SIGGRAPH, the Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques hit the Los Angeles Convention Center in a wild and woolly way this year. You could see how the visual effects on The Lord of The Rings movies were done to the latest in virtual swim gear. Even Gonzo from the Muppetsshowed up. Some really great technology that has or will wind up in products for the professional and consumer were shown.

Technology has come to the point where it is now possible to get motion picture quality animation rendered in real time using dual processor computers with high end professional graphics cards; something that you can order from an online catalog from IBM, HP, or Boxx Technologies ($8,000-$20,000). However, a lot of the software to do it is propriety right now and sometimes uses specialized interface hardware.

Someone that is uniquely using this technology is the Jim Henson Company. They are most widely known for the Muppets; but increasingly going into other areas of film and television, including the science fiction series Farscape. They have come up with the Henson Digital Performance Studio. With it you can manipulate a feature movie quality 3D character as you would a theatrical quality puppet and composite it against a rendered 3D feature movie background and have it all rendered in real time, with the characters and backgrounds near photo-real.

Demonstrated at SIGGRAPH was the NVIDIA mermaid Nalu interacting with a live audience. The mermaid was controlled by two puppeteers in a connecting booth, one of them supplying the voice of the mermaid. At a special session on puppetry and computer graphics, where the Muppet Gonzo made a surprise appearance, this technology was shown how it has been used in film and television production. Many directors prefer this method because unlike having live actors interacting with 3D characters that will be added later, the puppeteers can be directed right on set to produce the character's actions just as you would with a live actor and showing up on the director's monitor screen in real time along with the live actors. That means the director has much more control and has a much better idea of what the results will be before even getting to post production. Henson developed this system with the assistance of NVIDIA.

Each SIGGRAPH Conference has an Emerging Technologies area. This is where bleeding-edge technology is shown as being applied in some interesting ways. It is one of the highlights of the show. They had a series of self propelled floor tiles that would anticipate your movement and as you walked. The one you were on would move in the opposite direction and the next tile would place itself where the old tile was, creating a situation where you would continue walking, but never go anywhere. This has its application in virtual reality applications where a person would in reality walk, but remain stationary in the simulator. This allows the simulator to remain relatively small, but be able to have the person feel as if they are moving through a large simulated environment. This so called CirculaFloor is from the University of Tsukuba in Japan.

Also there was Swimming Across the Pacific where a person is suspended by a hang-glider harness wears a head mounted display and eight tracking sensors. It is a virtual swimming simulator, where the person experiences swimming in virtual water. They plan to use it as an entertainment device, an exercise machine, for education, and to be part of a program to treat people who are afraid of the water. They call it Swimming Across The Pacific because they plan to install it in an airplane traveling across the Pacific Ocean and have people use it while in flight. The developers are from the University of British Columbia and the Nagoya Institute of Technology.

There was also the Tickle Salon which has a multiple wire suspended metal ball dressed in a skirt that provides gentle skin stimulation. As it goes over you the system maps your body and adjusts to provide a better stimulation experience as it learns. This was from a group in Holland.

There was an interactive art presentation where a pattern was displayed on a video floor. When you walk on the pattern it disappears like it has been wounded and then goes through the process of healing itself. It uses a natural growth algorithm that causes the pattern to change. It is there to represent how two different entities interaction can result in changing the entities and such change can be both destructive and cause growth. Sunnybrook Technologies and The University of British Columbia showed off very high dynamic range computer displays, which mean the displays will be able to show far better images in contrast, detail, and color than present displays.

The game developers were there showing how real time rendered game images can show such beautiful details while you are skiing down a mountain or slicing the head off of an Orc. It is only going to get better because of the increasing power of both graphics and general purpose processors. This will be exhibited in the next generation of game consoles that are supposed to be 10 times as powerful as the current generation. There is increasing talk about the blurring of traditional movie and television entertainment and game based entertainment. On the job front, traditionally games companies have been hiring people from other sectors, especially some that have some connection to technology, art, and entertainment. With the growing numbers of specialized education programs toward game development, it is expected more people will be hired from those programs and less from related sectors.
Usually when people think of the SIGGRAPH Conferences they are thinking more of entertainment, science, and research applications, not for those at the office. However, what appeared is OfficeFX from Instant Effects www.instanteffects.com. You may have seen fancy graphics in public presentations by corporate senior management. They cost a large amount of money. Now such 3D motion graphics and effects can be part of the presentation of the average user. It works with Microsoft PowerPoint. You can even import your 3D Studio Max art work into the package. Honda and Acura are currently using it. It costs $149 and additional theme packs are available for $99 each.

Yes, there was Muppets to Mayhem at this year's SIGGRAPH Conference. I only covered a small amount of what was there. In the next few years some of the innovations that where shown will make it into your local movie theater, home, or office.

Timothy Everingham is CEO of Timothy Everingham Consulting in Azusa, California. He is also Chair (CEO) of the Los Angeles Chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH, the largest chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques and one of Southern California's significant professional organizations within the entertainment and media industries. He is also on the Management Information Systems Program Advisory Board of California State University, Fullerton; which he also graduated from with honors with the double majors of Management Information Systems and Accounting. In addition he is the Vice President of the Windows Media Users' Group of Los Angeles. He is also part-time press in the areas of high technology, computers, video, audio, and entertainment/media and has had articles published throughout the United States and Canada plus Australia, England, & Japan. He is a member of TUGNET. Further information can be found at http://home.earthlink.net/~teveringham