Comment Siggraph 2001 notes (Score 1) 85
Heard at the show:
"I'm disappointed this year. Usually, Siggraph is as big as E3, but this year, E3 was three times as big."
I remember when I visited the show in 1997 that the whole upper floor was full. The lower floor was the "startup park. This year, there was a lot of empty space on the upper floor. The periphery was a dead zone. I remember when we first exhibited at Siggraph in 1999 in Los Angeles that there were a lot more exhibitors. I think one reason Siggraph will be in San Antonio in 2002 and San Diego in 2003 is that those two venues will be smaller and less expensive than Orlando or Los Angeles.
One type of exhibitor that is totally gone is the telecom provider with high-speed access. In the past, they helped provided the high-speed datalines for the production houses that needed to move a lot of data to be edited from one country to another (London, England to Los Angles, United States). Telecom has overbuilt for the moment, and the telecom houses have no need to come to the show.
There has been a lot of consolidation in the 3d card market, with Nvidia presently looking like the winner at the top of the heap. ATI also had a presence, but Nvidia has the products and the buzz. People used to pay thousands of dollars for a video card, but that market has really declined
Apple was not there at all this year. Sun had the largest spot. SGI had the second largest spot. I'm not sure what presence SGI will have next year. SGI has always been about proprietary CPU and graphics chips, but with the Intel, Microsoft and Linux juggernaut, SGI's future looks very shaky.
Discreet, Softimage, Maya, Newtek, Maxon, Hash. What type of presence will these 3D modeling and animation companies have 2 years from now? I miss the small 3D companies like Strata, Specular and Ray Dream. I think the people who used to dabble with the lower-priced 3d programs now buy Web development programs like Dreamweaver, GoLive and FrontPage. This reminds me of how the camera market went downhill in the 80's and 90's because all those gadget people into photography turned to computers instead. With digital video and photography, I think the camera companies that have good digital products (Nikon and Canon) will bounce back (I think Kodak has serious problems though). Maybe Shockwave 3d will create a resurgence in 3d applications. Maybe Carrara will have a chance.
IBM, Compaq, HP. AMD, Intel. Who's going to be there 2 years from now? I'm surprised AMD is still putting up a fight. How about IBM's and Motorola's PowerPC. MIPS and Alpha are gone. Sparc is SUN's chip.
I like Curious Labs. I hope they do well.
I think another reason for a decline in vendors is U.S. Department of Defense spending. Evans and Sutherland was one of the pioneers in 3d simulators for the DOD, but they weren't at Siggraph this year. In the 90's they tried to break into the consumer market, but they failed.
There was a serious lack of any spiffs or giveaways this year. What's amazing is that there were so many giveaways in New Orleans last year. I think the budgets for tradeshows are set months before so the economic downturn hadn't hit the tradeshow spiff budget yet. I think that this year is also worse than last year in terms of the economy and the need to trim costs. I was able to get Swedish candy cane candy from Cycore and a superball from Intel - woohoo!!!!
I note that there are still a lot of companies still trying to get 3d content on the Web. I think it's only a matter of time before it becomes more popular. I think the main issue right now is Bandwidth. The popularity of Quake and Half-life shows that 3d over the web is viable. We'll have to wait and see more business and consumer applications. Entertainment is definitely the way to go right now with 3d over the web - maybe that's why E3 is so much bigger right now.
I still don't believe there are so many motion capture companies. I think I saw about six of them at the show. It's funny that the bigger mocap companies have professional dancers while the newer ones have a putz like me trying to show off the technology. Do I really want to see a couch potato nerd with slumped shoulders wearing a skin tight bodysuit jumping around - I think not.
Sony Imageworks had a drawing class in front of our booth, and they had a 6' 3" really buff male model disrobe so that he was only wearing shorts. I was scared he would crush me when he walked by our booth (I was glad he put his shirt back on or I would have fainted) to stretch out. I was thankful that they had a female model replace him in the afternoon.
802.11, Airport, Wireless networking is so cool. I could just sit by the wireless node and access the Internet with our Airport enabled computers. Most of the wireless notebooks were Macintoshes. The best thing about Airport enabled Mac notebooks is that the Airport card is unobtrusive with the late model G3's and titanium notebooks.
I liked the fish motion plug-in from Japan for Maya.
"Do you have a bag?!" No bags this year at Siggraph. I overheard someone picking an AMD fabric bag and exclaiming, "This bag's made in India!"
Siggraph L.A. was always nice because Los Angeles is the entertainment capital of the world. Production people from the local area found it easy to take a day off to attend the show. I wonder how busy Siggraph San Diego will be.
"I'm disappointed this year. Usually, Siggraph is as big as E3, but this year, E3 was three times as big."
I remember when I visited the show in 1997 that the whole upper floor was full. The lower floor was the "startup park. This year, there was a lot of empty space on the upper floor. The periphery was a dead zone. I remember when we first exhibited at Siggraph in 1999 in Los Angeles that there were a lot more exhibitors. I think one reason Siggraph will be in San Antonio in 2002 and San Diego in 2003 is that those two venues will be smaller and less expensive than Orlando or Los Angeles.
One type of exhibitor that is totally gone is the telecom provider with high-speed access. In the past, they helped provided the high-speed datalines for the production houses that needed to move a lot of data to be edited from one country to another (London, England to Los Angles, United States). Telecom has overbuilt for the moment, and the telecom houses have no need to come to the show.
There has been a lot of consolidation in the 3d card market, with Nvidia presently looking like the winner at the top of the heap. ATI also had a presence, but Nvidia has the products and the buzz. People used to pay thousands of dollars for a video card, but that market has really declined
Apple was not there at all this year. Sun had the largest spot. SGI had the second largest spot. I'm not sure what presence SGI will have next year. SGI has always been about proprietary CPU and graphics chips, but with the Intel, Microsoft and Linux juggernaut, SGI's future looks very shaky.
Discreet, Softimage, Maya, Newtek, Maxon, Hash. What type of presence will these 3D modeling and animation companies have 2 years from now? I miss the small 3D companies like Strata, Specular and Ray Dream. I think the people who used to dabble with the lower-priced 3d programs now buy Web development programs like Dreamweaver, GoLive and FrontPage. This reminds me of how the camera market went downhill in the 80's and 90's because all those gadget people into photography turned to computers instead. With digital video and photography, I think the camera companies that have good digital products (Nikon and Canon) will bounce back (I think Kodak has serious problems though). Maybe Shockwave 3d will create a resurgence in 3d applications. Maybe Carrara will have a chance.
IBM, Compaq, HP. AMD, Intel. Who's going to be there 2 years from now? I'm surprised AMD is still putting up a fight. How about IBM's and Motorola's PowerPC. MIPS and Alpha are gone. Sparc is SUN's chip.
I like Curious Labs. I hope they do well.
I think another reason for a decline in vendors is U.S. Department of Defense spending. Evans and Sutherland was one of the pioneers in 3d simulators for the DOD, but they weren't at Siggraph this year. In the 90's they tried to break into the consumer market, but they failed.
There was a serious lack of any spiffs or giveaways this year. What's amazing is that there were so many giveaways in New Orleans last year. I think the budgets for tradeshows are set months before so the economic downturn hadn't hit the tradeshow spiff budget yet. I think that this year is also worse than last year in terms of the economy and the need to trim costs. I was able to get Swedish candy cane candy from Cycore and a superball from Intel - woohoo!!!!
I note that there are still a lot of companies still trying to get 3d content on the Web. I think it's only a matter of time before it becomes more popular. I think the main issue right now is Bandwidth. The popularity of Quake and Half-life shows that 3d over the web is viable. We'll have to wait and see more business and consumer applications. Entertainment is definitely the way to go right now with 3d over the web - maybe that's why E3 is so much bigger right now.
I still don't believe there are so many motion capture companies. I think I saw about six of them at the show. It's funny that the bigger mocap companies have professional dancers while the newer ones have a putz like me trying to show off the technology. Do I really want to see a couch potato nerd with slumped shoulders wearing a skin tight bodysuit jumping around - I think not.
Sony Imageworks had a drawing class in front of our booth, and they had a 6' 3" really buff male model disrobe so that he was only wearing shorts. I was scared he would crush me when he walked by our booth (I was glad he put his shirt back on or I would have fainted) to stretch out. I was thankful that they had a female model replace him in the afternoon.
802.11, Airport, Wireless networking is so cool. I could just sit by the wireless node and access the Internet with our Airport enabled computers. Most of the wireless notebooks were Macintoshes. The best thing about Airport enabled Mac notebooks is that the Airport card is unobtrusive with the late model G3's and titanium notebooks.
I liked the fish motion plug-in from Japan for Maya.
"Do you have a bag?!" No bags this year at Siggraph. I overheard someone picking an AMD fabric bag and exclaiming, "This bag's made in India!"
Siggraph L.A. was always nice because Los Angeles is the entertainment capital of the world. Production people from the local area found it easy to take a day off to attend the show. I wonder how busy Siggraph San Diego will be.
