CGarchitect SIGGRAPH 2003 Report

SIGGRAPH 2003 – San Diego Show Report
by Jeff Mottle/CGarchitect.com

Well another SIGGRAPH passes us by marking my now 7th consecutive SIGGRAPH, two of which have been for CGArchitect.com as SIGGRAPH Press. 24,332 people made their way to the show this year, which is a respectable turnout, but far less than what we have seen in years past. As a result I am hearing that SIGGRAPH Management will be holding the next two shows in Los Angeles and possibly stay there for a third year to help bolster attendance and most presumably revenues. The show floor was also smaller again this year, but for some reason did not feel as small as I expected. Perhaps it was the odd layout of the floor last year that threw me off, or perhaps I am just getting used of it now. Only 240 companies exhibited on the floor this year which is about 3/4 of what I saw last year in San Antonio. Regardless there was some great stuff to see both on and off the exhibition floor and overall I felt this year’s SIGGRAPH was very informative and great for CGarchitect.


San Diego Convention Center

This year also marked the second annual CGarchitect.com/ArchVision party that was a phenomenal success. A few of us did a quick head count and we estimated over 100 people came out for our feast of free booze, fajitas and pizza, not to mention the single largest gathering of architectural CG people every assembled. Feedback was once again very positive, so as long as CGarchitect.com continues to run, we will be hosting an event every year at SIGGRAPH. If you were not able to attend be sure to start making your plans for next year as it is not to be missed.


2nd Annual CGarchitect.com/ArchVision Party at the San Diego Marriot Hotel and Marina

So by now most of you are wondering what exactly made the news at this years show and what will be shaping the future of the upcoming year’s CG community. While there were a number of new releases and product updates announced I’ll limit my review to the ones that were the most interesting to the architectural community. To see a list of this year’s exhibitors and their websites you can visit the SIGGRAPH 2003 website here: http://www.siggraph.org/cgi-bin/cgi/idSearch.html

Discreet

As most of you have read, the most significant news to the architectural CG community announced during SIGGRAPH this year, was the release of 3ds max 6. By now I will assume that many of you have already poured over the feature list at the Discreet site, but in case you have not I’ll link to it here: http://www.discreet.com/products/3dsmax6/

There have been numerous enhancements and additions to the program that were geared specifically to the architectural community. In fact, this release firmly establishes a solid base for 3ds max to become the core program that will be used for visualization within the architectural industry. With additions like the much improved layer manager, Autodesk VIZ Render support, the new architectural material and robust DWG import and export, it is evident that Discreet is now very focused on the architectural community. I had a chance to speak in depth with Michael Woodcox (Design Visualization Product Manager) about Discreet’s new direction and he had some very interesting things to say.

When asked about Discreet’s commitment to the architectural community I was told that this release, while not as feature laden as past releases, does set the groundwork for 3ds max to be used as the tool of choice in the architectural industry. Michael Woodcox pointed out that “A lot of work has gone into stabilizing the core, setting the stage for the design visualization community and stamping out any bugs, rather than adding a lot of brand new features”. Of course with this new direction, and the commitment to “make it right, or not at all” there are some things that were taken out of this release. For some it could mean a considerable change in workflow, and for other it will have no impact at all. So which feature is it? File Linking. While we have gained a much improved file importer we have lost File Linking. Michael Woodcox explains, “Feedback from customers indicated clearly that while File Link represented an improved workflow as compared to import, its implementation in VIZ lacked reliability and completeness of design. On the stability front, many customers have had problems with very poor reload performance and geometry moving out of position when reloaded. As for completeness, there are workflow scenarios that File Link allows which should either be prevented or dealt with more effectively.”
While there is admittedly a considerable amount of work that still needs to go into File Linking before it comes back, all is not lost. The revised DWG import code is actually a beefed up and more reliable version of File Link. The only exception is that the “Reload” button is missing. The much improved and full featured File Linking is expected to make a come back later this year in the form of a patch or extension.

On another front, I was also told that workflow is being streamlined to accommodate the two segments within the design visualization community. Architects who want to do basic, but sharp, looking renders and model studies will be able to use ADT with the VIZ Renderer, while highly polished and detailed renders and animations can be created with 3ds max. Through the addition of VIZ Render support and improved DWG handling, workflow has been facilitated so that everything funnels upwards to 3ds max as the complete package for architectural rendering.
On a final note I felt compelled to share a little of my “insider” knowledge to help put some people at ease. While I am a in a sense a journalist, I am also an end user and through my strong ties to Lightscape over the past 8 years, have been afforded the luxury of being able to sit in on higher level meetings with Discreet management and product developers, alongside a group of very talented individuals from all ends of the end user spectrum. If there was one overwhelmingly pertinent point that I took away from these meetings this year, it was Discreet’s new approach to the way it will be handling new releases. Rather than pack releases with a slew of new features that could potentially disrupt the core stability of the product, a few key features are chosen, researched and thoroughly tested to ensure they are rock solid before being released to the public. Again going back to the “make it right or not al all” mantra. This is something that I think many people will find quite evident in this new release. In terms of which features do make it into each release, I know many have accused Discreet in years past of not listening to the demands of its users, but having listened to the developers this year, I can assure you that all of your demands are indeed being heard. With this upcoming release, over 900 user suggested features were on the consideration list and each one was looked at carefully for this release. Of course, and as one would expect, only a chosen few can be selected. I think those in the design visualization industry definitely came out on top this go round, and I am pretty confident that in the coming years you will see a strong interest in the needs of the design visualization community from Discreet.

An exact release date has not yet been set for 3ds max 6, but you should start to see it hit your dealer’s shelves sometime this fall. Shortly after the release I will publish a more detailed review of the features that I think many of your will find of most interest.

SplutterFish/Vray/finalRender

Your favorite third party renderers all once again reported news of new versions and features this year. Of course many of you know that finalRender finally released their Stage-1 release, albeit over a year late. I stopped by their booth to see what was new and asked to see a demo and was snubbed and told to visit their website if I wanted to see what was new. I guess in person Cebas carries on their well known reputation. My question is why did they even come to the show if they did not want to show their product? So I will tell you what they told me. Go to their website.
I had a few minutes to speak with Peter from Vray who told me that new materials were on their way for the next release as well as some fixes that prevented some architectural CG users from rendering large files all at once. I was told that there were also a few more treats on the way, but he did not want to discuss just yet, but was told that it should be coming out very soon.
SplutterFish also put on a good show this year as they pitched the new 1.2 release and were position in several booths including the Discreet booth where they put on their Scott and Steve show. Some of the more relevant architectural CG items worth noting are the addition of support for photometric IES files, improvements to their toon shader and of course the new Banshee Distributed Rendering Manager.


Peter Mitev and Vladimir Koylazov from Chaos Software/Vray


The crew from finalRender checks out the last SplutterFish Scott and Steve show at the Discreet booth, before the show ends.

AMD

Opteron, Opteron, Opteron. Everywhere I looked there was an Opteron. If ever there was hype over new hardware it was no match for the new 64 bit AMD chip that was being pushed in nearly every booth on the show floor. I had a few minutes to speak with their marketing people to discuss the new architecture and learned a few things about their plans over the coming year. While the new chip is clearly the future of computing architecture in the next few years, many software manufacturers are still hesitant to jump on board right away and as of yet there have been no vendors to announce a 64 bit version of their CG software. Nevertheless they and many of the vendors I did speak to were confident that they would most likely be announcing full support by this time next year. When asked if a 32 bit applications would benefit at all on the new 64 bit platform, the answer was no. While you would obviously still see a slight performance increase by nature of the Opteron being the latest chip, your 32 bit application will not see the 4-6 time speed increases that AMD is touting to happen once 64 bit support is released into products like Windows and the products we use in the architectural CG industry.

Alias

Alias did a private demo of Maya 5 for CGarchitect.com and while they have yet to really target the architectural CG community, they did show me a few features that were rather interesting. The most impressive of which was the paint effects plug-in that I’m sure most of you are not familiar with. With Maya 5 however they have added the ability to convert any paint effects brush stokes into actual geometry complete with animation. I was shown a demo of a tree brush with animation that was painted on and then converted to geometry. I saw a similar exercise done with simple textured building primitives as well, which I can imagine would make random distant cityscapes quite a breeze. The second feature that I found very impressive, and also new to Maya, was their new polygon reduction tool. Like most reduction tools it holds edge detail, but you are also given the ability to paint areas on your model that you want to preserve during the decimation process. I also asked about DWG import and they do indeed have one, unfortunately it is limited to yes I want to import, or no I do not. There were no other import options to set. For the price of Maya these days it might just be looking at for the first two features alone.


Alias Booth

ArchVision

Our friends at ArchVison had a number of new products to show off at SIGGRAPH this year, and wowed the crowds and several vendors with the 4 rear projectors they used to paint an animated loop onto their booth.


ArchVision Booth

At the show ArchVision showed off their new ArchVision Content Managertm, which will allow you to centralize the serving and downloading of content to RPC users. The product is still in development but is expected to release in Q4 of this year.
Tied into the Content Manager they will also be releasing their new ArchVision Project Managertm which will allow you to group your content and rename RPC content into meaningful categories based upon your project and requirements. The most impressive part of this feature will be the ability to group RPC content for review by your customers via a web-based interface. For example you could choose all of the people that would go into your building lobby, the second floor and the meeting rooms as well as the trees you plan to use in the courtyard and send your content grouping to the client for review.

The end of new products does not end there however. Yet another product, the RPC Composertm ,with no release date specified, is similar to the Photoshop plug-in that some may have used in the past, but with much more functionality. The workflow for the standalone RPC Composer will allow you to import your background plate, set a horizon line and visually specify a correct scale, then simply drop in and rotate RPC content anywhere over your plate. Because you have specified the scale and horizon all of your content comes in at the correct scale based upon its position in the scene. From there you will be able to export directly to Photoshop where each RPC item will come in on its own layer to facilitate any further post editing.
The last two products to be announced was their new RPC Plugin for Maya, programmed by the crew from Luminova in Australia, which will allow you to render any and all types of RPC content. The final product is the release of their new RPC Environments, which are sky and ground plane RPCs that allow you to mix and match between hundred of sky and ground plane combinations, including your own custom textures. The only drawback to this product currently is a nasty bug in Max 5 that will not allow this product to work in that version. I’m sure Discreet will be working to get this resolved, so stay tuned for updates.


SIGGRAPH 2003 Convention Center empties out on the final day

Well there you have it, SIGGRAPH 2003 in a nutshell. For those of you who were not able to make it out this year, start planning your time off for SIGGRAPH 2004 in Los Angeles, as it promises to be one of the larger shows in the past several years. Based upon the turnout at this year’s CGarchitect Party, I am pretty sure we will top this year attendance and bring together even more of the architectural CG community, and will be an evening not to miss.

It was pleasure to meet so many of you this year and hope to see all off you and many more at next year’s show.

View Images from SIGGRAPH 2003 HERE