SIGGRAPH 2003

By David Em

September 1, 2003

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SIGGRAPH's core constituency is the 3D animation and visualization community. Without the fundamental research and personal relationships that have grown out of this organization, films like Finding Nemo, Titanic, and The Two Towers wouldn't be possible.

Like other tech trade shows, SIGGRAPH's pulled back in scale a bit from its glory years. It's still a big show, however, drawing 24,000 attendees this year. And there was no dearth of remarkable new software to ogle, hardware to poke at, and people to meet at a nonstop round of talks, panels, after-hours events, and parties.

BYTE contributing editor Alex Pournelle and I got a look at some incredible new digital video and animation tools, including a realtime dual-stream high-def video editor, the world's fastest graphics card, extremely capable but inexpensive 3D animation software, and some powerful workstations.

State of the Industry

On the tool side, SIGGRAPH 2003 provided ample evidence that the imaging software and hardware industries are in a state of flux. SGI, who just a few years ago utterly dominated the SIGGRAPH show floor with its workstations, didn't even field its own booth this year. And significant application developers such as Electric Image and Caligari were conspicuous by their absence for the first time.

On the other hand, the Big Three graphics card vendors, 3Dlabs, ATI, and NVIDIA were there in force, as were a host of companies that produce boutique tools for such things motion capture, 3D printing, and a variety of immersive projectors. The overall sense of the show was that the field is very much alive and well.

3D Animation Software

Ten years ago, high-end 3D animation software packages cost tens of thousands of dollars per seat.

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