SIGGRAPH Recap

Show Notes

So SIGGRAPH happened! I suppose that I went through the trouble of doing a whole episode in preparation for SIGGRAPH, then I may as well dedicate an episode as a bit of a retrospective on how the event itself actually went. So here we go!

I’ll start by saying that in terms of attendance, this is probably the smallest SIGGRAPH Conference that I’ve ever attended, and I’ve been showing up pretty regularly since 2003. A lot of that is likely for the same reasons that GDC and BCON Austin had lower than expected attendance. Simply put, a bunch of folks aren’t exactly keen on coming stateside right now. That said, I think the conference organizers managed to do well with the event. In a lot of ways, it felt like SIGGRAPH got back to its technical and research-based roots. There was an absolute glut of posters on display, to the point that the technical talks and the Papers Fast Forward were substantially shorter on an individual level.

I also participated in the ASWF’s Open Source Days event. That one was also heavy on the technical side… which is no surprise considering the fact that the vast majority of member projects in the ASWF are libraries and file formats. The cool thing about that event is that the talks were all captured on video. You can watch them on the ASWF’s YouTube channel (accessible in the link at the beginning of this paragraph).

The Blender Birds of a Feather community meeting did not get recorded, but it rarely ever does. Still, it was a full room with a bunch of friendly Blenderheads in there of all experience levels and from a pretty diverse spread of industries.

The Exhibition was also smaller than usual and it also had quite a bit less of the over-the-top “expo theater” that’s often seen. No mocap dancers on trampolines. No random cars or motorcycles. That said, there was an autonomous robot and a few different photogrammetry rigs around. And related to that… yes, people did talk about AI and machine learning. Those conversations were almost impossible to avoid. The technology is absolutely in use, but folks are still trying to figure out how they feel about it, it seems.

Other things I mention in the podcast:

• Bolt Graphics
• AlmaLinux
• Wacom
• Haply

Overall, I had a great time. I still rank SIGGRAPH as my second favorite event to attend and I’m looking forward to going to next year’s conference in Anahiem.

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