Frankie Goes to Hollywood ... L.A. Convention Center Actually

As long as you haven't moved your CAD system under a rock, then you know that SIGGRAPH 2010 is going off at the L.A. Convention Center at the moment. I could definitely tell that there was an anticipation for my appearance at the convention, so when Novedge founders Cristiano Sacchi and Franco Folini, as well as I, rolled up to the Convention Center in our 2009 BMW M3 I was surprised to find absolutely no paparazzi. Though I was demoralized, I wasn't defeated so i grabbed the Italians and pressed forward.

As a SIGGRAPH newbie, I was agog with all the bright lights and LCD displays. While my mind began to clear, we began snaking around the exhibition in a pre-determined geometric pattern (obviously calculated by the engineer bosses). The first booth of interest was obviously Autodesk. As the largest exhibition in the area it was difficult to miss. The crowd surrounding it was large and actively engaged in an enthralling demo of Maya. I stuck around long enough to get some sweet Autodesk 20th anniversary shwag and then moseyed on.

After a brief racing adventure courtesy of Bell, the three of us San Franciscans browsed several booths dedicated to collegiate 3D instruction like SCAD and Rochester Institute of Technology on our way to our next point of interest: Artec Group. These cats were demoing some REALLY cool new 3D recognition and scanning technology. They were one of I believe four different companies demoing such technology but most of the others were more interested in motion or inertia capture while Artec provides real-time 3D imaging. We really couldn't help ourselves because the demo just happened to be interactive. I took a deep breath, stepped up and volunteered to be digitized. While thoughts of Jeff Bridges in TRON were running through my mind, I made sure that they were aware that my image is copyrighted and if I discovered Frank Lipari bobble-heads on eBay I would be sure to sue. The whole process only took 10 seconds but for some reason it felt alot longer. When there's a crowd of people watching you, it becomes increasingly difficult to improvise "interesting" movements. Somehow I made it through and a few seconds later, the program had synthesized my movements and began a looped playback. I was mesmerized.

We had to swing by our friends at Maxon and scope some of the demos they had going on and we weren't let down. Though their sign was larger than their demo-screen, as you can see the audience was rapt with attention as Cinema 4D professionals wooed them with their prowess. Unfortunately, I was looking forward to the screening of Daihei Shibata's short film entitled The Light of Life (made with Cinema 4D). The film received the Grand Prize at the 2009 Asia Digital Art Awards and was recently featured as part of Saatchi & Saatchi’s New Director’s Showcase 2010 in June but I wasn't able to make it! I'm going to have to try to find it online.

Once we cruised by Next Limit to check up on Maxwell, we took a moment to admire the Emmy that Lightwave had on display while enjoying a demo on the new real-time rendering features in their layout view. As far as rendering is concerned, this seemed to be a common theme. Keyshot (personal fave) as well as Maxwell were demoing this recent addition to their software and focusing demos (at least on Tuesday) on this useful ability. Keyshot, however, was also demoing rendering-farm for near real-time rendering. Their specific demo was running on a 24 core CPU with spectacular results.

Franco, Cris and I finished off our tour of the Exhibition with a stop by the Rhino booth. Perched next door to Keyshot, my main man Brian James was demoing and Bobby McNeel was rolling around signing autographs. Ok, maybe he wasn't signing autographs but I definitely wanted to get one but couldn't work up the nerve. Since I'm new to using Rhino, Brian and I began talking about my recent exploration into 3D modeling and my desperate desire to create Star Trek models. The conversation quickly turned to rendering and he was able to pull up Keyshot on his 4 year old laptop and give me a quick tut on how efficient and easy to use it is with Rhino. I was a believer.

When our number was called for our turn with Bob McNeel, I felt like a kid about to meet Santa. I introduced myself and was about to ask for a new bike when he said: "Ah! You're crazy Frank, huh?"

Bob knew my name.

Restraining myself from gushing, I replied, "Only to my friends." And we were off! After discussing RhinoJungle and new engineering plug-ins our friends are developing we had to say goodbye. But that was ok. There would be another time. Plus we had monopolized alot of his time and the man was in high demand. So after we bid Brian and he a fond adieu, we three Novedgeans ended our Los Angeles experience the only appropriate way we knew how:

At the beach. Manhattan Beach to be precise, before a quick plane ride home.