Siggraph closed its doors for another year earlier this month and the gang of Framestore employees sent to take in the computer graphics festival's sights and sounds have all sadly returned to their desks. Head of Software Martin Preston has given us a round-up of some of the trends he spotted while he was over in Los Angeles.
Most significant trend
This was a strong year for the technical portion of the conference, stand-outs being the academic work on lighting and handling of volumes and Cornell University's work on handling 'difficult' specular illumination. Away from the papers sessions the main memorable piece of news would be the dawning realisation we probably can't ignore high framerate cinema, much as we might like to!
Best Party
Definitely the Dreamworks party. Actually, these days the parties are really just networking events, so we've swapped the disused-warehouses- turned-into-nightclub theme for canapés-and-cocktails. But if you're going to serve canapés you might as well do it in style, and Dreamworks certainly did that. It had a nice view too - as you can see the bottom right picture.
Memorable Moment
That would be the time I found myself talking, in a bar, to a man who called himself 'Wolfie'. The only reason he wanted to talk to me, I think, was that he heard my accent and wanted to tell me that he was a big Liverpool FC fan because "he'd heard there was lots of violence at the games". I told him he must have been thinking of Chelsea!