From the show floor at SIGGRAPH — Tuesday, August 7, 2012
by Jeff Greenwald on Aug 8, 2012
As Matt Jacobs, Video Effects (VFX) Supervisor of Tippett Studio, discussed how during their rendering of the movie The Immortals, Tippett’s artists nonetheless struggled with creating what he referred to as “The Ballet of Blood”. They used Pipeline FX Qube, Autodesk Maya and Houdini Fluid Simulation tool and built mesh simulations in-house. (And of course, the infrastructure was supported by Hitachi NAS storage from Hitachi Data Systems!)
Salaries in China and interest in western movies are both rising. Even Ron Stinson of Rainmaker, a visual effects shop in Vancouver BC, commented that with XingXing Animation’s recent acquisition of Rainmaker, movies can more easily move into China from government quotas (previously limited to 26 films per studio). With the Rainmaker purchase, films can now move from Rainmaker to China with almost limitless transparency to their new parent company.
Other observations from SIGGRAPH beyond the HDS booth…
Although you might think that Hollywood is American or maybe even think of media and entertainment as an “American” Olympic sport, the artists and studio post-production executives that are speaking in the HDS booth this week (and many who are attending SIGGRAPH) are keenly aware of how interconnected and international this industry truly is.
With tens of thousands of artists streaming into the exhibition hall, North American video imagery creators, must improve their own effectiveness and digital story telling or be replaced by craftsman who are residents of other countries. Creators from Sydney to Beijing, from Barcelona to Belgrade, and from Moscow to Morocco might have faster rendering platforms, better data migration software tools, and improved storage solutions that provide that extra edge. This is what SIGGRAPH is all about – learning as a community about new technologies on the horizon or those rapidly coming to a post-production house near you. More to come tomorrow on day two….
