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French
Every year, you can find the “Pavillon France” at SIGGRAPH, the French Pavilion: a booth where several French companies showcase their technologies and innovations. This Pavilion is spearheaded by French clusters such as CAP Digital. In a nutshell, they rent a big booth at the heart of the exhibition, then share this space between a dozen companies. Thanks to this approach, the companies exhibiting on the French Pavilion spend less than they would have by renting their own booth, and as a bonus the French Pavilion is located in a prominent location on the exhibition floor.
Unfortunately, due to various issues, there was no French Pavilion this year. Several French companies did make the trip, though, and rented their own booths. We met some of them this summer at SIGGRAPH 2022.
TechViz
TechViz focuses on 3D data visualization in VR/AR. Their software supports more than 200 tools such as Catia, Creo, NX, Navisworks. TechViz has been attending SIGGRAPH since 2007 (except for 2020 and 2021). As they explained us, the event is the perfect opportunity to meet the whole visualization industry.
TechViz also told us that since their last SIGGRAPH back in 2019, their software evolved quite a lot thanks to CloudXR, a content streaming solution provided by NVIDIA. TechViz explained us that this is “a game changer” since CloudXR makes it much more easy to achieve real-time collaboration on 3D models between multiple locations. CloudXR greatly improves real-time CAD data streaming.
Below: at 02:46, multiple participants interacting with 3D data from separate locations.
4DViews
4DViews focuses on volumetric capture solutions. They highlighted that SIGGRAPH came back in full force. As Richard Broadbridge (co-founder & managing director) told us: “Business is back”, with a wide range of exhibitors and scientific & technical conferences.
Ranch Computing: cloud computing for the CG industry
We also met Ranch Computing, a company focused on cloud rendering. They were happy to be back on the exhibition floor and to be able to dive into the latest industry trends. For example, Ranch Computing explained us that they attended a conference about virtual production and LED walls. They learned a lot about lens calibration and color calibration, but also about the fact that even with a real-time workflow and LED walls, offline rendering tis sometimes still needed to improve the visual appearance of the CG backgrounds.
Exaion
Exaion provides cloud services for CG studios in partnership with Daregraphics and Progiss (who are also closely tied to 3DVF). They showcased cloud storage and remote workstation solutions. Progiss also showcased NVIDIA Omniverse, the end goal being to allow studios to use Omniverse in the cloud. It seems that many big VFX studios were interested in Omniverse, maybe in part due to the fact it can help a studio switch to a USD pipeline with little effort.
Golaem
Golaem is already widely known for their crowd simulation tools, which have been used in countless movies and TV shows.
Of course, SIGGRAPH was a good opportunity to get back in touch with their customers in the VFX/animation/gaming industries, especially those that they hadn’t been able to meet since the beginning of the pandemic. Golaem also explained us that they are trying to conquer new markets.
Virtual production and VR companies in particular are looking into crowd simulation tools, but many know much about Golaem solutions. The same is true for companies focused on AI/deep learning. Their need: virtual crowd to train their AIs. In other words, there are many opportunities for Golaem.
Golaem also attended several conferences, for example case studies on big projects from the last few months or NVIDIA Omniverse presentations. The goal here is to monitor the current trends within the industry. Golaem told us working alongside Omniverse won’t be an issue since USD is supported by Golaem tools.
What’s next?
Overall, French companies we talked to were glad to be back at SIGGRAPH.
About 11 700 people attended SIGGRAPH 2022 on site (against 18 700 back in 2019) and were able, once again, to experience what makes SIGGRAPH so unique: the ability to follow the latest trends, countless software and hardware demos, lots of talks and conferences, and the opportunity to meet with people from all around the world. Next year, the French Pavilion should be back, which means that even more French companies will attend the event: we’ll tell you more about it in a few months!
