As many as 25,000 people will gather in Boston over the next five days for the ACM’s annual SIGGRAPH conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques.
There will be live acts, including a performance by a robotic percussionist, a computer animation festival, and a fashion show along with Panels, Keynotes, Exhibitors and Emerging Technologies and news releases. Game-related Emerging Technologies (blog) have their own exhibit hall.
New versions of every major professional 3D software application were being shown, including Maya 7, Softimage 5, MotionBuilder 7, Cinema 4D 9.5, 3ds Max 8, LightWave 9 & Houdini 8.
Several packages are now 64-bit compatible, including Softimage v.5, Cinema 4D 9.5 and LightWave 8.5, while Houdini already supports 64-bit Windows and Linux. Technology previews were also shown of 64-bit versions of Maya and 3ds Max.
Animated movies from the Big Three animation studios (Pixar, DreamWorks Animation & Fox’s Blue Sky Studios), tend to sport price tags north of $75 million.
New challengers intend to make movies for $50 million or less — in some cases, much less, says the Hollywood Reporter. Technology is the enabler.
NaturalMotion is said to be the first company to create 3D character animation software based on Dynamic Motion Synthesis (DMS), a technology that utilizes Adaptive Behaviors and artificial intelligence. NaturalMotion synthesizes 3D character animation in real time on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.
Steve Perlman, who led Apple’s development of QuickTime and later started WebTV, is expected to premiere a new system that could change how Hollywood films are created, says SF Gate.
Perlman’s invention, called Contour, developed by his San Francisco company, Mova, will make animated human characters more lifelike than ever, nearly indistinguishable from how real humans look on the big screen.
With Contour, actors wear glow-in-the-dark makeup and costumes in a dark, enclosed studio. As a panel of fluorescent lightbulbs flashes on and off — so quickly it’s imperceptible — the cameras record the details, later processed on a computer.
“An entire movie could be filmed on a sound stage,” he said. “You don’t have to go on location. You don’t have to worry if the actor has a zit on his nose. You don’t have to compromise the energy, the humanness and subtlety of their expression.”
Contour captures any surface with a phosphorescent pattern. Phosphorescent makeup is applied to skin. Phosphorescent dye is applied to cloth.
Currently, movies like Polar Express and Monster House use Motion Capture equipment from companies like Vicon.
Columbia Pictures’ MONSTER HOUSE 3D exceeded industry expectations, grossing $2.4 million opening weekend on only 178, 3D screens. The combined earnings for the 2D and 3D also surpassed box-office expectations, grossing $22 million opening weekend. More than 11% of the gross for MONSTER HOUSE came out of the 178 screens that were playing the film in the REAL D Digital 3D format.
For Monster House, each performer wore 60-80 markers for the body, and between 40-70 markers for the face. Each set of facial markers were specifically placed on each performer, so that his/her particular range of motion and muscle structure was captured with best fidelity.
By using 200 capture cameras, the crew was able to shoot with six performers at a time, capturing both face and body data simultaneously.
“Polar Express” earned roughly 10 times as much in Imax 3-D as it did in 2-D, a big catalyst, for digital cinemas. Eighteen months after Polar Express, Sony Pictures Imageworks has followed up with Monster House.
REAL D Cinema is the entertainment industry’s preferred standard for the delivery of premium 3-D cinema experiences and is the exclusive provider of Disney’s ‘Chicken Little’ in 3-D.
REAL D Cinema systems are comprised of several components, including a specially-treated movie screen; REAL D Cinema glasses; and, a REAL D Cinema Z-Screen lens that mounts in front of the digital projector, enabling the projector to show 3-D.
Real D uses a single projector, but because the projector is digital, it can project images far faster than 24 frames per second. “Chicken Little” will be shown at 144 frames per second, alternating left- and right-eye images faster than the eye can detect. 
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