Orlando: SIGGRAPH ’94

In the land of theme parks, it’s only natural to reflect on, well, themes.

The city of Orlando, Fla. was the site of July’s SIGGRAPH ’94 computer graphics show. Now that the Canadian attendees have had a chance to contemplate the steak and sizzle, Video Innovations asked some about the trends they spotted at the show.

Orlando is the home of Disney and Shaquille O’Neal, so it’s no surprise to hear people talk animatedly about giant steps.

Chris Wallace, president of TOPIX Computer Graphics and Animation in Toronto, says this year’s siggraph saw the birth of no less than a new industry: creative post-production.

Wallace points to the on-line, post-production systems showcased at siggraph. ‘I saw tons of people here that I usually see at nab (the National Association of Broadcasters annual convention and show in Las Vegas). They realize cgi equipment is now the platform for many post-production tools. That’s scaring them. Software is replacing all their black boxes.’

As a result, he sees post work heading to outfits like topix – hence the ‘creative post’ – and away from editing suites that lack visual artists. ‘By default,’ says Wallace, ‘companies like us will end up in post-production. And I don’t have to charge as much because it’s not costing me as much to be in that business.’

All the people interviewed agree the hottest technology at siggraph had to be motion capture.

John Coldrick of Toronto’s Spin Productions talks of the highly naturalistic animation that can be generated by rigging up sensors to a ‘performer.’ The performer doesn’t have to be a person, either; Coldrick notes the striking cbs Winter Olympics spots that l.a. animation house Rez.N8 achieved by hooking up motion capture to an actual deer.

‘Motion capture started to be viable last year, but it was the hot thing this year. It’s a way to do animation relatively cheaply, and quickly too,’ and should appeal to producers with a heavy animation volume, says Coldrick. However, he adds, it’s still a bit of a struggle to ‘finesse’ the technology.

Phil Neary, director of marketing at Toronto-based Alias Research, suggests the use of this type of ‘performance animation’ will broaden the cross-section of directors who use cgi.

‘They want to work with digital characters in a similar way to how they work with live actors,’ he says. ‘Now they’ll have the ability to bring motion-capture equipment onto the actual set and view the computer-animated characters in real time on the screen.’

Neary also notes the emergence of tools to support the increasing use of cgi with live action. He describes a camera lens package that will let directors more closely match digital and real-world lenses. ‘In the past,’ he says, ‘most packages gave you few options for modifying the digital lens.’

Getting back to the motion-capture explosion, Kim Davidson of Toronto’s Side Effects says he was struck by the presence of several brokers of motion-capture data. That means you can purchase on demand, say, the movements of someone swinging at a baseball. A service bureau industry is a logical expectation, several of the Canadian visitors suggest.

Davidson isn’t the only one skeptical about another much-hyped technology, virtual reality. siggraph had an entire area – called vroom – set aside for demonstrations, but Davidson says the hardware is still way ahead of the software.

‘It’s a technology that’s not quite complete. It’s also a technology that’s still looking for an application. Is it entertainment or educational?’

The excitement over multimedia was also waning at siggraph, reports Rein Taul, technology specialist at Forefront Graphics in Toronto. ‘It was just a general tone I was feeling down there. The applications were there, but they were being separated from a marketing point of view.’

Not all visitors were looking strictly at the hardware and software tools to identify trends. Neary looked at applications and notes a few distinct themes.

‘The traditional, hard-edge computer look that conveyed a high-tech aspect is going away,’ he observes. ‘It’s being replaced by a softer, more realistic, more cinematic look.’

Janet Matey, marketing manager at Montreal’s Matrox Video Products Group, agrees, adding that the evolving allure of siggraph demonstrates the industry’s maturity.

‘At one point you didn’t even get video producers going,’ she says. ‘This year there were a lot of creative people there, working in a production environment, who have real work to do. In the old days the big question was how fast you could print polygons on the screen. Now the focus has changed from the technology to the application.’

Taul says this advent of practicality was evident throughout the siggraph floor. ‘There are applications available that reach a much wider audience, like non-linear editing products that are stable, usable and affordable,’ she says. ‘More and more vendors were also offering pc-based and Mac-based solutions. If one thing struck me more than at any show over the past five years, it was a settling into real practical applications.’

Stuart Foxman is a Toronto-based freelance writer.