Siggraph

[Sawyer]

I may have a chace to go to the festival this year & I have a few questions:

 

When will the schedule of events be posted?

 

It's a bit of cash can anyone whose been give a description of their experiance?

 

Jeff will you be holding another get together this year?

 

Thanks

[John Dollus]

In LA, take advantage of the Siggy buses for events and avoid the taxis. The events are usually spread out and walking the streets of downtown LA in the evening is not exactly pedestrian-friendly. Oh, and book a room early!

 

-edited-

Just saw you are in Sacremento so you probably already know about what I posted. Might be useful to someone else, though.

[Jeff Mottle]

The courses have already been posted when I last checked. Were you looking for something else?

 

Yeah I am planning to host an event, but do not usually start plannig that until May or June. I am still waiting for the SIGGRAPH comittee to post media registrations.

[Sawyer]

I am just trying to figure out if I am going to go. And if I did go maybe I would just go for a few days not the complete week.

 

I looked again I guess I had not looked hard enough. Here is the schedule if anyone else wants to gander:

 

 

http://www.siggraph.org/s2004/conference/courses/index.php?pageID=conference

[bob6060]

I went to my first SIGGRAPH last year so consider this source.

 

SIGGRAPH seemed to be four conferences at once: 1) classroom lectures, 2) cutting edge papers, 3) product exhibits including indepth demos that were also live tutorials and some hands on classes, 4) birds of a feather networking on well advertized regional and topical themes.

 

The lectures were very good and I particularly appreciated the early session on how to do SIGGRAPH. The cutting edge papers were just that. I respect this important work but it is not my interest. There were also high tech exhibits which were interesting and fun. I did not do as much BOF networking as most did but it is always a good idea. That leaves the famous exhibit floor.

 

It was an excellent representation of most of the CG industry but rather light on architecture, per se. Heavy emphasis on character animation (entirely consistent with the economic driver of the industry -- gaming). The chat on the soda line was who knew of anyone who could do gaming programming for cell phones. Another big exhibit theme was motion capture and automated character rigging, e.g. Kaydara rollout out their Motion Builder 5. I was surprised at the hardware focus. Of the 15 exhibitors, six were: INTEL, AMD, HP, ATI, nVidia (two booths) and 3dLabs. Similarly, much of the discussion was the continued push to move graphics processing off of the motherboard onto the more muscular graphics cards. Two big web developments seemed to be the EVENT of the rollout of the ANARK 3d web authoring product and the total absence of Macromedia -- a non-Event. Less than a month before their major 2004 suite upgrade, the Macromedia were a no-show. On the other hand, NewTek was proudly showing off LW 8 and it has not been released yet. Go figure.

 

Pleasant surprises: Sketchup was there with a terrific realtime demo capability. ArchVision also had a large presence. There were many, many art schools there which helped me remember that I am first and foremost an artist and only a geek as a survival skill. After seeing a young lady with a teeshirt that said, "There are 10 kinds of people: those who know binary and those who don't" I was beginning to feel lost.

 

Enjoy SIGGRAPH 2004. I'm going to sit it out.

 

Bob Gerber

Gerber Grafix

[Sawyer]

I like your take Bob thanks for the input.

[bob6060]

Thanks. Glad it helped. One fairly big typo:

 

I meant to say, "Of the 15 LARGEST exhibitors, six were: INTEL, AMD, HP, ATI, nVidia (two booths) and 3dLabs." There were over 230 exhibitors there and I would expect more in LA.

 

Bob Gerber

Gerber Grafix