Actually, a funny thing started the whole trip to Singapore.  I was busy minding my computer animation class on a Monday morning when my co-teacher at Saint Benilde came up to me asking if I were free to help baby sit the students in Singapore as they attended the CG OVERDRIVE conference in the Lion City. One of the other instructors might not be able to make it, so they needed a back-up. Interested in attending the show myself, especially for free, I said yes.

Two days later, I was told that there would be no vacancies, and that if I still wanted to tag along, I’d have to pay my way.  The good news was that they could get me discounted rates if I joined their group.

I said yes, but made it very plain that since I had to pay my way, I would have “No Administrative Duties Whatsoever” during the trip.  Meaning, I was accompanying them to the fair, but I wasn’t about to baby sit for free.

And so off we went, after the tickets and hotel arrangements had been all set, to the PAL terminal to await our plane to take us to Singapore.  It was only then that I was told that someone HAD backed out, and that there was one ticket available for me to use at the conference.  So now De La Salle -College of Saint Benilde owes me the price of the conference ticket.

CG OVERDRIVE was a conference covering various aspects of, you guessed it, Computer Graphics.  It spanned three days, and was billed as Asia’s largest. It touted speakers from Pixar Animation Studios, Double Negative, Blue Sky Studios and many others.

The conference took place at the Singapore Expo Center, which was located outside the city itself.  We took the Singapore version of the MRT, which was the quickest and cheapest way to get there.

It turned out the Expo center was about ten stations away from the “Bugis” MRT station, which was the closest to our hotel.  The trip was roughly ten to fifteen minutes one way, with a transfer at one station where the MRT line forks into two distinct lines.

I was excited to see what this conference had to offer.  The advertisements said that there would be many things to see and do and so I prepared myself to see and do many things.

We arrived toward the end of registration, around quarter to ten in the morning.  We got the required goodie bags that had in them a couple of souvenir shirts, an Adobe After Effects poster, several CG postcards and the ever important CG OVERDRIVE delegate pass, that would allow us entry into the various activities.

And there were some interesting activities, to be sure.  There was the main hall where the speakers would share their experiences and views, and then off to one side was the film viewing area, which showcased selected works from entries given by companies and individuals in the region.

Off in a smaller hall was a software clinic that featured presentors giving demonstrations on various pieces of graphic software, from Shake, which is a compositing package, to 3D Studio Max, to ZBrush and Maya.

There were as well a few booths of vendors, mostly hardware vendors, such as Seagate Storage Systems and a company called Frontline.  This company caught my eye.  They offer high-end solutions to high-end 3D and computer graphics needs.  Sure, many companies offer that, but this company had a deal, working in conjunction with Sun Microsystems and Autodesk, to serve up a dual core AMD Opteron based workstation.

Not only was it based on the AMD Opteron, it was based on a 64bit AMD Opteron 2.4Ghz dual core processor.  It also boasted 2 Gigs of RAM, 250 Gigabytes of hard disk space, an NVidia FX1400 video card and a 19 inch LCD monitor. It was bundled with Autodesk MAYA, which was running during the display, and some students and I took it upon ourselves to try and crash the machine.

Over one point five million polygons later, (count them, 1,500,000 plus) the machine was clunky but running.  It was at that point that I decided that the machine had taken enough from us.  We were all very impressed, which of course pleased the vendor at Frontline.  We talked a while after, and I had told him that so far I had experiences with AMD-based machines.  He half-jokingly told me to sit with him and help sell the machines.  If I had nothing else to do I would have done just that, but I had to go and find a seat, as the Keynote speech was about to start.