Report from SIGGRAPH 2006 [photos]

SIGGRAPH 2006 wrapped up yesterday in Boston. The week-long event is regarded as the 3D industry's leading conference and exhibition show featuring its own Animation Film Festival. The winner of that festival is nominated for an Oscar, and this year that honor went to a piece titled, "One Rat Short", by Alex Weil, which won Best of Show at SIGGRAPH 2006 and numerous other awards. Besides an excellent Animation Festival with over 726 entries, SIGGRAPH features an Art Gallery and Emerging Technologies exhibit where art and science intersect -- where computing involves the leading edges of science, industrial technology and entertainment.

Every year the biggest names in 3D software exhibit on the show floor. This year was no different. The exhibit floor was very busy. Apple however was not at SIGGRAPH in "booth form". Apparently a few companies were worried that the Boston show was not going to be as well attended as a typical SIGGRAPH show in Los Angeles, to make the visit worth it financially. Apple did not have a booth this year on the show floor and may have been in this small group of companies that normally exhibit. However, the unofficial, official word is that Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) next week likely factored into their decision process to not have a booth.

A more speculative factor may be that the company would have attended the show if their upcoming Intel-based Power Macs were introduced and out in the market. However, it should be noted that Apple doesn't necessarily exhibit hardware at SIGGRAPH, but lately their pro film industry applications such as Final Cut Pro HD, Motion and Shake.

Apple was at the show however in other forms, including a booth in the Job Fair. Leading 3D software powerhouses and studios like Pixar generally make up the Job Fair. And of course Apple was at SIGGRAPH meeting software developers.

Despite not having a booth on the exhibit floor, this was a better year for Macs in 3D than last year with a measurable improvement in Macs on the show floor and with attendees. Of special note, Apple's Cinema Displays were everywhere on the show floor -- despite the fact that they were hooked up to Windows PCs. And in some cases, though rare, we saw iMacs and Apple laptops running Windows 3D software on Apple hardware, most likely under Boot Camp.

In fact, the T-Splines folks -- who are big time Apple supporters -- told us they had a new MacBook Pro running Windows XP running their T-Splines plugin inside of the Windows-only Rhino modeling program.

Besides a general uptick in the appearance of Macs at SIGGRAPH, we spoke to several PC 3D software companies and asked about a Mac version. Last year in Los Angeles when we asked these questions we got a lot of answers in the form: "if we get enough feedback about it we will consider a Mac version." This year I randomly went up to three software companies and asked about a Mac version. And all three said they were already working on one. Architosh.com will be discussing these in upcoming SIGGRAPH reports.

This was a good show for the Mac in 3D. However, the mother of all good news has not been stated thus far. This news pertains to ATI and its commitment to the Apple Mac platform. With the recent purchase of ATI by AMD -- the chief rival to Intel and the processors running inside of new Apple computers -- many have speculated that the future of graphics on the Mac is an Nvidia or Intel only story. While this decision will largely rest with Apple in the end, ATI told Architosh.com that the company is just as committed to the Mac as ever before and plans on delivering great graphics technologies to Apple for years to come.

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