Siggraph…

My Siggraph 2006 experience, in glorious 3D 2D boring text. Siggraph was kinda fun, but damn stressful.

Monday: 10 hour workday. Dinner with Victoria on the way to the airport. 11pm departure on the redeye to Boston.

Tuesday: Arrive at 7am local time on almost no sleep. Check into hotel, shamble to the showfloor to hook up with the Softimage people and to take a quick peek at the showfloor. Back to the hotel for A/V setup for the user group. Back to (nice!) hotel room for updates to the Powerpoint and a quick 1-hour nap. 3 hours of user group preparation and the actual show. The Softimage|3D demo was particularly fun, and the future technology preview was cool. My talk went okay, but I could have used some sleep beforehand. Softimage party afterwards and drinking. I certainly had fun there, minus the completely drunk guy who tried to punch Javier as we went back to the hotel for a while. Went to bed at 3am with way too much alcohol in my bloodstream.

Wednesday: Get up only three hours later. Still hung over, of course. Arrive at the airport to find that the nonstop flight back to SFO got cancelled and I’m rebooked on a route with layover in Denver. 45 minutes additional wait for the flight to Denver. Sleep on the plane next to a hyperactive little girl. 2 hour wait in Denver. Finally arrive at SFO at 3:15. Rush hour has started, Airporter and subsequent drive home take another 2 hours. Finally get to our house at 5:30 – only 4 hours late. Thank you United, there’s a reason I don’t fly you anymore unless I absolutely can’t help it (but that’s a story for another time – the amazing E3 2005 experience).

So yeah, my Siggraph 2006 experience certainly could have been less stressful. The Softimage people around Jennifer Goldfinch made up for it, but if there is a next time I’ll do it in such a way that I get to have more sleep inbetween everything.

Sonoma Heat Wave

It’s over 100 degrees in Sonoma…and our AC unit is broken. Fun

The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins

God bless YouTube. Sure, they are still trying to figure out how to convert their popularity into profitablity without scaring away their user base, but they bring us easily accessible gems like this Leonard Nimoy obscurity. We had it on the Legend network a few years ago and were scratching our heads, now I can finally watch it again!

What The Hell?

Hillendrand for Arcado? You’ve got to be kidding me! Way to shaft a player that the club slowly and steadily developed and who was starting to get real results. Well, Victoria and I are going to the game tonight…not sure I wanna go now ;(

dotXSI4Maya Plugins

These files are (hopefully) outdated with the release of Crosswalk, but there had been a lot of people asking for compiled versions of the Maya .xsi plugins every other week, since Softimage could only offer the source code and that code was a bitch to compile and link. Hopefully these two compiled plugins will make your life a bit easier!

Download dotXSI4Maya for Maya 6.0.
Download dotXSI4Maya for Maya 7.0.

Siggraph 2006

August 1-3, 2006 – Boston Convention & Exhibition Center

At SIGGRAPH 2006, Softimage will be showcasing the tools and technologies that empower artists to create the world’s most compelling 3D character performances.
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And don’t forget to register for our user event, taking place on August 1st at the Seaport Hotel, which will include a look back at Softimage’s twenty-year history of 3D innovation, presentations by Marc Stevens from Softimage and Matthias Worch from Factor 5, a sneak-peek at upcoming technologies, and a few exciting surprises. Registration opens July 10th.

I suggest you register, last year’s event was full! I might post more details as they become available – if Softimage only do half of the stuff I’ve heard the whole event will be very cool!