SIGGRAPH 2006 – The Year of Architectural Visualization

SIGGRAPH 2006 – The Year of Architectural Visualization
By Jeff Mottle

Having now recovered from this year’s SIGGRAPH, I’ve finally found some time to do a small write up about the event this year. This was my tenth SIGGRAPH in as many years, and while my role when attending SIGGRAPH has changed a fair bit since my very first show in 1996, this year will definitely be one for the record books.


Boston Convention Center Atrium
(Image Courtesy Alexander Gorbunov)

If evaluated on attendance alone SIGGRAPH Boston unfortunately would rank as one worst show in ten years. Just over 20,000 visitors attended this year, down 10,000-15,000 from the average, but based on content it was the best for the Architectural Visualization industry. Although show attendance is always low on the East coast, this year felt bigger than it actually was. In fact before I saw the actual attendance numbers, I expected them to be on par with year’s past. The presence by the Architectural community was at an all time high and as far as I’m concerned it’s about time.

SIGGRAPH Exhibition Floor
(Image Courtesy Alexander Gorbunov)

This year’s exhibition floor was where a great deal of the arch viz community was hanging out. Of course the biggest booth, and always the most visited by our community, is the Autodesk booth, where they officially announced the release of 3ds Max 9. Although held off site, the increasingly popular MasterClasses offered by Autodesk featured a number of courses specifically geared towards architectural visualization. On Tuesday afternoon Gary Davis, of VisualZ/Imaginet, presented a session entitled “Design Visualization using Combustion & 3ds max” followed by Robert Stava & Anthony Cortez of ARUP on Thursday with their session: “Lighting and Rendering for ‘Real World’ Visualization.

Autodesk also awarded both Chris White of Weta Digital and Lon Grohs of Neoscape Autodesk Masters awards for their outstanding work in the industry. Chris recently completed work on King Kong's city sequences, and Lon on the Park Plaza project in New York City.

Many of you are now starting to see the name VisMasters popping up more and more as they fill the void that has long been missing in our industry. Started by well known industry image content creator ArchVision, VisMasters is fast becoming the place to go for many of your favorite industry applications, training DVDs and content.

This year VisMasters had an impressive size booth with live presentations by many people in our industry including: Chaos Group, Neoscape, Vertus FluidMask, Bionatics, TurnTool, and ArchVision.


VisMasters Booth

Chaos Group shared the booth with VisMasters this year and was showing off the features of the much anticipated 1.5 release. Those who registered in advance were able to also pick up the latest 1.5 release candidate and the new licensing dongle that will be required to run version 1.5. Due to the number of industry vendors presenting in the booth and the visualization focus, the VisMasters booth ended up acting as the central gathering place for many architectural attendees at the show.

Packed VisMasters Booth during a presenation by Lon Grohs of Neoscape

Last year SPINE3D was the only architectural visualization firm that I could ever remember having a booth in all of the years I’ve been attending. This year saw a few more join their ranks. The crew from Neoscape had a booth in the job fair located to the side of the exhibit hall and although not known to many MediaLab also had a booth on the floor. Likely one of the bigger firms in the industry, MediaLab is not well known despite their size. They focus exclusively on the residential market with their clients including most of the largest US homebuilders. We’ll be trying to secure an interview with them in the coming months.

Next Limit Booth

Although there were over 230 exhibitors on the floor, many of whom you might be familiar, I thought I would point out a few that target our market. NextLimit, the well known creators of the Maxwell Rendering Engine has a strong presence at SIGGRAPH this year with probably the most comfortable booth at the show complete with several sofas and coffee tables that were full for the entire event for one on one demos.

Ballistic Publishing, the publishers of the outstanding EXPOSE series of coffee table books, had lineups at their booth for most of the show. While there has been no dedicated book for Arch Viz yet (we are working on that by the way) they do feature a great deal of our industries best work in each one of their new releases.

Future Publishing, the creators of 3D World Magazine, also were at the show this year. 3D World, as many of you know, ran an Architectural Visualization Supplement a few months ago featuring the CGarchitect.com Industry survey and features on a number of top architectural visualization studios.

Although not as widely used as V-Ray in our industry, Cebas’ FinalRender was next door to the guys from SPINE3D. Matt Clementson, the well known fR guru and CGA forum member, was a fixture in the booth showing off the latest features to passers by.

Matt Clementson - fR Guru and (foot model?)
The guys from Quest3D also had a large booth this year and showed off some amazing new work produced with their VR engine. While entirely node based now, I was told the next version will have an even more refined GUI with menu and tab based setups.

Springer, the publisher/distributor for Brian Smith’s new Foundations 3ds max 8 Architectural Visualization book, was also at the show this year, but for some reason forgot to bring the book! VisMasters to the rescue - they had several display copies on the floor for those that were anxiously waiting to see what the hype was all about!


Quest3D Booth

VisMasters Design Visualization Conference

Following SIGGRAPH this year, the team from VisMasters hosted their inaugural conference for the design visualization industry. Showing how they are committed to not only servicing the industry with the best visualization products, but also strengthening the industry as a whole, VisMasters staged a sold out event for 300 participants.

Morning Session at the DVC

The event took place at the Boston Park Plaza hotel on Friday August 4th in Boston, MA and attracted delegates from 16 countries and 32 US states. The goal of the conference was to bring together professionals from all areas to talk about the evolution of our industry and where modeling and visualization area headed.

The morning session started with a presentation from Ernest Burden III, from Acme Digital, and was met with rave reviews. Ernest likened artistic and well executed imagery to famous portraits. His comparisons really hit home that visualization is and should be regarded as an art form and not a technical exercise. Those in attendance took away a wonderful array of examples and a new appreciation for the art of visualization. Following Ernest, Lon Grohs and Nils Norgren presented the workflow and approach Neoscape takes when creating their cinematic architectural films. Starting with their approach and storyboarding techniques right down to the types of camera moves that make a successful film.

Nils Norgren of Neoscape

Originally slated to be presented by Sean Mei from ScreamPoint, who was called away at the last minute, attendees were treated to an engaging presentation from Paul Doherty Vice-President of Land Development and Home Production for K. Hovnanian Homes, the 6th largest home builder in the US. Paul’s presentation closely mirrored the session that was to be presented by Sean, by discussing the opportunities and challenges that exist in the building industry when using 3D and BIM in real world applications. The presentation was highlighted by the fact that he not only discussed BIM, but showed how it is actually being used in a working and large scale architectural operation.

Following lunch attendees filed back to the theater for an insightful discussion panel presented by representatives by some of the industries top architectural and design firms. Ron Reim of Occulus, Martin Summers from Morphois, James Vanderzande from SOM and Jonathan Ward from NBBJ. All presented their individual views and how their firms are using 3D models and visualization in their practices.

Lon Grohs Presenting during the V-Ray User Group Meeting

The afternoon sessions wrapped up with a short networking break which led into three concurrent user group meetings and technology presentation hosted by Autodesk, FormZ and Chaos Group.

CGarchitect.com Architectural Visualization Industry Awards.

After a long day of presentations VisMasters Design Visualization conference attendees were invited to the exclusive awards presentation in the extravagant ballroom at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel. This year marked the 2nd annual AVC awards and 3rd annual 3D Industry awards. Winners of both competitions were announced and presented the exclusive CGA crystal award. Winners Gus Capote (3Dawards best still image), Sean De Boer (AVC 2006 First Place – Individual) and Team Salt Lake Graphics Society (First Place – Team Category) were all on hand to accept their awards in person.

CGarchitect.com 2006 Animation Reel playing to 300 VM DVC Attendees

The evening wrapped up with an open bar and food for all of the attendees in a VisMasters after party.

VisMasters After Party

Overall the VisMasters Design Visualization conference was a huge success and has been met with a great deal of praise from all of the attendees. The resulting success has paved the way for two more events in the coming year. VisMasters will be partnering with the IMAGINA conference in Monaco to bring you another conference (Feb 2, 2007) and plans are already underway for a follow up event following next year’s SIGGRAPH in San Diego (Aug 10-11, 2007). The conference is being renamed to the DMVC (Design Modeling & Visualization Conference) to reflect a broader range of interest in both visualization and modeling aspects of the industry.

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