Sorry to say there wasn’t really a vacation this summer for me, but in case you were lucky enough to unplug sometime during the past few months, here's a quick overview of what you may have missed at the season’s main trade shows, CineGear and SIGGRAPH.
CineGear 2006
This show had a little bit for everyone, from 16mm camera users to DPs that work with the Dalsa Origin camera. Pro8mm unveiled MAX, a restored and modified variable speed camera capable of shooting 16mm and Super 16mm and with synch sound and lens included. At $6,000 it's quite a bargain, so step right up. Moving up in class and price in the 16mm realm comes the ARRI 416 camera, which puts 3dmm features in a 16mm camera that includes a larger viewfinder and 1-75 frame rates all in a small, lightweight package.

On the HD side of things, Cine-tal and Gamma & Density teamed up to take the guesswork out of HD production. The combination of the Cine-tal Cinemage monitoring system with the Gamma & Density 3cP color correction software allows for precise and instant review of how HD footage will look once it is color corrected.

Stepping up to the mega-def camera class, RED’s prototype camera continues to morph and evolve through its development and is on schedule to begin delivery in December. (The company also plans to show 4K images from its sensor at IBC.) The silver finish has been changed to black, the camera body has been lengthened and remolded in places and the nose plate has been re-designed.

Since NAB, Dalsa and Codex Digital have been working together to create a digital cinema workflow solution to record 4K images from the Origin direct to the Codex Digital Data Recorder.

SIGGRAPH
The most significant announcement at this show obviously came from Autodesk with new releases of 3ds Max and Maya in what was the first step in the company's “three-year roadmap” to tightly integrate the two apps but maintain them as unique products.This step was marked by the new extensive support for FBX files of 3ds Max. The tools were also improved individually, with Max adopting some of Maya’s toolsets for creating cloth, hair and globally illuminated objects, and Maya gaining workflow improvements to perform better across the pipeline with other 2D and 3D tools.

But the sexiest announcement came from a new company, Mova, which unveiled a revolutionary motion capture system, called Contour. This markerless system, using glow-in-the-dark makeup and dye and rapidly flashing lights, both invisible to the naked eye, is capable of recording movements as subtle as flaring nostrils and folds in clothing and can do so from multiple angles simultaneously. Suffice it to say, the level of detail this system will capture is an enormous leap forward in mo-cap technology.

Another newbie had an interesting release. Darwin Dimensions unveiled its character generation software, evolver, which takes a new approach to the creation of humanoid characters. Instead of creating a new character from scratch, evolver prompts users to select from a virtual gene pool, essentially selecting the ancestors of a character. Then evolver automatically generates that genetically appropriate character, fully rigged. From that character base, the body and face can be altered using a series of scroll bars. Within a couple minutes a unique, fully rigged character can be created and output to any popular animation software.

And talk about a quantum leap in graphics processing: NVIDIA unveiled the Quadro Plex, a 3U rackmount visual processing system capable of running multiple streams of 4K video. The system was developed with medical and industrial imaging purposes in mind, but it’s hard to imagine some of the elite in post and the D-Cinema folks passing up on this toy.

Steve Gibby contributed to this article.