SIG: Final Complete Siggraph 2015 Event Photos & Notes

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We continue with our last page of images in this gallery.

13 – PipelineFX’s was showing its new Qube! render farm technology. (photo: Akiko Ashley).

PipelineFX is the maker of Qube!, the rendering farm software solution that is widely used across top VFX houses and graphics shops, including leading architectural CGI firms and other 3D pros. Their technology runs on both Macs and Windows and they have extensive iOS app capabilities. A fairly Apple-centric we think given their years of graphic choices on their website (i.e.: they show their apps running on Apple hardware a lot) as well as their early iOS app development.

14 – While Apple’s Macs were popular at SIGGRAPH 2015 booths they were almost entirely mobiles and the new Mac Pro was only spotted in just a few booths, such as this one. (photo: Akiko Ashley).

This picture says a thousand words when it comes to Apple’s new Mac Pro from 2014. The revolutionary design has been a controversy in the 3D graphics community as many 3D professionals would like to work on OS X more or less full time, making it their standard bench operating system. We can easily see the popularity of the Mac platform from all the demos running off of MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

However, Akiko Ashley tallied up counts of PC workstations versus Macs on the show floor and the numbers were not pretty for the Apple Mac Pro. While Apple laptops are everywhere, and even the iMac was used as a demo machine for many booths (Shotgun was all iMacs) the true pro workstation class Darth Vader Mac was nearly invisible at Siggraph 2015. Architosh will have more to say on this matter soon, but perhaps Apple will beat us to the punch with some positive news on this machine?

15 – At Chaos Group’s booth we see a V-Ray presentation. The next versions of V-Ray are highly anticipated and the next versions for SketchUp will have dramatic new UI improvements. (photo: Akiko Ashley).

The Chaos Group had a very busy booth at Siggraph 2015, with plenty of interesting good news coming from them about V-Ray. They announced V-Ray for Nuke in particular at the show. When we last saw the Chaos Group folks at the AIA National architects show in Atlanta in the late spring, they gave us a peak at the upcoming UI changes coming to the next versions of V-Ray for SketchUp. Lots of promising good stuff on the horizon….

16 – Maxon’s new release of Cinema 4D was the hot ticket for the German software company. (photo: Akiko Ashley).

Mason released a milestone update with their new Cinema 4D software package, one of the big five complete 3D modeling, rendering and animation software packages on the professional market. Cinema 4D competes primarily with Maya, 3ds Max, LightWave and Modo. Our news coverage of the new version is here.

18 – The Wacom tablet show in this image is quite large…is this Rhino in Rhino? Doesn’t look like it. (photo: Akiko Ashley).

Our last image is of the Wacom folks with their what looks like their Wacom Cintiq pen and touch display. The Cintiq touch displays are their flagship technology and enable the user to use a touch pen to work common graphics and design applications. Models come in 27, 22 and 13 inch sizes and are full touch-based, high-quality displays. You can learn more here.