young@pixar (Bruce Young, Isaac's Daddy) (08/25/86)
I just returned from SIGGRAPH and thought it would be nice to see some
net discussion on the show. What did all you attendees think? My
impressions are below. (I will try to filter out as many of my Pixar
biases as possible.)
Best Film -- Other than the Pixar films, I thought that Jim Blinn's
Mechanical Universe was superb. Abel Image Research had
the best commercial work. The Dr. Pepper commercial was entertaining.
One comment on the film show. Isn't everyone getting tired of
seeing technically advanced but boring imagery? I think that
computer graphics has progressed to the point that the story/art
content is at least as important as the technical aspects.
BAN FLYING LOGOS.
Best Paper -- Unfortunately I am unable to comment on this one as I was
stuck on the exhibition floor for nearly the entire show. I would
really like to hear from the net on this topic.
Best Party -- Abel Image Research. I just hope that the Plaza of the Americas
was able to recover their Presidential Suite.
Best Exhibit -- Tough one to call (except Pixar's :-) of course!). Several
interesting ones -- Miekos (sp?) had a box with several hundred
Transputers doing Ray Traced images in about 1 min. ~$850K.
.Vertigo was selling a animation system consisting of an IRIS, SUN 3
and a 'render accelerator' for $120K.
Shima-Sieki (sp?) had a complete paint system for the Broadcast market
with a 4kx4k framebuffer, scanner, output, optical discs, ray tracing
hardware, etc for $330K.
Hewlett-Packard's 320SRX was quite well received as well. I think they
may give Silicon Graphics a run for their money.
Megascan had a black and white monitor with specs so incredible that
it was difficult to believe. 3k x 3k (or so) with 1.5 GHz video.
That's right folks, one and a half GIGAHERTZ!
I'm sorry if I got any information wrong. Most of it was from memory.
I'll look forward to reading other people's SIGGRAPH observations. All in all
I thought it was a good show.
{ucbvax,sun}!pixar!young
(I'm probably the only one at Pixar with these opinions so appropriate
disclaimers apply)hr@uicsl.UUCP (08/27/86)
RE:
"/* ---------- "SIGGRAPH observations" ---------- */"
"Best Film -- Other than the Pixar films, I thought that Jim Blinn's
Mechanical Universe was superb."
I need to find out how to get our local PBS station to show it.
I might finally learn some physics.
"Luxo" (?), a pixar flick was easily one of the best films.
"Isn't everyone getting tired of seeing technically advanced but
boring imagery?"
My wife has noticed a continual improvement in the artistic quality of
the Siggraph movies since Minneapolis. But there is a long way to go.
"BAN FLYING LOGOS."
PLEASE DO!
"Best Paper"
I usually go to sleep during these and I missed the ones I wanted
to see, so I can't comment.
"Best Party"
The ones I missed.
Worst Party -- The conference reception on Thursday. It was so be we
got a free lunch on Friday.
"Best Exhibit"
I liked Commodore's booth, but I'm biased.
----
harold ravlin {ihnp4,pur-ee}!uiucdcs!uicsl!hrbobr@zeus.UUCP (Robert Reed) (08/27/86)
Bruce Young is being too modest (understandably so) about the Electronic Theater. Certainly the Pixar film, "Luxor Jr." stole the show, just as "Tony de Peltri" did last year. We've finally reached the age of CG animation where the technique is good enough that it can be forgotten, so that the art of film or video can be the focus. "Luxor Jr." has all the technique that anyone could ask for, but you think about that for about three seconds, and then become engrossed in the story. Generating yet another flyby around simple geometric solids just doesn't cut it anymore. BEST PAPER. My vote would be for "Fast Phong Shading" by Gary Bishop, et. al. Not only is the work significant, but his presentation was entertaining and delightful, helping many party-weary audience members stay awake enough to follow it. BEST PARTY. I heard that the Abel party was really crowded this year, but my vote for the best time goes to the Pixar organized sortie to the Photon parlor that same night. For two and a half hours, sixty crazed maniacs from nearly as many companies donned combat gear to dash around an obstacle course, shooting each other with LED equiped plastic guns. BEST EXHIBIT. Pixar certainly had some great demos. I was also impressed with the Symbolix/Pixar marriage, the Symbolics Scope. But the booth that really blew me away was the Japanese company up near the main entrance (what were they called?) who had eight fully stuffed graphics processor boards, most with custom chips and two to ten megabytes of memory, with various names such as the "Pre Postprocessor". The hardware looked awesome! :-) In general, this struck me as a refinement year for SIGGRAPH. The show seems to either present big new gizmos all over the floor, that do new and amazing things, or to reshow last year's gizmos and demonstrate that they actually work. This year was definitely the latter. -------- I went to the hardware store and bought some used paint. It was in the shape of a house. I also bought some batteries, but they weren't included. --Steve Wright ---- Robert Reed, Tektronix CAE Systems Division, tektronix!teklds!bobr
haddock@ti-csl (08/28/86)
I thought that one of the most interesting displays was the one from
Inmos themselves with ~320 Transputers hooked up to a Compaq that
performed 8-bit color Mandelbrot's in about 2-3 seconds!!!! Sort
takes all the fun out of waiting an hour on a VAX for some of those
critters. :-)
-Rusty-
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