneous video and alpha channel (4:2:2:4) playback, two-channel balanced audio i/o, and realtime vga preview capabilities.

dpsReality is designed to accommodate studio processes such as network rendering and compositing. The product’s Virtual Tape File System addresses production processes like network rendering and compositing, allowing simultaneous network access. dpsReality will ship in September with a North American base price of us$2,495.

*More cool from ICE

ICE has announced a new generation of its Blueice hardware, which runs the company’s desktop graphics products. ice also announced the BlueICE SDI Video option for Adobe After Effects ‘on ICE’ 3.0, which provides a realtime uncompressed video capture and playback solution for under us$2,000.

Basic Blueice hardware promises equivalent rendering speed as existing Blueice hardware, starting at us$1,995, including hardware and icefx for After Effects software. The board works in both Mac and nt systems and can support an optional Blueice sdi video daughter card.

Ultra Blueice promises up to twice the speed of existing Blueice hardware, starting at us$3,995, including hardware and icefx for After Effects software.

Both Basic and Ultra Blueice will be available in September 1999. Blueice sdi video will be available in October 1999 for us$1,995.

*Illusions and all things real from Avid

Avid Technology made a number of announcements at siggraph this year pertaining to its Softimage division as well as to advances in its editing and compositing solutions.

Among the announcements was Avid’s release of Version 6.0 of Softimage Media Illusion nonlinear compositing and special effects system. The new Illusion provides work-flow and feature enhancements, including faster rendering speeds, promising increases in performance from 50% to 200% for users working on complex multi-element composites at 64-bit film resolution.

The product is expected to begin shipping in September for a range of sgi workstations. Pricing begins at us$24,800 for the SGI 02 and us$31,000 for the sgi Octane.

Avid also plans to assign all responsibility for irix-based graphics systems Media Illusion and Matador to a newly formed independent company, Blue Software. The new spin-off entity will be based in London, Eng. and headed by Simon Cuff, former product manager for Matador and Illusion. Avid will retain a minority stake in the company, which is expected to be operational by October this year.

The company also unveiled Sumatra, the next-generation 3D animation system developed through Softimage over the past several years. The product is going into large-scale beta testing for a targeted release at the end of the year.

Sumatra is touted as a nonlinear animation system which provides capability for things like non-destructive animation mixing, interactive rendering, and realtime surface continuity management.

Softimage has also formed a strategic alliance with Microsoft to develop tools for Windows ce-based game authoring for the Sega Dreamcast console.

Softimage will provide game developers with an ascii-based file format called .xsl and will develop a realtime viewer for .xsl files. Together, the viewer and file format will provide an integrated game development environment, allowing faster prototyping and better exchange of data between pc development platform and Windows ce-based game consoles. The .xsl file format provides game developers with a means of importing, exporting and editing game data, allowing them to view 3D creations in a realtime environment without leaving the development platform.

The viewer will be available in September and will ship with source code with Microsoft Windows ce authoring tools.

Softimage DS Version 3.0 has also entered customer beta testing and is expected to ship by the end of the year. New version enhancements include improvements in editing speed and efficiency, advanced titling, fully integrated advanced 3D dve and new keyers.