Mastering mental ray

This past week (July 25th through 29th 2010) Ryan and I attended the annual SIGGRAPH convention, this time held in downtown Los Angeles California.

To say we had a great time would be an understatement.  It was our first time at SIGGRAPH so we had a lot to explore, and being ‘newbies’ to the event it was all a fascinating and unique experience for us.  On Sunday we flew in to LAX and spent some quality time exploring the Convention Center and looking at the poster gallery.  Each poster held a summary of the sessions being held during the week, and the technology on display at the convention.

Monday during the day was mostly spent in the Emerging Technologies area.  In this large hall it was one thing after another of cutting edge developments, the strange, and the interesting.  One of the first things we found was an electronic eye being developed by Disney’s engineering group.  It started out as an eyeball free-floating in a fish bowl which could be directed to look in a particular direction via electromagnetism, something to have in their haunted house.  This eventually turned into a large eyeball prototype consisting of a free-floating eye in a plastic sphere with coils arranged along the outside to control the orientation of the eyeball.  The really unique things about this is that they can also pull video from the floating eye!  The eye is now about the same size as a human eye and can be placed easily in robotic heads, and because it has a stationary outer sphere that encloses the floating eye it also has potential as a prosthetic eye for people.

There were a number of demonstrations going on including one about lenses and optics by the guy that designed the camera optics for the lunar missions for NASA.  Fascinating.  There were interactive articulated humanoid robots, terminator-like robotic arms that work from a video image of a human arm/hand and could (remotely) pick up and set down items from a table, albeit slightly shakily.  Some things in the gallery were art, or art as proof-of-concept for ideas, and often times the simplicity of the display masked the difficult technology and years of research needed to get to that point.  Groups from around the world – Japan and Germany in particular – made the trip to show the world what they were up to.  I won’t go into all the things that were there, but it took most of the day to get through and was fascinating.

We coincidentally ended up behind Ludwig von Reiche and Barry Ruff of mental images while in line for lunch, and got to meet them both and chat briefly about the book.    As Ludwig put it, it is one of the great things about SIGGRAPH; you never know who you are going to meet.

Monday afternoon was the Autodesk Education Summit at the new Marriott LA Live, and they had three speakers including Chicago’s own Perry Horovas of Tribeca Flashpoint.  All the talks were exceptional, and unfortunately we didn’t have any time after this to mingle as we needed to get to the mental images event immediately afterwards.

The invitation only mental images event, also at the new Marriott LA Live, and that was a lot of fun.  I got to meet Zap Andersson in-person finally, and he is, of course, a really nice guy.  I didn’t get much opportunity to talk with him as the place was packed beyond capacity, I ended up mingling a lot on my way to drop off business cards for a raffle, and there was an endless stream of interesting people to meet and talk with.  I got to meet Bart Gawboy, the mi Director of Training and overall mr guru, but again didn’t get much time to chat.  Zap and Bart were in high demand, I’m sure, and the place was packed.  There were several tables where it looked like they were going to do demonstrations, but that was impossible due to the crowd and the noise.  In mingling I got to meet Alexander Keller, mi’s Chief Scientist, and Juri Abramov, the Director of Software Development, and got to chat for a while with them.  Juri was in a deep discussion with Ivan or Rainmaker Entertainment (Vancouver) and discussing the advantages, disadvantages and workflows of mental ray and Renderman.  Ivan was critical of mental ray and felt that – compared with Renderman (Rman actually) –  it lacked essential tools for production use.  The main difference between Pixar and mental images is that Pixar also produces animation and they build their tools to work in a production environment whereas mental images does not have a production studio.

Once I made it back to the other end of the room near Zap and Ryan I found Ryan hanging out with and getting his picture taken with a group of people I didn’t know.  It turns out it was Rolf Herkin and friends.  Rolf is the CEO and CTO of mental images, and one of the people in the group saw the book on the table next to Ryan and had Ryan join their group.   Rolf and many others had no idea that I had written a book and we all talked for quite a while about the book, along with the writing and publishing process.

After mingling some more there was a raffle (we didn’t win anything) and then I got a chance to talk with Rolf and Ludwig together.  Ludwig mentioned how difficult it has been to start mr User’s Groups anywhere but LA, and where they have existed briefly elsewhere there has been only a couple/few people involved.  I told him of my experiences in the Chicago area  how the Max user’s are very interested, and we have had two annual “mental ray Seminars” that had between 60 and 80 live attendees along with online attendees.  So, perhaps, there are some opportunities to get some things moving in a more mi-sponsored way for the mr Seminars and groups.

Somewhere in there I got an invitation to come to Berlin, and offers for a lot of support for my efforts with mental ray and iray.  Having never been beyond the US and a little piece of Canada, going to Europe would be exceptionally cool.  Gotta get that passport now.  :)

The mi/mr event was very fun and a lot of interesting conversation, and certainly a highlight of the week.

After the mi event Ryan and I went to the CG Architect gathering at a bar near the hotel.  I got to meet Jeff Mottle in-person, and we also got introduced to the two Brians with 3DATS.  I’ll be taking over Pete Draper’s mental ray class next week as he is in India working and won’t be able to do the training.  Mark Gerhard had considered doing the training, but is now part of the TurboSquid team (congrats Mark!).  I’m excited for the opportunity.

Again, it was nice to put names to faces and to meet the other players in the new CG School in Miami. The first book by Brian Smith of 3DATS was inspirational to me in that it was written in a style I could connect with, and focused on the essential tools and practical techniques, and in many ways I kept those things in mind as I developed my book.

Tuesday I had a video shoot for Sybex, which will appear on Amazon.com and their web site, and that went very well I’m told.  Next I did an appearance at the Sybex booth to demo and answer questions to anyone that was interested.  I got to meet Chip Weatherman of HNTB, a fellow Beta Tester and a reviewer of the book.  Chip said that the book has been an invaluable resource and had helped them out time after time.  Comments like that are what I appreciate the most, to know that the book has helped someone with their work.  Eddie Perlberg stopped by to take a picture, and I have to make sure I get a copy of that.

We spent a couple hours looking through the first section of the convention floor.  Ryan found some trick Photoshop tools that solved a number of problems he was having and we bought that right away.  We had to run to a 3ds Max session, and Ryan bugged out of there early to play with his new toys (he had a project due Thursday, too).

Wednesday I went to the first NVIDIA session on iray and cloud computing, presented by Alexander Keller and Michael Kaplan of mental images.  It was very interesting to learn about the how and why of GPU-accelerated raytracing and some of what is going on with the workings of iray in particular.  I hope the PowerPoint or other similar documents will be available at some point.  The iray demo was excellent, of course, and there was a lot of horsepower behind what they were doing.  It was amazing how fast it got to a resolved image.

The remainder of Wednesday was spend going from booth to booth (stopping if interesting) and seeing what they were showing.  I met a lot of interesting folks, picked up a lot of material, and gave away a few books to key people (courtesy of me and Sybex).  I spent a lot of time at Autodesk and NVIDIA/mental images and meeting people and getting demos, or watching as many of the presenters at Autodesk as I could.  I figure those will be on The Area at some point, eh?

One highlight at the show was William Shatner and Dick Van Dyke appearing at the NewTek booth.  Dick was an absolute delight, and just what you would expect; ear-to-ear grin, outgoing, and funny at every moment.  He has been a user of 3d software (Lightwave) for over 20 years, and active in user’s groups and the like.  A fan and a hobbyist.  Bill was returning a favor to the Lightwave people for help with www.myouterspace.com, and had no clue what was going on.  Both were funny on stage and very outgoing, but Bill looked unapproachable as he walked past me twice to/from the stage.  He only came up to my shoulder, too (which isn’t that hard).  Dick was very approachable and I got to thank him as he went by.  Dick truly beams joy, and loves the crowd as much as they love him. They showed videos of him in various shows on the screen behind them, like Chitty Chitty and The Dick VD Show, and the crowd would let out a big applause.  He’d look back and laugh, and then joke about not having the legs for that anymore, but you got the sense he’d be up there dancing and singing if he could.  He was fascinated by all the technology, and told a story about his friend Walt Disney and how he would have just loved every bit of what what was at the show.  Dick talked about the early ‘special effects’ days and they had these sulfur lamps to light the background so they could then composite backgrounds, animated creatures, or whatever.  The event was recorded, and I’m guessing it will show up on the NewTek.com site at some point.

I got to meet Louis Marcoux and chat with him for a while and catch the “3ds Max Tips and Tricks” which was very cool.  Then the day was done.  There was a two-hour gap between the end of the show and a party we were going to so I crashed at the hotel, out like a light.  I woke up too late to really get a cab and make it anywhere, and added to the fact we had a very early flight and were exhausted, decided to call it a show.

A fun and fascinating week that I definitely will try to work into my schedule every year that I possibly can.  Next year is Vancouver!