CGSociety :: Special Feature
25 December 2008 by Paul Hellard

What a year! 2008 is destined to go down as one of those years that threw everything at us. 2008 was also one of those years where influences from outside the industry started to take its toll as well. The criteria for selection into the CGSociety 2008 Retrospective was that the event had to mean something to the community of artists.

The CGSociety community also suggested the world financial state had such an influence on their CG work, it too made it into the final list.

Other suggestions were products, mergers, movies, games, shorts and even influential people. If they pulled enough votes, they made it onto the list. Let's cut to the chase. CGSociety presents the public-voted Top 20 CG happenings of 2008.

Side Effects Houdini 9.5 (OS X release)

Credit: Marvel Studios. Image by Rhythm & Hues.

After staging an impressive public beta period for Houdini 9.5, Side Effects Software released the node-based 3D animation app. in mid-July. Houdini 9.5 brought what SideFX called the 3D industry's first node-based workflow to the Mac, ensuring that 3D artists could collaborate seamlessly in a multi-platform environment.

Throughout 2008, Side Effects showed the industry that Houdini was able to quickly become an effective tool for artists in the pro VFX industry. With stints at Rythym & Hues on the 'Incredible Hulk' and other features, Houdini has scraped in to the CGSociety's 2008 Retrospective listing.

Houdini store
Learning resources

MAXON Cinema 4D R11

As Maxon CEO Paul Babb paraphrased at SIGGRAPH in LA, "this one goes up to eleven". Maxon CINEMA 4D's interface was totally revamped in this major version update. Touting 64-bit support on PC and Mac OS X, all kinds of features are brought forward in this update, including the CineMan tool, which lets the artist render CINEMA 4D projects using Pixar's RenderMan Pro Server, or other RenderMan compliant engines using the RIB format.

The bundling of various industry-specific modules has turned CINEMA 4D into a truly mouldable application. These Editions can be targeted for film animation, game work and web, through into industrial and medical visualization use.

Oktapodi

Gobelins has turned out some amazing animators lately. The makers of this colorful chase film have spent the better part of 2008 running round the world showing the film off at festivals and climbing up on stage to collect the best awards. Straight after 'Oktapodi' won 'Best of Show' at SIGGRAPH in LA, third-year students Julien Bocabeille, Francois-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchland, Quentin Marmier and Emud Mokhberi were back on stage to pick up the Audience Prize. Just recently, the crew won a Jury Award at SIGGRAPH Asia's Computer Animation Festival in Singapore.

The story tells of a couple of octupi, having been caught napping in their ocean, looking after each other and determined never to part company. Along comes the stubborn chef wanting to keep supplies of calimari constant for his clients. What follows is an entertaining, enthralling chase around a sleepy Greek seaside town.

Oktapodi
CGSociety story on animator Emud Mokhberi
Gobelins

Pixologic ZBrush 3.1 for OS X

Pixologic bit the bullet earlier this year and released 3.1 for Mac OS X after the trial and release of the Windows version in November '07, picked as number three in last year's list. Industry reaction was terrific, very positive and ZBrush continues to be one of the tools of choice in Next-Gen game work and character development. There's a wide range of tutorial material online and on DVD for those wanting to learn more about this first digital sculpting tool.

Lead developer Ofer Alon, and the Pixologic team are artists and are part of the creative industry. There was a lot of close collaboration when the beta program for 3.0 occurred. With input coming from Cesar Decol Jr., Ryan Kingslien, Scott Spencer, Kris Costa and a host of other major names, ZBrush has become a work of art in itself.

Credit: Damian Canderle

Blue Sky's 'Horton Hears a Who'

Credit: Twentieth Century Fox. Blue Sky Studios.

Stepping aside from the Ice Age productions, Blue Sky Studios brought together a magnificent team with a classic story to tell. Some very high-end technologies were created, test-run and applied for this production, all to create the incredibly entertaining antics of some very believable Seuss characters.

The lead supervising animator Mike Thurmeier and his crew largely relied upon Maya, along with various plugs-ins to speed up workflow. An old tool called 'Follow Through' was plied for tails, hair and anything that would flap in the wind. With the help of a great story, comedic voicetrack and a very tight team at Blue Sky, this film is a classic, a keeper.

Horton Hears a Who
CGSociety story on 'Horton'

The World Economy

Well, for a CG-related list to have to include the economic reality, there must be something major happening. And it's not over yet by a long shot. During the last few 'down times', the most popular escape from the economic realities were the escapist adventures in film at the theater. These days, the more sedantary will spend time on their consoles. This is where we step in. I wouldn't be the first to suggest that there are no further hard times ahead, but the call for more entertainments can only mean more work for the creatives.

It is my hope that film and game production will continue through these darker times to entertain the masses and protect the artists to some extent.

Wall Street Journal
International Herald Tribune
Financial Times