Akiko Ashley was on the show floor for Architosh this year and took all the pictures in the next few pages. Her detailed report on what was key at this year’s SIGGRAPH in Anaheim can be found here and is a very good read.
Before we start off we wanted to mention again that SIGGRAPH shows–like many other conventions–seem to be struggling more and more as the years go on. While there were many excellent companies at this year’s event in California, it was notable that Autodesk decided to not attend and apparently from the word on the grapevine will not be attending SIGGRAPH in the future…at least in booth form.
It has been many years since Apple has been at SIGGRAPH in booth form. In fact, I think that would take us back to the PowerPC days of tank like G5 Mac Pros. Remember those days?
Apple does show up at SIGGRAPH in behind the scenes fashion to talk to developers and also for its popular Job Fair. Below you can see an Apple Job Fair booth next to the Houdini booth. Now it must be interesting to know what kinds of folks Apple is looking for at a place like SIGGRAPH. But the company is a giant and has far more ranging positions imaginable than one might think. And they always are looking out for talented designers.
01 – Apple at the SIGGRAPH Job Fair. Companies like Pixar, Disney, Apple, ILM, and many leading ISVs in 3D show up each year to attract talented prospects. (courtesy of Akiko Ashley. All Rights Reserved)
Closely related to Apple, Pixar was at SIGGRAPH this year, of course, and their booth, as you can see from the photo below, is quite different. Akiko attended the Pixar invite only event and we will be talking about RenderMan technology later this month as part of our tour of everything 3D at SIGGRAPH.
02 – Pixar at SIGGRAPH 2013. The company also attends the Job Fair and is a prominent participant in conference sessions and major keynotes and talks. (courtesy Akiko Ashley, All Rights Reserved)
A major announcement this year was Houdini ENGINE by Side Effects Software. Houdini ENGINE is a compact API which extract’s Houdini’s core tech into a powerful procedural engine for film and game studios so they can integrate it into the pipeline applications.
Popular DDC applications like Maya and game development platforms like Unity can be integrated. This means you can load into DDC apps and Unit Houdini assets without having to rely on baked-out data.
03 – The Houdini booth featuring the new Houdini ENGINE. (courtesy Akiko Ashley, All Rights Reserved.)
Although AMD has struggled much with Intel over the past few years the company garnered two major wins with the contracts to supply the GPUs for both of the latest Sony and Microsoft game consoles. Now the big news for AMD with regards to Apple is centered on its supply of the AMD FirePro twin graphics cards inside of the upcoming Mac Pro (2013).
Akiko was deeply curious to find out anything at all about the FirePro inside of the new Mac Pro and visited the AMD booth. While details of the new Mac Pro are very secret and could not be discussed or discovered, the AMD booth help was anxious to show off the top of the line FirePro cards and what they can do for OpenCL acceleration.
04 – AMD’s booth was showing off its top of the line FirePro graphics cards for DCC apps and advanced 3D graphics and CAD. The next Mac Pro will be based on two twin FirePro cards. (courtesy Akiko Ashley. All Rights Reserved)
As noted in our special SIGGRAPH highlights report, AMD was showing off OpenCL acceleration on Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects (AE). We are beginning to wonder if Apple’s decision in AMD was centered primarily on advancements in OpenCL and the company’s attempt to stave off defections in the pro film and video market since the major gaffe with Final Cut Pro X. There are many lingering questions about the new Mac Pro…and we will just have to wait and see.
next page: Booth Pictures for Next Limit, LightWorks, and More…
Next Limit of Spain is one of the most innovative software companies in the world, with cutting edge technology now wrapped in three product lines: XFlow, RealFlow and Maxwell Render. The company also does research.
Like Graphisoft, Next Limit has been recognized as a leading innovator by the European Business Awards program in the EU. At SIGGRAPH Akiko mentioned that Next Limit was showing the next version of Maxwell Render. Version 3.0 of the popular rendering engine and program are coming. There are now many plugins for Maxwell Render for various CAD and DCC packages, including the bonzai 3D, ArchiCAD, modo, Rhino and Lightwave. These were all released in 2013.
05 – Victor of Next Limit of Spain. Maxwell Render 3.0 is coming soon, says the company, and is one of the global leaders in high-end rendering technology. (courtesy Akiko Ashley, All Rights Reserved.)
Maxwell Render comes in three versions now. There is Maxwell Render Suite and Maxwell Render LE (Learning Edition). And there is Maxwell for SketchUp. The growth of Maxwell Render is actually quite remarkable, as the field for high-end photographic rendering technology is remarkably competitive and crowded.
And speaking of competition, LightWorks made one of the biggest announcements at SIGGRAPH 2013 about its new iRay+ API technology and partnership with NVIDIA. We have written about this in a fuller report here. In essence, Lightworks will be the exclusive partner in bringing NVIDIA’s iray GPU-based rendering technology to a rendering engine (API) for incorporation into hundreds of applications used worldwide.
06 – Lightworks introduced Iray+ for incorporation in its API packages for ISVs in the CAD and 3D markets. (image courtesy Akiko Ashley, All Rights Reserved).
NewTek introduced a new 3D application called ChronoSculpt. This is a stand-alone application but does have very strong connections to the Lightwave 3D sister package. This is “time-based cache sculpting for every 3D software pipeline” says the company.
NewTek Lightwave also has a new product called NevronMotion but that’s a plugin for Lightwave that does motion retargeting and works with support for the Microsoft Kinect device. Rumors are floating that Apple is going to buy the Israeli company behind the Kinect’s technology.
07 – ChronoSculpt is a new 3D application by NewTek’s LightWave group that revolutionizes the way one works with animation and dynamic simulation cache files. (courtesy Akiko Ashley, All Rights Reserved)
We will go into more about what ChronoSculpt is in a future report. Currently the application is available for Windows 64-bit operating systems only but a Mac OS X and Linux version is coming soon, says the company. We are pretty happy to see the Lightwave group reinvigorated with the latest Lightwave 11.6 release and these new focused products.
We will have more pictures soon.