#NAB Report!
Well, this may not be exactly "on your desk"<g>, but let me take this
opportunity to make a little "NAB Report" for anyone who's interested,
here on CIS.
Just got in this afternoon from a quick two-day visit to Vegas and
NAB95. Notable forum attendees included PaulL, GregP, MikeM, WadeS,
PhilM, and probably others whom I am forgeting (please go easy on me)
due to post-Vegas frazzle syndrome!
The Adesk booth (once I found it in a dark corner :-() was being
manned by famous X-Desker JamieC. among others. Jamie was showing 3DS
to folks who seemed very interested by the latest 3DS stuff. Right
next door, SGI "partners" Alias and Wavefront were showing their
wares, with no real sign of any new "togetherness", keeping with what
is being said by the SGI suits who have commented on the recent move.
It was great to see Brick Eksten and Dave White showing off the new
SCSI-based PVR (Perception Video Recorder) from a decidedly larger
(and more "interestingly" staffed — who *was* that Candy person??)
DPS booth. Keeping with their philosophy of bringing great-looking
video animation to the masses for a reasonable price, this PCI-based
seemingly lossless solution looked brilliant, and all for the same
price as the PAR! Able to command 7 SCSI devices (9 GIGs apiece!) at
a compression ratio of 3:1 (depending on the frame characteristics
and software settings), the PVR can be a real NLE workhorse for a
fraction of the cost of systems that are mis-guided enough to depend
on a EISA bus for throughput! The Windows software seemed to perform
flawlessly, and, of course, the audio support is complete with full
time-code support. I only wished they had used more 3DS animation to
show it off, though. LightWave's Low (super-sampled) A-A settings
only ruined the edges and scintilated the texture maps so
artifact-hunting wasn't anywhere near as much fun as it should have
been. I did *not* see any artifacts, however. I'm hoping to secure a
board soon and an in-depth article in 3DA should be forthcoming.
Back on the 3DS front, DavidA, LaVinaL. and the rest of the Digimation
crew had a small but extremely exciting booth on the Multimedia
floor. David was showing the NEW Bones Pro (complete with exclusion
for errant vertice influence, G-shading, etc.) along with a great,
new Smooth interface. Also there was a positively brilliant lens and
*Refraction* (Yup, you heard right!) routine from Alec and the boys
from Moscow that had us drooling, along with a preview of the
Landscape Generator that has TONS of promise. Killer explosions and
other fractal-based fun is also coming from the Digimation camp,
making for an extremely exciting near-future from our friends in LA!
The Adesk press-party/blow-out (*open bar!!!* and, yes, a whole bottle
of JD!) was lots of fun. JoeF, BobB, KevinB, and other Adesker's
looked like they were having great fun hob-nobbing about with
who-knows-who while DavidA showed his stuff on one machine, while
KiethS from Schreiber showed Key Factory, a very cool
collision-detection routine on another.
A very interesting observation I had was that LightWave NT was being
shown at no less than *4* booths. Micro/Soft/Image had it (evidently
entry-level positioned with their own 3D stuff to come), Nu-Tek, of
course, and there were a couple of other appearances.
All-in-all, it was a great time and VERY interesting. If NAB was this
good, Siggraph should be absolutely KILLER!
See ya there, and, as always, thanks for listening,
-Alan