2012 Retrospective :: Community suggestion thread

Hey there,

Wow, what a year! Just nudging the month of November, looking at just the last couple of months at the time of writing, Lucasfilm was bought by Disney, Luxology and The Foundry have merged and Animal Logic has saved Fuel VFX. Ballistic has released the Massive Black 2 book, and we're running 'TEN', our latest online CGChallenge, with plans for several more events later.

This thread will be open for everyone to drop in suggestions for the top CG-related topics. We'll then have a community-based list of the top CG-related things that happened (so far) this year to compile the CG Top 20 - 2012 article. This is a bit of a tradition here at CGSociety and one of the highly-anticipated, community-based articles that we put together. I hope to be generating this and posting as the final article for 2012, late December.

In the meantime, have a look back over the years.

Here is the CG Retrospective 2011 article:

Here is the CG Retrospective 2010 article:

Here is the CG Retrospective 2009 article:

Here is the CG Retrospective 2008 article:

Here is the CG Retrospective 2007 article:

Here is the CG Retrospective 2006 article:

.....the CG Retrospective article for 2005:

... and the CG Retrospective article for 2004:

.... Gee, we've been doing this a while huh!

The floor is open to you now. Give me your votes.

Criteria for selection
Whatever is selected in this list needs to be innovative, landmark or very cool. We are interested in events, movies, short films, games, products, software or anything that you believe had a major effect on the CG industry in 2012. It could be anything related to CG that had a profound effect on you and your colleagues.

Bring on your suggestions!

Luxology and The Foundry merge
Lucasfilm (+ILM) bought by Disney
Major Studio crisis (Digital Domain, Double Negative)
Unreal Engine 4
Nintendo Wii U
Kickstarter (Film projects, Game projects, game consoles, 3D printing)
The Avengers
The Hobbit

EDIT: Somehow forgot to list Zbrush 4 R4

Maybe the Curt Schilling 38 Studios mess in Rhode Island.

Brave
Paperman
Assassins Creed 3

Cinema 4D R14

Ok here are some of mine:

• The formation of the Lightwave 3D Group
• Luxology Foundry
• High Framerate Filming
• The whole Digital Domain Media Group fiasco.
• The LucasArts sale
• The layoffs in SOHO
• The 38 Studios mess
• The Zinga mess
• Kickstarter and Crowdsourcing becoming a player.
• Adobe jumping head first into the cloud (May God Help us)

Well there was indeed a lot of big CG activity.

I think asides from all the major releases this year like Brave, Wreck-It-Ralph, Rise of the Guardians.

There should also be maybe more features about the VFX and CG houses opening up in China and in other places. Some of these houses are doing very good quality work like the ones seen in DC Nation.

Also it won't be complete without a new section about the commercial ups-and-downs like the ones mentioned by previous posters, particularly the Digital Domain collapse.

Also agree that we need to acknowledge the role of crowd-funding and the projects that are now landmarks of it like "Iron Sky" and the recent ones that people talked about on this forum.

Blender also should get a mention for making the leap as a live action VFX package with "Tears of Steel" that was released alongside Blender 2.63.

Paperman (love, love ,love)
Digital Domain Media Group debacle
Lucasfilm bought by Disney
FuelFX bought by Animal Logic
Naiad bought by Autodesk

Disney buys Lucas
Luxology Foundry merge
Hobbit coming out in December
CGtalk finishes 10 yrs

Disney buying lucas is a definitive "yes".
Foundry and Luxology merge (this will have a major effect in the upcoming years I feel)
and of course the Digital Domain saga

Cloud Atlas, very good movie and biggest independent production, very underestimated this year.

ZBrush definitely deserves a mention IMO, the updates this year (R2,R3,R4) have really taken concept sculpting to new levels of speed and ease of use. I can't think of another developer who consistently innovates like Pixologic and they don't even charge their existing customers for updates. Easy to see why their user base is so loyal.

Cheers,
Brian

The Disney Lucas deal.
The Luxology/Foundry merger.
Fabric Engine. Excellent tech, it's currently in beta.
Windows 8. Love it or hate it, it's definitely going to have a long term impact on our industry.

- Blender 2.64 (VFX tools like camera-object tracking/masking, and so on, after Tears of Steel open movie), and celebration of 10 years being open source.

Zbrush 4 R4
Fabric Engine.
Luxology and The Foundry merge
Lucasfilm (+ILM) bought by Disney
Major Studio crisis (Digital Domain, Double Negative)
Kickstarter (Film projects, Game projects, game consoles, 3D printing)
Blender 2.64