jmpreston

OK, we didn't have something like the Blurr party in Hollywood but my guest and I still enjoyed the open bar and nice (but calm by the standard of another thread here) people we met there. The food was good and interesting but next year we should have something more substantial to go with the drinks.

It appeared that not everyone who registered actually showed up. There were a lot of vacant seats and left over gifts from the sponsors. This could be because of competing events on Wednesday evening or the distance from the LA Convention Center. The music hall was just off the Red Line metro so that shouldn't be a problem but maybe the location of the entrance was. Still, the turnout was just fine and the ceremony was short and entertaining. Jeff certainly received a lot of praise and it may take him some time to come down from the clouds :-) Of course he deserved it.

It was great to see the support of heavies like Intel, HP, and Softimage, along with our smaller suppliers. What was noticiable was the lack of support from Autodesk. That needs to change.

Now that those Bostonians at Neoscape have staked out the high ground with two awards we'll have to see if the Spanish retaliate next year. They received two awards in 2004. Nice to see the merger of movie techniques and arch viz. Creativity is on the rise.

- jim
Intiri, Inc.
Santa Clara, CA

AJLynn

But WHO WON?????????

jmpreston

There were more awards this year than last but Neoscape of Boston won two. I'm sure all the news will be out in next week's newsletter.

Sponsor and Southern California firm Focus 360 says they have some 55 people now. That is a good size office in any industry and indicates that the arch viz discipline is starting to mature.

There was some $90,000 in prizes this year but it wasn't clear during the ceremony what the prizes were and who got them. Hopefully the newsletter will cover this. There were more awards and far more in prizes than what we saw at the 2004 CGA SIGGRAPH event. The tee shirts have cleaner designs, the shoulder bags / brief cases, or whatever they are called, are a quality gift from HP, CGA, Focus360, and Vismasters, and the electronic glowing pen from Focus 360 is, well, really cool. The CGA awards sculpture is very attractive and would look good on my desk some day :-)

For those who attended, the tall blond girl with me was not my wife or daughter but a sophomore at a college in the SF Bay Area who is interested in architecture. Thanks to all who took the time to give her some advice. She was blown away by the scope of SIGGRAPH and the number of real architects we met at the CGA awards who are only into arch viz now. I think we corrupted her :-)

- jim

AJLynn

Currupting a tall blonde college sophomore. Nice.

Neoscape and Focus 360 do some great stuff.

Do you know who won the AVC? (The individuals competition, with Zhu, Olivier, Eyal , Alex and Niall as finalists)

BTW the competition home pages do give lists of exactly what the prizes were, they were some pretty impressive packages.

jmpreston

I didn't follow the competition so I didn't know about the prizes. I focus only on residential interiors and this category wasn't in the competition - yet. Two other winners are Chinese, Chen Qingfeng and Zhu Tianyi. Zhu attended and gave her acceptence speech in English. It was warm and really nice. My guest, the tall blond Russian girl, was delighted to see a woman win. There were very few women in attendance and even less that did 3D CG.

- jim

Ernest Burden

It was really wonderful to see Zhu accepting her award in person. She is so young! Watch out world!

The prizes were actually more like $100K worth, with Zhu taking home about 70% for her first place finish, the rest going the Olivier and Niall (though I forget which was 2 and which was 3). When the final scores are up you will see just how close #2 and #1 were.

The party was fun, and I managed to not get drunk and be foolish. The best part was meeting so many people that I have only know on-line.

Good fun.

__________________
Ernest Burden III
AcmeDigital
architectural rendering

Arnold Gallardo

Agreed It was finally nice to put a face on people I've met online and have dealt with for years specially meeting Jeff as well as you Ernest.

I don't think anybody noticed the extent of work that went into doing something like that and Kudos to Jeff for it. Congratulations to him as well as all the winners! Yes I was glad to have seen Zhu accept her awards although I was not able to talk to her and congratulate her which was too bad.

Anyway see you guys online and offline maybe next year

__________________
_ _ ______________ _ _
Arnold Gallardo
Visual Content Creator
Technical Writer

Author:'3D Lighting: History,Concepts
and Techniques'

Jeff Mottle

Hi everyone,

I just got back last night and will be posting winners and SIGG news in the next few days. I really need a few days to recover. The CGA event had me working until 2-3am for almost a month and nearly 20 hours a day for the last week. I'm exhauted and need to take a breather.

It was a pleasure to meet everyone and thank you to all who attended the event and supported CGA.

Maybe next year we can try to provide more food, but the event cost almost $30,000 US as it was and we did not have any more money to spend. We had about 230 people througout the night, so it was by far the most successful and biggest event we have had to date. All of our sponsors were very pleased and I was getting a lot of positive feedback for the rest of the show. Over the next 12 months there will be a lot of great things happening with CGA as a result of our success, so stay tuned.

We always get more RSVPs than actually show up, but that is the nature of SIGGRAPH. I estimated for the amount we had, but had seats for more "just in case" ;-)

Neoscape won both the image and animation category for the 2005 3Dawards and as was aready mentioned Zhu won first place for our AVC competition. For the full results you can go here: http://www.cgarchitect.com/challenge...ge/ranking.asp

Thanks again everyone!

__________________
Jeff Mottle
CGarchitect.com

Brian Cassil

It was a great party. It wasn't untill after I left that I realized there was no band but I prefered being able to converse casually without having to yell anyway.

The CGA event has gotten bigger and better every year since the first one in San Antonio. I was most pleased because it was the first time I've seen so many of the largest contributers to the forums there like Ernest, Nisus, Quizzy (I know he was there last year but I didn't meet him), and Tim Nelson. It was a lot of fun getting to talk with you all.

It became a bit of a joke at the party how much Jeff was being thanked but he deserves it. So one more time, THANKS JEFF!

nisus

Great party, Great fun... Hard to know most people...

Also tired as hell... left LA on thursday noon, arrived saturdaynight in Brussels... I've been on six planes in three days... LA to Vegas to Kansas City to Newark to Burmingham (missed connection by 5 minutes due to weather delay) to Frankfurt (missed connection by 2 minutes due to weather dealy!) to Brussels... For those who know Europe a bit... Frankfurt is NOT somewhere in between LA and Brussels... but still in time for my saturday dance evening!! ,-p

next year we need printed avatars... I've talked to a bunch of people, but honestly don't really now what there nick or avatar was...

I've seen 'Surfing Ernest', 'Dutchy Quizzy', 'Bearded Brian', 'Tnx Jeff', 'Daddy Swayer'... hard to do faces of the other ones...

And I like the T-shirts!

rgds

nisus


for first time visitors next year: Don't do whiskey... average EU drink is 4cl... US shots are at least 3-4 times more... don't drink the amount of glasses you're used to... ;-p