Siggiraffe

It looks like it is time for my biennial pilgrimage to the Los Angeles Convention Center, where the tigers and zebras of SIGGRAPH 2004 will be frolicking all week. The conference proper started yesterday, the art gallery opens today, and the exhibiiton begins on Tuesday.

Let’s see, the first SIGGRAPH I went to was in ‘98, in Orlando, FL. I had a one minute appearance at the VRML roundup. That event has mutated and is now called “Real-Time 3DX: Demo or Die”, and though it is typically one of the most popular events it has become a victim of its own success, lots of flash with little content.
SIGGRAPH 99 was in Los Angeles. This was the height of the dot com bubble, the show was huge, with dancing babies as far as the eye could see.
SIGGRAPH 2000 was in, er, San Antonio I think. I didn’t go.
In 2001, the show was back in LA. Clinton was out of office, the economy was dying, and most people were still in shock over the dot com thing. Realistic skin and hair [Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within] were the “in” thing that year.
I didn’t attend the 2002 show in New Orleans.
Then, last year, breaking with tradition, SIGGRAPH was in San Diego. I drove down for a day. The Archvision booth with its catalogs of prop people was the most interesting thing. Crowd scenes, a la Lord of the Rings, were the big thing in 2003.
More to come.