SIG: Siggraph 2019—Highlights from the Computer Graphics Show (Part 1)

Los Angeles. SIGGRAPH 2019 is now here in Los Angeles with a huge array of attendees from all walks of life taking on a comprehensive program of Courses, Technical Papers, Production Sessions, Birds of a Feather and so much more.

This year the Exhibits Floor may look petite, but it doesn’t mean vendors aren’t around. Companies like Side FX, Autodesk, Chaos Group, Unity have opted to rent rooms at the convention center. Vendors can do presentations, panels and courses for three days in a much more intimate environment. You can focus on what you are trying to learn or adapt into your workflow without the distraction of other booths.

Keynote time at SIGGRAPH 2019. The event last week had many new key announcements which Architosh is covering below and in other reports.

Victoria Alonzo from Marvel Studios did the keynote presentation. She is a strong advocate for more women behind the screen in production roles in technology and other key roles.

Key Product and Company Announcements

Autodesk made the highly anticipated announcement about Bifrost for Maya. Bifrost is a new visual programming environment for Maya to do your own custom effects, publish and share with other artists across different shots, scenes and even shows. It comes with a ton of pre-built graphs to help you get started. Autodesk also announced the latest versions of Shotgun, Arnold, Flame and 3DS Max. Maya will provide Open Source support by integrating the USD Plug In.

Autodesk announced several new items at SIGGRAPH, including its support for Pixar’s new USD format. This year much of the action was in vendor suites in other rooms.

Maxon Cinema 4D announced Cinema 4D R21 Release. Maxon creates, “3D for the real world.”

Maxon’s booth shot between sessions on the show floor.

The new R21 release has tons of new features and enhancements. Redshift joins the Maxon family of products for their first SIGGRAPH together after Maxon announced acquiring Redshift at NAB. Maxon introduced a better way to manage your Maxon product license through “My Maxon” and makes it easier for you to use a license at work and later use it at home if you decide to finish a project on your own computer.  People cheered when Maxon revealed their new pricing strategy. $60 (49 Euros) a month for a 12- month license or $95 (85 Euros) a month single license. You can still get the Perpetual License for $3495. There is also a combo package of Cinema 4D with Redshift for an additional $20.

Paul Babb of Maxon, head of worldwide marketing. The company announced a new monthly pricing strategy.

KHRONOS released Open XR 1.0. Open XR will ship the API first and the Device Plugin Interface in the future. Open XR is a royalty free, open standard that provides high performance Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, the X in XR is the combination of the A in Augmented Reality and the V in Virtual. Developers frustrated with have to port their code to different headsets will find Open XR gives them a lot more freedom to create cross platform XR experiences. A third-party developer will bring Vulkan to the Mac OS. (see: Architosh, “SIG: Khronos Releases OpenXR 1.0 Spec—Establishes Foundation for AR/VR Ecosystem,” 29 July 2019).

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