Siggraph from Beyond
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I was also able to get up close and personal with NewTek to get a glimpse at ... uh, what's that called again? ... let me check my notes ... oh yes, there it is: LightWave [8] for Mac OS X. Anybody out there heard of this program? Seems to be a big hit with the kids these days, especially the Mac kids, who are buying it up at a pace equal to--and sometimes exceeding--the peecee version. So what about the forthcoming version 8? Well, of course, it's not going to be ready until the fourth quarter, but I can verify that an early version does exist and does already incorporate a number of the new features announced earlier. Some of these new features include enhancements to dynamics, character animation, modeling workflow, animation workflow and texturing tools. It offers new hard body dynamics for physical simulations, improved cloth and soft body dynamics, faster inverse and forward kinematics and bone dynamics ... just in case you want to shoot a cannonball at a guy and watch him crumple around the impact. And I think we can all agree that two to four months is too long to wait for that! More info: http://www.newtek.com/.Pixar, sadly, had nothing to say publicly about RenderMan for the Mac. As you're probably aware, Pixar is considering a full release of RenderMan for the G5, but no announcement will be made until the G5s are actually announced. The company has benchmarked PhotoRealistic RenderMan on the G5, and, if anything were to come of it, a beta period might begin in August, closed to all but active Pixar customers with current maintenance contracts. I wonder if the RenderMan I have on the IIci in my garage will qualify. A boy can dream.... More info: https://renderman.pixar.com.[an error occurred while processing this directive]
And finally (for my schedule, at least) RealViz used Siggraph as an opportunity to debut MatchMover 3.0 Pro, a tool for tracking 3D camera data and motion from videos and film sequences. The new version adds a variety of features and workflow improvements and also gains support for Mac OS X for the first time. The new version of MatchMover gains significantly in the areas of speed and workflow. It also adds improved handling of motion control data; 3D object model-based tracking; 3D tracking of cameras and multiple objects in the same session; improved handling of survey points; a new graph editor toolbox; and motion capture. And it's expected to ship late this summer. More info: http://www.realviz.com.That's certainly not all that was to be seen at the show, by a long shot, but a man only has so much time to get in all his meetings and sniff around for juicy tidbits while also having time to raid the press room for fudge brownies and sodypop. (I'm not made of stone, you know.) But, as you can see, the Mac was well represented this time around, and hopefully even more developers will have picked up on the Mac tip by the time the show rolls around next year. Of course, that might depend on whether Apple decides to pack a real 3D card into the G5 at some point within the next few months, but we shall see.
As for the show itself, Siggraph is always an occasion for long-lost pals to come together and for new friendships to be forged. This year some 24,332 people from around the world did just that, according to conference organizers. That's up fairly dramatically from the 17,274 bodies that were reported to have been present at the 2002 show in San Antonio. Companies exhibiting at the show were up slightly to 240, compared with 225 in 2002.Next year, Siggraph moves from San Diego to Los Angeles. For more information, visit http://www.siggraph.org.
Contact the author: Dave Nagel is the producer of Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; host of several World Wide User Groups, including Synthetik Studio Artist, Adobe Photoshop, Mac OS, Adobe InDesign, Adobe LiveMotion, Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; and executive producer of the Digital Media Net family of publications. You can reach him at dnagel@digitalmedianet.com.
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