Softimage at SIGGRAPH

Is it really over?

2008-08-16T04:44:00.001-07:00

Wow.

It's Saturday morning, and I am back in Montreal. I finally had a chance to go through all the videos that are fab Avid Video team put together, and it was really great to see what they were able to capture.

The week of SIGGRAPH goes by in a blur.. i was there for 8 days this year, since Christine and I get in a few days early for set-up. As shown in the videos, we had a lot going on this year.. Production Challenge, the Education Summit, Reseller Meeting, Leadership Summit, Developer Conference and all that took place before the show even started!

We had a large amount of the latest available 8 core workstations at the show - due to ICE being multi-threaded, we were pretty demanding of our hardware partners that they had to provided fully loaded systems, and they all delivered! We had at least 20 systems from our great partners like HP, Dell and Lenovo for SIGGRAPH that included the latest and greatest technology, including a couple of the new Dreamcolour monitors.

We had a new booth this year, which was constantly standing room only. I do apologize for the small design flaw that caused some tripping around the corners - if it's any consolation, I was the first one to go flying when i walked into the booth first thing Tuesday morning. (Thanks Mark for pointing that out during your demo!)

Of course, party party.. we hosted the NICE ICE party on tuesday to replace our annual User Group. The goal this year was to celebrate the launch of ICE with our clients, and i think we certainly were able to do that! And i am still impressed with Vanilla's set and how NICE ICE he really is!

We also sponsored the Blur Crystal Method party on Wednesday. I headed over after stopping by the Pipeline FX party at the Standard. At Blur i missed Carmen Electra's performance unfortunately, but i did get the chance to dance for a bit, sore feet notwithstanding!

More pix coming soon.. thanks to everyone on the Softimage team and in the Softimage Community for a stellar week.. it was my 5th SIGGRAPH and my favorite one to date!

Highlights from the Show Floor

2008-08-14T20:47:00.000-07:00

Education Summit, Show Floor, & Nice ICE Video!

2008-08-14T00:29:00.000-07:00

ICE ICE Baby! Softimage Nice ICE party photos

2008-08-13T12:29:00.000-07:00

Tuesday August 12th 2008, Softimage held its Nice ICE party at Club 740 in downtown Los Angeles. 3000 people packed into the club where Vanilla ICE performed!

Word to your mother

2008-08-13T09:27:00.001-07:00

What an awesome party - Vanilla Ice was great, everyone thought he was brilliant. He even brought Ron Jeremy along with him... yeah, _the_ Ron Jeremy. My sides were hurting it was so funny.

I think pretty much everyone got into the party (except for people without ID - which is the club's policy, not ours) and had a good time. We had podium dancers, awesome DJ's, trapeze performers, all kinds of stuff going on. Hanging out with customers and friends with no agenda other than to have a good time. Driving to the club we saw our show reel being projected onto the sides of the building, which was pretty exciting. I spent a fair amount of time in the super VIP area (sneaking people in mostly), which seemed a privilege until I saw the bar bill. Ouch!

Anyway - another day on the show floor beckons. I pretty much lost my voice shouting at the party, so today is going to be interesting.

Best. Party. Ever. Jen and Christine deserve a huge round of applause for all their work on getting that party together.

(duplicate post)

Softimage Production Challenge

2008-08-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

And so it begins....

2008-08-12T08:42:00.000-07:00

Managed to escape the frenzy last night and get an early night - so no red eye this morning. Had a flick through some of the announcements for the show. Mudbox looks really nice, so I am looking forward to seeing a demonstration of that. Apparently they were doing live digital painting throughout the party, which sounds pretty sweet. It will be interesting to see what Pixelogic come back with - I heard they were just doing sneak peak stuff. We'll soon see. It's always good for the customers when packages duke it out - you lucky people you ;)

I get to spend a whole morning on the stand today before I get locked away in our meeting suites, so talking to the visitors makes for a fun time. I don't envy the guys on our booth team, when I used to be an application engineer it got really tiring. It also screwed my demo flow for about a month after a show as I got stuck in a "show them as much as possible in ten minutes" demo mode :)

I'll take some pictures on my phone today and post them up later - tonight is our party, which is going to be great. I doubt my posts tomorrow will be quite so jolly :)

*short version of another blog post*

All Education, all the time!

2008-08-06T10:26:00.000-07:00

It's my last day in the office before heading to LA. ACK.

(A perfect time to write a blog post, of course.. not like i don't have a zillion things to do, but I like this better!)

I am just finalizing some details on our Education initiatives at SIGGRAPH, and I received some fantastic news from Kevin, our PR manager. I'll share that later on..

At SIGGRAPH 2008, Softimage will be holding an Education Summit on Monday, August 11th from 3-5pm at the Sheraton Downtown Los Angeles. We are expecting representatives from the leading art and design schools from around the world, and we have a packed agenda for them. We'll be showing off XSI 7 and integration with CryEngine 2 and Gamebryo.. presenting new training material from Escape Studios designed specifically for educators and "How to integrate XSI 7 & ICE into your curriculum," presented by Softimage Certified Instructor Adam Sale. And longtime Softimage user and studio owner Marc Bourbonnais of ModusFX will be sharing his thoughts on how instructors can help in "Preparing Students for their First Job."

More details can be found here: http://www.softimage.com/events/sig08/edu_summit.aspx

We are also holding the 2nd annual Production Challenge on Sunday, August 10, also at the Sheraton, from 11am-8pm. This is a master class to end master classes.. 4 of the industry's top XSI artists will be creating a shot LIVE in front of an audience. You won't be taught about techniques at this event.. you will learn both how and why these talented artists use the software in a real, live production scenario. It's also FREE!

Don't miss it - register HERE: http://www.softimage.com/events/sig08/prod_challng.aspx

For the 2nd year in a row, Softimage is sponsoring the Student Volunteer Program with 300+ licenses of SOFTIMAGE XSI 7 Academic. At the end of the show, each volunteer will have a FREE license of XSI 7. That's approximately $90,000 worth of software!

Ooh.. I just got GREAT news from our partners over at Digital-Tutors. Every attendee of our events at SIGGRAPH will receive a special promotion code for a brand new, not-yet-announced training title for XSI 7.. which will entitle them to 40 per cent off the cost of the training!
http://www.digitaltutors.com/store/home.php?cat=32

So my great news.. A few months ago, Digital Content Producer Magazine asked us to help promote a student cover contest for their SIGGRAPH issue. Well, they chose a Softimage XSI artist from Centre NAD here in Montreal!

Here's a mini shot of the cover:

See you soon!

jen

SIGGRAPH 2008 Booth Schedule Posted

2008-07-31T10:59:00.000-07:00

The booth schedule for Softimage at SIGGRAPH 2008 has been posted. Booth #647. Be there!

Special presentations:

Using XSI for the award-winning anime, TekkonKinkreet (English, translated) - Takuma Sakomoto, Studio 4°C
Rock Legend Uses XSI in the Music World - Rudy Sarzo
Using XSI to Create Basketball-Playing Robots for Mitsubishi Robot Factory Ad - Andrew Proctor, The Mill
Creating VFX for Journey to the Center of the Earth Using XSI - VFX Supervisor Chris Townsend and Mathieu Leclair, Hybride
Creating Photoreal Simulations in XSI, Phil Dobree, Jellyfish Pictures
Using XSI for Creature Features, Aaron Sims
Pre-Viz & Post-Production Using XSI 7 and ICE, Robert Moodie, Buzz Image Group
XSI in Education, Carl Callewaert & Chris Cowen, Center for Arts and Technology
Using XSI to Animate Dinosaurs in Jurassic Fight Club, Jeff Stoyer, 1080
Using finalRender with XSI, Edwin Braun, Cebas Computer

Softimage SIGGRAPH 2008 Booth Schedule

SIGGRAPH by the Numbers..

2008-07-29T17:29:00.000-07:00

As we get closer to the date of our biggest show of the year, all i seem to see is numbers..

- 3 sets of show giveaways have been delivered
- 4 different hotels have Softimage reservations
- 5 student volunteers are lined up
- 7 ancillary events are planned
- 9 days until the first crew departs for LA
- 21 workstations are being staged
- 22 customer presentations are scheduled
- 42 staff members have been registered for show badges

.. and so on...

There's a buzz on the 5th floor of Softimage HQ, as the marketing team's checklists are being completed one by one.. RSVPs are coming by the dozens every hour.. schedules are filling up.. everyone is gearing up for LA!!

jen

Register for Nice ICE: the can’t-miss Softimage event of SIGGRAPH 2008

2008-07-29T14:16:00.002-07:00

At SIGGRAPH 2008, Softimage will be hosting its Nice ICE event - unlike anything you've ever seen! If you're going to SIGGRAPH, this is one event you don't want to miss.

Where: Club 740 in downtown Los Angeles
When: Tuesday, August 12th, 8:00PM-1:00AM.

Join us at one of L.A.’s premier nightclubs for an exciting multimedia celebration of XSI 7, featuring music from live DJ’s and a surprise guest performer that you absolutely won’t want to miss!

Register Now

Welcome to the Softimage at SIGGRAPH 2008 blog!

2008-07-29T14:16:00.001-07:00

It's SIGGRAPH time again and Softimage will be there in full swing!

Watch this space for more information.

Softimage @ SIGGRAPH video part 4

2007-08-15T19:41:00.000-07:00

Softimage @ SIGGRAPH video part 3

2007-08-09T23:21:00.001-07:00

Production Challenge Finished Animation

2007-08-09T23:20:00.000-07:00

And it's a wrap!!!

2007-08-09T17:54:00.000-07:00

I just watched the second SIGGRAPH video - I hope our users are enjoying them as much as I am. Josh, Brandon & Doug have been great - I am so amazed at how fast they are able to cut these together!!

This has been an incredible week. The Production Challenge. The Research Summit. The User Event. The Party. Our client presenters were wonderful - i was able to watch almost a little bit of all of them this year, which was nice.

I just heard that some people that attended the party thought it was one of the three best SIGGRAPH parties ever - that was nice to hear, especially since I know people were frustrated that the couldn't get in. It's chaos when you have 2700 people at an event, and I am sorry for those who couldn't attend. I am happy that it was such a great party that Marc Stevens almost closed the place - and i even got him out on the dance floor for a bit!

House of Moves & pendulum were the co-hosts of that party - it wasn't just a Softimage event - collaborating was great fun, and I can't believe I am about to say this, but we are already thinking of next year in LA!

Paul Hellard is writing great reports of the show at www.cgsociety.org check them out!!!

Our fabulous Director of EMEA Sales - Mark Pammenter!

My good friend Melanie from Autodesk laughing at Mark demo-ing 3dsMax.

Me and Bill Coleman (our VP of Sales) - making up after a little bit of drama.

So cool to be on 2 Marquees in 2 days.

Softimage @ SIGGRAPH video part 2

2007-08-09T14:46:00.000-07:00

What. a. night.

2007-08-09T09:37:00.000-07:00

Last night's party was insane. We had about 2700 people filter through the House of Blues. I have a couple of pics, and when I find my charger I'll post. :)

I have organized a few parties in my day, but nothing on the scale of last evening.

This has been quite the week. SIGGRAPH 2007 was the best I have ever been to.

Overheard...

2007-08-08T20:07:00.000-07:00

Syd Mead speaking to Moondust lead engineer Ronald Beirouti, "Young man, that's some wonderful software."

Nice. 'Nuff said.

XSI and Face Robot in the Guerilla Studio...

2007-08-08T18:06:00.001-07:00

For those at SIGGRAPH - the Guerilla Studio is a place where artists or anyone can TRY 3D -- It's a non-intimidating chance to sit down with XSI and Face Robot -- and explore at your own pace... Getting there is a bit of a journey.. up the escalators, across the food court, down the escalators -- whew! I can't wait until Transporters are invented.

Kevin G.

Wednesday.. wow!

2007-08-08T18:06:00.000-07:00

CAPCOM presenting Lost Planet

The Full Sail Gang with Syd Mead

Scott Gagain (House of Moves) & I mentally preparing for the chaotic party we are about to throw.

Quick - Hide those party tickets!

Hi -

It's Wednesday, 6pm, and I am trying to get ready for the VFXtasy party tonight.

Last night's User Event was amazing - I never had such a great time watching an event. It was held in an old theatre - Spreckels - and it was perfect. Chinny was a great MC, our GM Marc Stevens did a great corporate overview - and fas too - chinny and i were very impressed at how he clicked through those slides.

Syd Mead is a gem. Absolutely brilliant, kind and supportive. He was also signing autographs in the booth today,

Chris Watts, Daniel Leduc and Joe Kasparian did a fantastic presentation on 300, one of my fav movies of the year. The two presentations were so different, yet alike in the fact that every great movie, every picture, all starts and ends with a good story.

I am trying to rally for the VFXtasy party tonight. We are so overbooked, we ran out of tickets and half of SIGGRAPH probably doesn't like me very much right now!!

Three hours and I'll find out! see ya later!

SOFTIMAGE PRESS EVENT

2007-08-08T17:58:00.001-07:00

Softimage Press Conference in San Diego
Kevin G. and Karen Moltenbrey from CGW -

Leonard Teo shares the news about XSI 6.5 Essentials & Advanced

JoAnna Scott from the UK interviews Greg & Marcin -
Winners of the SIGGRAPH "Best of Show" for their animated short "ARK"-
rigging and animation done in XSI

Softimage Production Challenge Time Lapse

2007-08-08T14:09:00.001-07:00

Wednesday August 8th - Softimage at SIGGRAPH

2007-08-08T13:44:00.000-07:00

We're in our third day at SIGGRAPH. Monday - Production Challenge -(awesome). Softimage Press Event (see photos) --the news is out! XSI 6.5 Essentials & Advanced. New features - new pricing - GREAT time to upgrade or subscribe to Maintenence.

Syd Mead came back to San Diego, (he was here last week for Comic Con to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Blade Runner), as our Key note speaker for the SOFTIMAGE user evnet. Syd gave a very nice interview to FXguide.com -- lots of sage advise for tomorrow's designers.

More to come after we catch our breath... Kevin G. PR

Softimage @ SIGGRAPH video part 1

2007-08-08T00:21:00.001-07:00

And there is still a show to do?!?!

2007-08-07T07:09:00.000-07:00

12am - and the discussions about the Production Challeng are still going strong.

Softimage Ladies of SIGGRAPH - Caroline, Christine, Anick & Sarah

Research Summit was a full house!

What you dont see - pre-event wackiness, illustrated here by Bill Roberts.

Reseller meeting was a packed affair.

We packed a LOT into yesterday. We started the day with a reseller meeting, then the Research Summit (Bill summed it up nicely, all i want to add is WOW) and a press conference. It was a crazy day

I was at the booth until about 730pm, Nicolas and Christine and Caroline Laberge (a godsend to have your Licensing Manager here... YAY Caro!!) wereat the meeting suites until bout 9pm.. but we are feeling officially READY for the show to begin!!

The results of the Production Challenge are so cool I can't get over it. We were up in Todd's room at midnight looking at the daillies.. Tick Toc Man is coming to life.... I can't wait to get that online and show all of you!

Tonight is the User Event.. Chris Watts arrived here in San Diego, waiting for Mr Mead now. This is going to be such a great User Event, I can't wait!! (well, except for the 1000 hings I need to do before it starts!)

Time to run - I need to get to the show and go over all the final details before the doors open in 90 min and SIGGRAPH 2007 begins!!

PS If someone sees me fling my mobile into the Ocean - is not my fault. it wont stop RINGING!! :)

Softimage Research Summit at Siggraph 2007

2007-08-06T18:27:00.000-07:00

Time for my first post. After all the pain and hassle of getting the NDA's signed the penultimate Softimage uber-geek-out event is over. In a word - WOW!

Great day - about 80 industry leaders joined us for 5 hours of a future-vision immersion session.

Along with an amazing view of how the industry's hardware will evolve in the years to come our guests were treated to multiple demonstrations of how Softimage will harness all this power and deliver it to our customers to make the digital art of the future.

For those of you who have heard the name Moondust but weren't at the event, get ready for a re-definition. Our brilliant team of developers showed how this amazing piece of core technology will not only will provide a platform that Softimage can develop on – but also provide an amazing interface for any creative use with a vision to build their own custom tools. May sound a little vague, but if you were there - you know what I mean.

Also pretty amazing from a raw power perspective to see an 8 core machine use all available compute cycles and flatten all the meters - demos of the task manager are usually so un-cool....but not today.

For those who attend the user group you will see some of the Research Summit technology - but packaged into more tighter demos with the added bonus of Mark Schoennagel's witty repartee.

All in all - we had a great afternoon, our sponsors AMD, NVIDIA and HP all spelled out how the hardware would change and mental images and Softimage explained how they would "rock-the-box"

Bring on the show floor!

More photos..

2007-08-06T08:01:00.000-07:00

Kevin G. Clark & Anick Gagne take a bite out of SIGGRAPH

Sarah, Brandon, Josh & Doug - our Avid editors

Ken Knobel & Nikki Bridgman

Bill Coleman & me

Alexandre Jean Claude, Ronal Berouti, Andre Foisy, Jean Beaudry & Dom Laflamme check out the booth construction

Production Challenge - What a blast!

2007-08-06T07:13:00.000-07:00

Kevin's right - the Production Challenge was amazing. And our full capacity at one point was 110, but the amazing thing was that it went from 12pm-10pm. TEN HOURS - and some people were there for the entire time.

It was an amazing experience watching David, Greg, Todd & Brad in action. I spend so much time watching demos and customers present, but this was the first time I got to watch our clients work. Seeing Greg and Todd collaborate, David and Brad banter - and seeing these artists create a project in front of our eyes was just a complete delight.

I have never enjoyed an event more. We recorded a time lapse of the event, so we'll be putting that together for everyone to see. Brad and Todd will also be presenting the results of the Challenge in the booth on Wednesday - we haven't sorted out if we can fit this into the User Event or not.

The best part - everyone wants to do this again.

jen

Big news this morning

2007-08-06T06:35:00.000-07:00

I finally do my first post since I'm in San Diego. Haven't had much time to go around the city, as we were making sure everything was ready for the show, but also on the web for our big announcement of the day: XSI 6.5 and Face Robot 1.8!

The press release Kevin prepared just hit the wires, and the team in Montreal just published on the web site all the info about the new products (thanks Jamal and Pat!). We're pretty excited about the new pricing and feature packaging for XSI 6.5, can't wait to get feedback about that when we hit the show floor tomorrow.

It's almost 7am here, kind of early, but we had to sync with the press release to go live with everything. And because of the jet lag, I can't sleep late anyway. I'm going to go for breakfast, and then will make sure, with the rest of the team, that everything is ready for tomorrow when the show floor start.

SOFTIMAGE Production Challenge_Huge Success!

2007-08-05T19:00:00.000-07:00

The Softimage Production Challenge kicked off today at the HYATT Hotel - (the one Mike Seymore from FXguide.com was asking me.. where? when? ) Here's the link again to the awesome "Fantastic Four" artists who are a force for everyone.to behold! Brad Gabe (Stan Winston Studios), David Andrews (The Orphanage), Todd Akita (PSYOP) and Greg Punchatz (Janimation)-- are showing how a real life production works (no canned Master Classes here).
What we are most pleased about is that the room was FILLED to CAPACITY-- with over 75 attending! The "TickTock Man" modeled, rigged, lit and then animation with the Dali-esque clock faced man and Jelly beans flying will be shown at the SOFTIMAGE User Event on Tuesday, August 7th (7:00pm - 10:00pm). I got all our NEWS printed at Kinkos, but I left my USB drive there. I have to drive back up to Hillcrest Kinkos and pick it up. D'oah.. Kevin G.

San Diego Marine Layer on Sunday

2007-08-05T07:28:00.001-07:00

Kevin: Woke up at 6:22am with the sound of airplanes taking off. Today is Sunday, and the SOFTIMAGE team is gathering to go over all of our news and activities taking place at the show. I am staying with some friends that live across the San Diego Bay in Point Loma, and today is KINKOs day; the bane of existence for any PR person before a Trade Show. This is fine, as we have some pretty awesome news to print up this SIGGRAPH! The Production Challenge starts today at 12:00 noon at the HYATT Hotel. Mike Seymore from FX Guide (www.fxguide.com) just pinged me wanting to know where & when! A complete list of EVERYTHING we are doing at SIGGRAPH is posted on our site at: http://www.softimage.com/events/sig07/default.aspx . Go Crazy!! More to come later today -- we'll of course post some images from the "Attack of the Jellybeans" Production Challenge later today- so check back after 12:00 noon!! Kevin G.

Fireworks!

2007-08-04T21:43:00.000-07:00

Leo here: Just after my last post, fireworks started in the bay... here are some pics from my room. :)

Welcome to San Diego!

2007-08-04T21:08:00.000-07:00

Leo here: Finally landed in San Diego late this afternoon after a long delay in San Francisco on the connecting flight. It's hot! :)

As Jen's been writing, things are heating up for SIGGRAPH. The action has already begun for our booth staff who are hard at work setting up the Softimage stand for the show.

Here are some snaps from me... stay tuned for more!

San Diego from my hotel room...

The lobby of the Manchester Grand Hyatt.

The Manchester Grand Hyatt, where we're staying.

The Gaslamp Quarter, where all the great restaurants are. :D

The view from my hotel room at night... nice :)

Lay of the land

2007-08-04T07:48:00.000-07:00

I thinked I walked around San Diego a dozen times yesterday. Back and forth from the hotel to the convention center. San Diego is a great city to walk around in, everything s super close.

We stopped in at the Spreckels theatre where our User Event is taking place. Oh wow - its beautiful. It's an old-fashioned theatre on Broadway. It's an amazing venue - I can't wait for Tuesday!

Later we went over to House of Blues to do a walkthrough where our Wednesday Party is taking place. Again - WOW. It's a fantastic place - and I can't wait for that either! We have had a few parties over the years, and I really think this one is going to be one of the best. I wouldn't miss it!

Things are coming together nicely, today is the big push to complete the booth. Pictures will come later, I am waiting for Leo to come in and help me sort that out.

jen

Day One - Set-up is FUN!

2007-08-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

My colleague Christine and I arrived in San Diego yesterday to start our SIGGRAPH journey.

San Diego is such a great location for SIGGRAPH. We are staying at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, which is a short walk from the Convention Center. Yesterday we went to the show floor and watched the beginning of booth construction. Fascinating stuff! The show floor looks the same but different from Boston last year. Soft is right at the front of the hall, next to Natural Motion and Autodesk.

Later, we walked to the locations of our two events - the Spreckels Theatre where our User Event is taking place, and House of Blues, where our party is happening the next night. Both are located downtown near the Gaslamp District downtown. There is still room to register for both if you haven't yet: http://www.softimage.com/events/sig07/default.aspx

I just had the nicest chat with Roger, who works with Syd Mead, to coordinate next Tuesday's presentation. They were just here for Comicon, and are both very excited to come back for SIGGRAPH. Funnily enough, just last week Syd and Roger attended a screening of '300' in LA, where they were promoting Blade Runner as well, and there they spent some time with Zac Snyder. So our user event next Tuesday already had a dry-run of sorts, at the PetCo Stadium!!

Syd will be selling copies of his new DVD at the Softimage User Event, and will be signing them in the Softimage booth on Wednesday at 10am. If you are registered for the VIP cocktail before the User Event, you might be able to get your DVD signed there by Syd as well!!

Anyhow, back to work. We have a bunch of meetings today to make sure all details are covered, as we await the arrival of our colleagues from Europe, Asia and some of the Special Projects team from Venice, CA. The majoriy of the Montreal team arrives tomorrow.

See you soon -

jen