CGSociety - SIGGRAPH 2008 Diary

SIGGRAPH Friday

Sunday 17 August 2008 - 01:59AM
Renee Dunlop

Here on the final day of SIGGRAPH this year, unlike previous years, there is no trade show floor open. All the attention is on the full day of Technical papers and sessions.

The ACM have intelligently selected some of the best and most high-end classes to tackle here on the last day. There were still some wonderful classes to attend. One I checked out was Science in 3D that covered three areas, visualizing ultra-scale data involving forces such as seismic data from earthquakes, surgical planning using 3D medical imaging that covered the separation of conjoined twins, and mapping out the underground view without disturbing the surface or surrounding landscape of the highly destructive Atta Texana Leafcutting Ant colonies, nests that are rumored to be large enough to swallow a truck.

All three lectures were fascinating. The ultra-scale data covered research in algorithm, interface design, and system and architectures for visualization. They work with application scientists in areas ranging from astrophysics, cosmology, turbulent combustions, fusion energy, ground water to climate. The third session on the Leafcutting Ant colonies were using systems originally designed to find smaller and more shallow ground cavities such as unmarked graves to map out large areas and enable scientists to learn about the colonies of this devastating pest who is gradually moving north with the climate change.

But it was the surgical imaging I found most interesting. Imaging was used to map out the shared and separate organs of conjoined twin infants in order to successfully plan out an extremely complicated surgery that took two teams totaling 33 surgeons and assistants. Robert Morreale, Director for Illustration and Design at the Mayo Clinic showed how they used CAT scan imaging, volume rendering, 3D CT, and medical illustrations in the operating room to map out the shared liver and billiary system and surrounding organs to within half a millimeter accuracy so that the teams of doctors could know exactly where to make incisions and how to separate the organs for optimal results.

On to Bend Me Break Me, the last session, covering the rope bridge animation and procedural fracturing in Kung-Fu Panda, and the fast 3D fragmentation in The Mummy 3. The rope bridge process started off with an animation pass including parenting that was passed to FX who applied secondary dynamics. Some of the difficulties they encountered was controlling the rotation and twisting of the bridge. The bridge geometry was substantial, and the sequence contained many shots, some longer and some as short as 12 frames, so they had to have a system that provided quick turnaround under those circumstances.

To handle the fracturing in Kung-Fu Panda but maintain procedural control and artistic directing, they used a 3D paint system combines with voxels to define the areas of fracture and the intersecting areas that would crumble and scatter.

Ken Museth and Michael Clive, FX TD from Digital Domain, led the talk on The Mummy 3. Museth, Senior Research Scientist at DD holds a terrifying number of degrees and successes including physics effects for a number of films, worked as an adjunct professor in computer graphics at two universities. He carries a PhD and was a visiting faculty member at Cal Tech while also working on mission design and visualization at NASA’s JPL. To handle the breakage in Mummy, they needed a system that was very, very fast, something that would preserve shaders, and so decided to go with level sets. They then used a modified algorithm that also worked with intersections. By implementing a series of time reduction methods, they were able to keep render times under control with fantastic results.

The session ended with a grand applause and a bolt for the door as everyone, exhausted and brains crammed with new information, headed out blinking into the setting sun, some already making promises to reunite again next year at Siggraph in New Orleans. We’ll see you there.

SIGGRAPH - Oktapodi

Friday 15 August 2008 - 00:01AM
Paul Hellard

The makers of CG animation 'Oktapodi' has taken both the Audience Prize as well as the Best of Show prize at this year's Computer Animation Festival.

After winning at Annecy, Julien Bocabeille, François-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier, and Emud Mokhberi walked up to the podium this afternoon after John Knoll announced the winners.

The prizes were announced at the Nokia Theater this afternoon in Los Angeles in a ceremony that marked the culmination of efforts for the volunteer crew headed up by Jill Smolin.

Ken Perlin, the winner of the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award hosted this year's ceremony wearing TRON inspired neon tie and suit jacket. ;-)

Related links:
Oktapodi

SIGGRAPH Wednesday

Thursday 14 August 2008 - 17:32PM
Paul Hellard

Second day out on the show floor and running through the many sessions and presentations I have on my schedule, I keep running into old friends I have never met before.

I ran into Seth Rosenthal and Jim Hourihan from Tweak Software. They told me about 'RV', their sequence viewer software recently taken up as playback tool of choice by Lucasfilm and LucasArts. They are understandably excited.

Not two minutes later, walking the meeting room halls, I sidled up to Shawn Kelly, Carlos Baena and Bobby Beck from Animation Mentor. They were about to go up to their Birds of a Feather session, to meet a huge room full of returning former students, so I went along to observe.
Emotions are high when groups like this gather and today was no exception. It was very cool.

The NVIDIA crew was demonstrating the first fully interactive GPU-based ray tracer at their stand today. Based on their own GPU technology, the ray tracer shows linear scaling rendering of a highly complex, two-million polygon, anti-aliased automotive styling application. Bit of a mouthful, but take it from me that it very fast and powerful. NVIDIA also is showing its Quadro FX 3700M, a laptop that pushes workstation power. With 128 CUDA parallel cores, it has 1GB of graphics memory. Ouch!

Around the corner I found Takuma Sakamodo doing a totally stunning demo at the Softimage booth. Tak is director at Studio 4C and was proudly showing the steps his crew went through to create 'Tekkonkinreet', a breath taking study of alternative life in Japanese animatrix.

At the end of a huge day, I carried on into the night, which is my way. ;-) There were so many parties I thought I'd better share them round a little. I went to the very fun and sophisticated souré at J Restaurant for SIGGRAPH Asia, which is hitting Singapore in December, then the party at the Figueroa put on by the TurboSquid crew, up from New Orleans. I sent some guys of to the Blur party and I went to a more sedate but equally spectacular private pool party over looking the city of LA. With the strong breeze coming off the Pacific, the air was clean and the night sky was star-filled. Good to go.

Related links:
SLIDE SHOW

SIGGRAPH Variety

Thursday 14 August 2008 - 08:44AM
Renee Dunlop

At the Palms Restaurant at noon today, industry officiano Jon Peddie was holding a panel that included a bunch of experts in rendering. I could get there by 11:30 with a half hour drive if there was no traffic.

Traffic wasn't too bad, plus I tend to drive like I am in a video game, so I made it to the luncheon by 12:30.

The Jon Peddie panel included industry experts Bill Mark, Senior Scientist of Research at Intel, Bill Roberts, Director of Project Management at Softimage, David Kirk, Chief Scientist at NVIDIA, Habib Zargarpour, Senior Art Director at EA, James McCombe, CTO at Caustic Graphics, John Hart, Professor CS at the University of Illinois, and Raja Koduri, CTO, Graphics, at AMD. They debated the future of rendering and the pros and cons of ray-tracing and rasterization rendering. We rather lucky invited guests dined on salad, steak or salmon, and cheesecake. It was a fine way to wake up.

On to the convention center to meet with iZ3D and Meant to Be Seen, two companies working together in the area of stereoscopic visualization in games and film. iZ3D has displays that ship with the appropriate plugin and 3 sets of glasses so that the viewer is able to see games or film in 3D, and Meant to Be Seen tests games with stereoscopic capabilities and certifies the quality of the image with a rating system. Both companies have a future, I'm sure, I was really thrilled with what I saw.

A quick stop by the Laika booth to check out more about the upcoming film, Coraline, then out to meet with Lori Petrini for Tippett Studios to see some samples of their latest projects.

I finally had some time to check out the floor, saying hi to friends at Digital Domain and scoping out projects from various companies. Then on to SIGGRAPH Asia introduction party for dinner and drinks, (Singapore Slings reigned supreme, of course) then over to another pool party.
SLIDESHOW

SIGGRAPH Tuesday

Thursday 14 August 2008 - 07:16AM
Paul Hellard

Up early for a breakfast meeting. Such is SIGGRAPH. Trade show floor opens. Excitement ensues.

Yes, today was totally crazy and not without reason. You don’t open a display of new technology and information like SIGGRAPH without some measure of frantic activity.

Doors opened onto the trade show floor. with the all new layout. With the addition of the Studio', 'Slow Art', SIGGRAPH Village and the 'New Tech Demo', the trade show floor is split down the middle and gives the impression of giving the crowds two bites at the same cherry. Actually, the Village looks a very cool place to hang out, ... if I had the time.

I first went over to see the LightWave guys, demonstrating the new version 9.5. I'd be very interested to follow up later. Admittedly I was there a little early and I headed out for another appointment away from the floor. There was a rather boisterous gathering over at the Rhythm & Hues booth which turned out to be a meet-and-greet do; everyone was invited.

Walt Disney Animation had a very cool, rustic room that looked like the coolest studio to be in. Some of their illustrators came along to doodle, which was fantastic to watch. There was so much MoCap again this year. Not without reason. The technology come ahead leaps and bounds and real life markerless is close to online.

I ventured across in the heat, to the Nokia Theater. After coming in out of the bright sunshine, I walked straight through into the bowels of the cinema. Couldn't see a thing! The psychodelic works on the screen weren't quite bright enough to guide me and in looking for the best, closest seat, I sat down on someone in the dark. Had to laugh.

After the show closed, the Softimage crew took a bunch of press and friends to dinner at the Cicada restaurant. Afterwards, though I really wanted to check out their club party, starring Vanilla Ice and other special guests, and the BOXX party, I accepted an invite to go over to Hollywood. Wow, the RabbitHoles guys, and Alex Alvarez and the Gnomon Workshop crew threw the best casual party and I found myself in so many groups of old artist friends most of them I was actually meeting face to face for the first time. Felt I knew so many of them when I left at 2am. Quickly back to my hotel to try and write. I could only sleep with sweet dreams.

Related links:
SLIDESHOW

3D and CAF Special

Wednesday 13 August 2008 - 15:34PM
Renee Dunlop

There was action in the Nokia Theater today bringing debate, innovation, panels and nostalgia.

This morning trip was a little less successful at avoiding the traffic than yesterday, today I was thrilled to hit 20 miles per hour on my drive in, but it turned out to be a stroke of luck because I ran into good friend Ethan Summers, FX artist extraordinaire, as we were parking our cars. We had two blocks to catch up on lots of news before parting ways to opposite ends of the convention center. Headed straight to the second and last day of the 3D seminars organized by Rob Engle. I arrived just in time to see Laikas’ presentation that included 12 minutes of never-before-seen footage of their upcoming film, Coraline, a stop motion/CG hybrid that looks fantastic and will be high on my list of films to see.

Took a quick break for lunch before sitting in on today’s keynote speaker, Catherine Owens, director of U2 3D, also returning for the last session of the 3D seminar on the future of stereoscopic entertainment to hear the panel discuss what problems need to be solved. There’s a lot of opportunity for those who what to solve some problems involving the stereoscopic process in games. There are many hurdles to solve there. Another is rotoscoping, a process magnified many times over what is needed in a single camera project. There are problems begging to be solved, if anyone is looking for their claim to fame.

From there I wandered over to the Computer Animation Festival at the Nokia Theater where I caught the tail, then foolishly wandered out of the Nokia with intentions of checking the schedule on my laptop in the warm night air. Pretty soon I concluded it was the Pixar Studio Night in, hmmmm, the Nokia Theater. After going back through a security check I joined the concessions line for sustenance, a line that took a full half hour to get through. The wait was rewarded just before I dropped with two all beef hotdogs which I believe tasted better than any gourmet meal I’ve ever had.

The Nokia Theater was huge and there was still plenty of room. There are layers upon layers of balconies. They were screening The Man Who Planted Trees by two time Academy Award winner Frederic Back, the sweetest gentleman one could ever hope to meet. The hand drawn animated short is a tale written in 1953 by French writer Jean Giono (1895-1970) and tells the story of a man who lost his wife and child. To fill his days of loneliness and help heal the land he loved, he began to plant acorns with the desire to grow a forest. The forest actually grew until the hills were covered and the animals returned, and streams that had run dry were filling with snow melt, people came and enjoyed the peace and beauty. They built their homes and raised their children, and it became a village of happiness and joy. Year after year the man planted until the sorrow of losing everything that land had to offer was forgotten and only the beauty of this man’s effort remained.

An advocate of the environment, Back felt compelled to tell the story through animation after stumbling on it in the magazine, Le Sauvage. It was an absolutely beautiful and moving short film that left me blinking back tears. A standing ovation erupted as Lasseter emerged escorting Frederic Back, who shared how he stumbled on this story and how grateful he was to people like Lasseter and Pixar for giving him the opportunity to share this with people in the audience.
Lasseter then introduced the next film’s creator, writer/director/producer Leslie Iwerks, who was there on behalf of her documentary on Pixar’s history, filled with interviews with many artists including Lucas and Catmull and Brad Bird. It was an informative and humorous account of how they all met and developed the culture and technology and gained funding for one of the most successful studios today.

Related links:
Frederick Back
Laika, Coraline
SLIDE SHOW

SIGGRAPH Monday

Tuesday 12 August 2008 - 11:28AM
Paul Hellard

My Monday began with a trip in a fast car through the city. It was a classic LA adventure, or was it a dream.

I was actually being whisked away in a ride down on one of those bright concrete freeways, (gotta love those white concrete freeways), to VICON House of Moves' new motion capture studio in the district of Culver City.

Welcomed casually by CEO Scott Gagin in the sharp morning sunlight, standing in the carpark, our little group was shown round the facility with the help of some of the best technologists and directors in the game. These guys, like Brian Rausch (ex-Sony Pictures Imageworks) have cut their teeth on so many different projects at House of Moves, both TVC and motion picture blockbusters, as well as games like Assassins Creed, Gears of War and others.

Their twin sound and vision stages work non-stop in their facilities as well as venturing outdoors with a mobile studio, which they once installed at the LA Equestrian Center for horse MoCap. The stage and camera rig was designed by HOM's Head of Stage Production, Sean Stanek, formerly the motion capture producer on Monster House and Beowulf at Sony Pictures Imageworks.

Onwards and into the throng at the LACC, just in time for the opening address by 2008 Conference Chair Jacquelyn Martino, the handing out of the SIGGRAPH awards and the long awaited keynote by the president of PIXAR, Ed Catmull. The recipient of the Computer Graphics Achievement Award was Ken Perlin, whose speech was full of superb quotable quotes. "CG is important. CG is limited only by your imagination"; "The beauty of science is the science of beauty" and "We are the music makers, the dreamers of dreams."

Ed Catmull described his career as being so long, the industry had become a part of him. After his time at NYIT, the momentum had begun to roll and he described realising that Art, Technology and Education could create and nurture the SIGGRAPH community. "When PIXAR started there was no CG industry, so we were in manufacturing," he said. Toy Story gave them the chance to make that fully CG animated feature he once thought would take ten years to flourish. It took 20.

His Keynote covered the work flow patterns of a place like PIXAR and the many ways of management that did work, and others that didn't. His confessions of the Brains Trust were enlightening and the importance of open criticism of a creative band of artists. His advice to managers was to not so much prevent risk, but to always be ready to lead, support and protect the team of artists.

Incidentally, Pixar has announced RenderMan Pro Server 14.0 with a solid bunch of new features. More details on the RenderMan site. Please don't forget to click the Slide Show button just below here to check out the images taken each day at SIGGRAPH!

Related links:
SLIDE SHOW
Pixar RenderMan

Monday Mayhem

Tuesday 12 August 2008 - 10:06AM
Renee Dunlop

SIGGRAPH began in earnest today with deep, technical sessions bringing the technology of Stereoscopy into startling perspective. Renee Dunlop takes up the story.

Mornings are not my favorite, but I surprised myself by waking on time after only three hours of sleep. After a fairly decent ride down the parking lot known as Interstate 405 and a few turns around construction, I parked and headed to Petree Hall C where Rob Engle had pulled together two days of industry leaders for his Stereoscopic 3D: Research, Applications, and Entertainment extravaganza. I must say, Engle did a mighty impressive job coordinating a fantastic lineup of presenters, starting with a full session to explain the basics before building on a variety of applications and wrapping with a two hour stereoscopic animation compilation.

Some of the sessions were humorous, others carried a serious wow factor, and all were informative. One was perhaps a bit too realistic for those with a weaker stomach, or so the fellow behind me discovered when a theater screen sized surgical procedure caused him to grow faint. As always, the FX community stepped up to help him out, stopping the screening, bringing the house lights up, and passing him bottles of water. He was fine and I think some of the audience appreciated the distraction, though my slightly twisted self was enthralled with watching a two-foot suture needle pierce the surface of a giant cornea. Just don’t try this at home.

To see the evolution and how far this field has come is truly remarkable. This is no longer the trendy archaic red-blue glasses that did little but make the audience look comically strange. Stereoscopic animation has efficiently crossed over and now is not only a viable form of entertainment but helps to save lives, increase comfort, and expand research.

But first, lunch, in the form of grabbing the first sandwich in the cafeteria display case, a bottle of water to replace the one I gave to the fellow behind me, some rapid networking in the cashiers line, and a short sprint to Hall B to see keynote speaker Ed Catmull, President of Pixar and Disney Feature Animation. I was only mildly surprised when he showed up in faded jeans and a solid blue Hawaiian shirt, but what I didn’t expect was how personable he was. He spoke for roughly an hour about the history of Pixar and its union with Disney, how they have preserved a culture that embraces creative empowerment, and the importance of the individual as well as the team. Casual, simple, soft spoken, and kind, it was easy to forget the status of the man that spoke to an audience of thousands. After listening to an hour of stories with a full belly and toasty warm under the heat of my laptop, it was more like the perfect evening with some old friends.

But it was time to move on to a more exclusive setting upstairs where Catmull was joined by Dana Batali to discuss the 20th anniversary of RenderMan and the upcoming release of RenderMan Pro Server 14.0. Then it was straight back to the Stereoscopic seminar followed by a two hour animation festival that included screenings of Disney’s upcoming Bolt, DreamWorks Monsters vs. Aliens, and Laika’s Coraline, all of which look fantastic, more pulsating organs and giant needles pulling the thread right towards the audience, and a live video game demonstration. The night ended with a screening of U2 3D. It was a great start to the week.

Related links:
SLIDE SHOW

SIGGRAPH: Ready to go

Monday 11 August 2008 - 07:32AM
Paul Hellard

After the long flight from Australia, the CGSociety and Ballistic crew have touched down and are ready to catch up with friends, meet new ones and learn as much as possible about what they have been up to in the past year.

A fresh breeze in Los Angeles has kept the hot sun from being damaging to pale winter skins, although it must be said that even on my first day here, there hasn't been too much time spent outside.

The undercurrent pinning the discussions at the CGTalk Meet up last night at the Westin Bonventura was that everyone was either incredibly busy, or had completed fresh courses recently and were ready to jump into the industry we celebrate in LA this week.

For most of us, Sunday was a day for adjusting our body clocks and getting our bearings in the streets around the convention halls. Aiming to catch up with several CGTalkers I've never met, I missed a few by a measure of a few metres, got eye contact on others and finally met them after years of email. Just about 80 or so poured in to the CGTalk Meet and it was great to spend time with these enthusiastic artists in the community. Thanks to Jason Porath, Jeremy Birn and Rebecca Kimmel for setting this one up. The waitress who brought the food and drinks to the scrum, on her first night on the job thanks you also. ;-)

Related links:
SLIDE SHOW

SIGGRAPH Volunteers

Wednesday 06 August 2008 - 03:00AM
Paul Hellard

Today, the CGSociety turns the spotlight round briefly to the people behind the scenes of SIGGRAPH.

These are the volunteer guides putting their hand up to assist the attendees throughout the conference, each one vying for a chance to work in the industry at large.

Trinidadian animator Darvin K. Manwah has been selected to attend SIGGRAPH as a Student Volunteer. Among 1,200 students worldwide, he was picked out to attend the LA conference as the sole Caribbean Islander selected to participate this year. He says that he is looking forward to the ‘I can’t believe I’m really here’ moments as the festival kicks off.

Studying Visual Arts at San Juan Government Secondary in Trinidad & Tobago for five years has paid off in honing Darvin's creativity. Moving from traditional to CG, he has worked in LightWave and other applications, creating landscapes, cityscapes to human characters.

“I hope the SIGGRAPH experience will help me better propel myself into the industry and hopefully help me be fully employed,” says Darvin. “I had a scholarship to VFS last year but couldn’t make it up to Canada. This year, SIGGRAPH is a great step forward for me.”

With the completion of his short film closely approaching, a teaser and cinematic trailer is set to be released soon.

Carphology Entertainment

Clone Wars at SIGGRAPH

Tuesday 05 August 2008 - 21:27PM
SIGGRAPH

Lucasfilm will present an exclusive advance screening of their highly-anticipated animated film "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" as part of the new Production Studio Nights at the SIGGRAPH 2008 Computer Animation Festival.

Hosted by John Knoll, Visual Effects Supervisor from Industrial Light & Magic, the evening will begin with a behind-the-scenes discussion about the film's design and style with the film's Director, Dave Filoni. The advance screening of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" will follow the discussion on Thursday, 14 August at the Nokia Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, California.

"SIGGRAPH is honored to host this special advance screening at the Festival," stated Jill Smolin, SIGGRAPH 2008 Entertainment Director. "The Star Wars films have always been stellar examples of visionary visual effects. Seeing these effects paired with computer animation, and the behind-the-scenes knowledge from Dave Filoni will be an incredible experience for fans and film professionals alike."

In addition to the Production Studio Nights, this year's Festival will also feature talks and screenings dedicated to stereoscopic 3D research, applications, and programming. In a series of talks, experts will teach the foundations of 3D, from acquisition to projection and from history to the future. Screenings of 3D shorts and clips from 3D features will be shown in a montage of creations from the past, and previews of tomorrow's achievements. In addition, the popular "U2 3D" will be screened in its entirety.

Related links:
Stereo 3D
Studio Nights
Registration

SIGGRAPH Electric Sheep

Monday 04 August 2008 - 06:00AM
Paul Hellard

While the timeless SIGGRAPH emblem is golden this year for LA, and Meats Meier’s ‘Animation Mother’ will surprise people as well, I have ventured into the story of the background banner.

The image above is a still frame taken from the artwork Dreams in High Fidelity, by Scott Draves. It is a digital painting that evolves, and was designed and rendered with the Electric Sheep, a cyborg mind composed of 60,000 computers and people mediated by a genetic algorithm.

Scott ‘Spot’ Draves is a visual and software artist living in New York City and San Francisco. His most recent work for sale is Dreams in High Fidelity a limited edition infinite animation. Draves is best known as the creator of the Electric Sheep, a continually evolving abstract animation with over 60,000 daily participants.

He created the original Flame algorithm in 1991, the Bomb visual-musical instrument in 1995, and the Electric Sheep in 1999. Draves’ software artworks are released as open source and distributed via the internet.

Draves’ award-winning work is permanently hosted on MoMA.org, and has appeared in Wired and Discover magazines, the Prix Ars Electronica, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and on the main dance-floor at the Sonar festival in Barcelona.

Before becoming a full-time artist Draves worked for a series of technology start-ups. First was the fabless microprocessor design company Transmeta, made famous by Linus Torvalds. Later came FastForward Networks, which was acquired by Inktomi. His last regular job was with PDI/Dreamworks R&D Department, which earned him a feature film credit for ‘Shrek 2’.

In 1990 he received a BS in Mathematics from Brown University and in 1997 a PhD from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University for a thesis on metaprogramming for media processing.

Spot started VJing at underground parties in the early 90s and still performs live. In 2004 he published SPOTWORKS a DVD of visual music which has sold more than 4000 copies.

Besides teaching at Parsons School of Design, his current project is Dreams in High Fidelity, a painting that evolves. The HiFiDreams is limited edition fine art that is installed in the lobby of Google's headquarters, and has been acquired by corporate and residential collections nationally.

Every year, the SIGGRAPH Conference Committee convenes at an initial strategy meeting to discuss the state of the computer graphics and interactive techniques community. These discussions by this interdisciplinary group of volunteers and contractors result in a collection of information that helps to shape the character and color of the coming SIGGRAPH conference.

For SIGGRAPH 2008, the conference committee saw the need to craft the conference experience to mimic the natural fission and fusion of ideas as reflected not only in their planning process, but also in the trends and changes of the computer graphics and interactive techniques industry as a whole. Much like a virtual network, content and ideas next to each other would passively or actively inform one another. The conference needed to grow. This breaking free from many a past construct gave rise to a simple and eloquent expression which became the theme for SIGGRAPH 2008: "Evolve."

Scott Draves' artwork was thought to encapsulate perfectly this spirit - a piece born from man and machine; from one and from many; singularly and all at once. Even in its static form, its vibrant complexity exudes the richness and energy that speaks to the evolution of the SIGGRAPH conferences.

Spore @ SIGGRAPH

Friday 01 August 2008 - 22:37PM
SIGGRAPH

Technical content presented at SIGGRAPH 2008 will feature the techniques behind the animation development in Spore, the latest interactive video game due to launch worldwide in September 2008.

Spore, produced by the makers of the popular Sims games, is an internet-based game that allows users to create a species of creatures, grow them from cellular to full-scale life forms, and share their evolved creatures with other players interactively worldwide.

As part of the SIGGRAPH 2008 Technical Papers program, Spore experts will present their latest research, Real-Time Motion Retargeting to Highly Varied User-Created Morphologies. This paper presents an inside look behind the animation authoring tool that makes it possible for users to create the Spore creatures and bring them to life.

"As the field of computer graphics matures, we will continue to see graphics practitioners take on novel challenges that were not even considered just a few years ago," commented Greg Turk, SIGGRAPH 2008 Technical Papers Chair from the Georgia Institute of Technology. "The modeling and animation techniques used in Spore will inspire others to think more creatively about user-created content in computer games."

The authoring system used in Spore animates characters whose shapes are unknown to the animator since the bodies are user-generated. The authoring tool allows animators to visually describe motion using familiar posing and key-framing methods. It records the data in a body-independent form, preserving both the animation's structural relationships and its stylistic information. During game play, this motion information is applied to specific characters to yield body-dependent pose constraints that are supplied to a robust and efficient inverse-kinematics solver.

Related links:
Technical Papers

Cheat Sheets

Friday 25 July 2008 - 03:20AM
Barbara Robertson

CHEAT SHEETS

Here’s your cheat sheets.

SIGGRAPH 2008
Monday, August 11 to Friday, August 15

Here’s your handy-dandy cheat sheet for all things, well, most things, well, some very cool things to check out at SIGGRAPH. We even starred* a few don’t miss events and talks. But first, the basics.

The core convention is at the Los Angeles Convention Center, in downtown LA at 1201 S. Figueroa Street. The Computer Animation Festival is across the street at the Nokia Theater, 1111 S. Figueroa. They’re both about an hour from the beach in traffic and a half-hour from the airport. Fly into LAX. If you don’t have a hotel reservation, check the SIGGRAPH site for special rates, but at this stage, you could have better luck with hotels.com, tripadvisor.com, or another travel website.

Once at the convention center, register in Hall G on Sunday from 1 to 7, Monday 7:30 to 6, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 8:00 to 6, or Friday 8 to 3:30.

Prices for non members. (Join SIGGRAPH and get discounts)

Full Conference Access: Admission to everything – the Reception, the Computer Animation Festival, papers, panels, you get it all plus the conference DVD: US$1,025 now, US$1,125 at the door.
Full One-Day Access: US$325 now, US$425 at the door.

Computer Animation Festival (CAF) Pass: Screenings, Panel Discussions, Awards Ceremony, the Hall of History, the Stereo 3D conference, and more. US$200 anytime (US$175 with full Basic conference pass; US$100 with Full conference one-day pass.
One-Day CAF Pass: US$50

Basic Pass: Art galleries, Birds of a Feather, Exhibition & Exhibitor Tech Talks, Fast-Forward Papers, Featured Speakers in Hall B, FJORG! In Room 151, Job Fair, International Resources, New Tech Demos, Posters, the Studio, Slow Art and the Design & Computation exhibits in Hall H. US$125 now, US$150 at the door.
Basic One-Day Pass: US$45

CAF plus Basic: US$300 (US$350 at the door) – such a deal!
CAF plus One-Day Full Access: US$425 (US$525 at the door)

ALL DAY, EVERY DAY

The (Gorilla) Studio - Powerful workstations, versatile software, artists, scientists, engineers, all waiting for you to step in and collaborate on creative projects. On the main floor, use the South Lobby entrance. (Basic, Full)

New (emerging) Tech – Interact with future, but working, displays, haptic devices, robots and…ants, birds and other digital creatures. On the main floor, use the South Lobby entrance. (Basic, Full)

Design & Computation - Cellular automata, shape grammars, parametric design, fractals, architecture, jewelry, textiles and furniture. Hall H, main floor. (Basic, Full)

Slow Art – Procedural and literal exploration of time through art – erosion, rhythm, moving through space. Hall H, main floor. (Basic, Full)

Hall of History – from III’s 1979 demo reel to Videosystem’s 1992 Ren Qu'un Souffle, you can see CG animation history evolve as you walk along Petree Hall. (CAF, Full)

Geek Bar – get wired, network, plug in a headset and watch streaming video from eight technical sessions. (Full)

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CHEAT SHEET MONDAY

MONDAY
Registration – 7:30 – 6:00 Hall G

All Day (or mostly all day):

Stereoscopic 3D, Part 1 - Primer, science and research, games, alternative media and screenings. (Part 2 on Tuesday.) (CAF, Full) Petree Hall C, 8:30 to 7:45

FJORG! Sixteen three-person teams of CG animators compete for 32 hours to produce the best character-driven animation. (Basic, Full) 9:00 – midnight (and beyond).

During the Day (and into the night):

8:30 – 10:15
Intro – How to attend SIGGRAPH (Basic, CAF, Full) 515A

*Talk – Digital Cinematography in “Horton,” “Wall-e” and “Indiana Jones” with moderator Darin Grant from PDI/DreamWorks and luminaries from Blue Sky, Pixar, and ILM. (full) Hall B

8:30 – 12:15
Class – HDRI in production for artists, Intermediate. (Full) 502A

Talk – Artist Frank Guthrie from Nickelodeon provides a tour through the process of animation. (CAF, Full) Petree Hall D

10:30 – 12:15
*Production Session – Great Failed Ideas in Production with visual effects Oscar winners John Dykstra (Imageworks), John Knoll (ILM) and Bill Westenhofer (Rhythm & Hues), and Apurva Shah, vfx supervisor for Disney/Pixar’s Oscar winning Ratatouille. (CAF, Full) Hall B.

11:30 – 12:00
Birds of a Feather – International VR Contest (Basic, Full) 501A

1:30
*Featured Speaker – Ed Catmull. Co-founder Pixar, President Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios. CG pioneer and RenderMan architect. Founder, NYIT’s CG lab and the computer division of NYIT. Four Academy Awards. Need we say more? (Basic, Full)

3:45 – 5:30
Production Session – “Kung Fu Panda” with Director John Stevenson plus the production designer, animation head, layout head, editor, and vfx supervisor. (CAF, Full) Hall B

Talk – Director Rob Cohen and visual effects supervisors from Rhythm & Hues and Digital Domain unwrap “The Mummy: Tomb of the Golden Emperor.” (CAF, Full) Petree Hall D
Talk – Smile for the Camera: Travel the uncanny valley with technical gurus from Weta, OLM Digital, USC’s ICT, and Bauhaus Universitat. (Full) 502A

Special Event – SpeedLab: Show up, join a team, work on an imaginative solution during the week to an important problem, show the result on Friday and compete for Fun & Prizes. (Basic, CAF, Full)

5:45 to 8:00
*Stereo 3D Screenings – Put on the funny glasses and check out the best animated and live action stereoscopic 3D films. (CAF, Full) Petree Hall C

6:00 – 8:00
*Special Event – Fast-Forward Technical Papers Preview. See previews of the most amazing graphics technology you’ll be using tomorrow. (Basic, CAF, Full)

7:30-9:30
Birds of a Feather – 21st Anniversary Sake Barrel Opening and CG Performance –. (Basic, Full) Wilshire Grand Golden State Room.

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CHEAT SHEET TUESDAY

TUESDAY
Registration – 8:00 – 6:00 Hall G

All day (or mostly all day):

Exhibition (Basic, CAF, Full) 9:30 – 6:00.

Job Fair – Post your resume, get tips, hang out in the lounge, network (Basic, CAF, Full) 10:00 – 4:00 . Hall K.

FJORG! 16 teams of three animators race to finish the character-driven animations that they started yesterday. (Basic, Full) midnight – 5 pm

Stereoscopic 3D, Part 2 – diving deep into animated films, 3D capture, and predictions about the future. (Part 1 on Monday.) (CAF, Full) 8:30 – 5:30 Petree Hall C

Talk –Spend the entire day immersed in the entire history of character animation. (CAF, Full) 8:30 – 5:30 Petree Hall D.

Technical Papers – animation, collisions, hair, realistic rendering, and rendering materials. (Full) 8:30 – 5:30 408AB

During the Day (and into the night):

8:30 – 12:15
Technical Papers – image collection, video, and parallelism. (Full) Hall B

Talk – Effects Omelette. Imageworks, EntityFX, Rhythm & Hues, and ILM break out the technical mix to handle, respectively, physically-based depth of field, snow, data-driven shape deformation, animated auroras, and fractured temples. (Full) 515A

Class – HRDI – Learn how to capture, store and display HDR images on low-dynamic-range displays with the master, Paul Debevec. Intermediate (Full) 403AB
Class – How to Get a CG Job – Resumes, Demo Reels, tips on interviewing and negotiating. Beginning (Full) 406

10-11:30
Birds of a Feather - Web3D Consortium (Basic, Full) 501A

9:45 – 11:30
Exhibitor Tech Talk – desktop mocap from iPi. Hall G, Room 1. (Basic, CAF, Full)

12:00 – 1:30
Birds of a Feather – ISEA (Basic, Full) 511A

12:15 – 1:15
Posters – Poster authors stand by their work to talk and demo. (Basic, Full) 403, 404, 409, 411

12:30 – 1:30
Invited Screening – Animated films from Japan, DemoScene’s mind-altering images, (CAF, Full) Nokia theater

1:00 – 2:30
Exhibitor Tech Talk – Photoreal facial animation. Image Metrics and USC ICT’s Paul Debevec talk about Emily, a lifelike CG character. Room 2

1:30
Featured Speaker – Catherine Owens. Co-director of the “U2 3D” documentary, the first live-action digital stereo 3D feature released theatrically, and director of “Original of the Species,” which explored CG mocap.

1:45 – 3:45
Competition Screening 1, (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater

1:45 – 3:30
Panel – How studios view student demo reels. (Full) 406AB

Talk – Green Scenes: The technical nitty gritty on Imageworks lighting package, Rhythm & Hues’ Hulkin’ muscle-based system, and DreamWorks’ grass in Madagascar 2. (Full) 515A

1:45 – 5:30
Class – Computational Photography - Review fundamentals and learn advances affecting image capture and synthesis in CG with Paul Debevec and other brilliant light bulbs. Intermediate. (Full) 403AB

3:45 – 5:30
Talk – Caspian: The technical details. Learn how The Moving Picture Company completed 865 shots in five months, Framestore CFC created Aslan and Trufflehunter, and Scanline VFX brought a Rivergod to life in the “Narnia” sequel. (Full) 515A

Technical Papers – characters. (Full) Hall B

4:30 – 5:30
Invited Screening – Eye Candy from Disney, Pixar, ILM, Digital Domain, Imageworks, Blue Sky, The Orphanage and more. Repeats W, Th, F. (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater.

5:45 – 7:45
Competition Screening 2 (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater

6:00 – 8:00
Special Event – Anti-Auteurs: User-generated games with Jason Della Rocca from IGDA and others. (Basic, CAF, Full)

8:00 – 11:00
Studio Night – Pixar presents two screenings, the Oscar-winning animated film “The Man Who Planted Trees” with John Lasseter and director Frederic Back, and “The Pixar Story,” with director Leslie Iwerks. (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater.

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CHEAT SHEET WEDNESDAY
Registration – 8:00 – 6:00 Hall G

All day (or mostly all day):
Exhibitor Tech Sessions – NVIDIA, all day. Realtime rendering, parallel computing, interactive ray tracing, and more from the source. (Basic, CAF, Full) Room 405, 9:00 – 6:00

Exhibition (Basic, CAF, Full) 9:30 – 6:00 See Floor plan in related links.

Job Fair – Post your resume, get tips, hang out in the lounge, network. (Basic, CAF, Full) Hall K, 10:00 – 4:00

During the Day (and into the night):

8:00 – 10:00
Birds of a Feather – Women in Animation. (Basic, Full) 501A

8:30 – 9:10
Talk – The hilarious short animation “Oktapodi” is in the running for Best of Show and a Jury Award. Meet the third-year students from Gobelins who created it. (CAF, Full) Petree Hall D

8:30 – 10:15
Talk – Open Source, Open Content, Open Movie, it’s “Big Buck Bunny,” an animated short from the Blender Foundation recreated in front of your eyes. (CAF, Full) Petree Hall C

8:30 – 12:15
Class – Motion Planning for Virtual Humans. Beginning. (Full) 502B

9:00 – 10:30
Birds of a Feather - spatial 3D interfaces in videogames, (Basic, Full) 307

9:15 to 10:15
*Talk - Panel discussions with animators whose work you’ll see in the Computer Animation Festival led by ILM visual effects supervisor John Knoll. (CAF, Full) Petree Hall D

9:45 – 11:30
Exhibitor Tech Talk – SpeedAnimation from Craft. (Basic, CAF, Full) Hall G, Room 1

10:30 – 12:30
Competition Screening 3. (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater

10:30 – 12:15
Talk – Animation Mentor panel discussion and tribute to the life, work and inspiration of Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston which will take place on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles, California. (CAF, Full) Petree Hall D
Talk – Behind the scenes of “Terra,” an independent animated feature (CAF, Full) Petree Hall C
Talk – Particles: CG Clouds in Madagascar, and, at Rhythm & Hues, an avalanche in “Mummy 3” and daemon deaths in “Golden Compass.” (Full) 502A

12:30-2:30
Birds of a Feather - Multiuser Virtual Environments. (Basic, Full) 507

1:45 – 3:30
Talk – Build an Animation Studio. Ex-ILM’ers Rob Coleman, Jamy Wheless and John Helms talk about building a studio and offer a sneak peek of their animated feature “The Fourth Magi.” (CAF, Full) Petree Hall C
Talk – Polygon Pictures, the first 25 years. Screenings on Th. (CAF Pass, Full) Petree Hall D

Production Session – Machines & Monsters: “Cloverfield” and “Iron Man” with the crews from Tippett Studios and Industrial Light & Magic. (CAF, Full) Hall B

2:45 – 3:45
Invited Screening – Games. (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater

3:00 – 4:30
Birds of a Feather – Animation Mentor. (Basic, Full) 511A

3:45 – 5:30
Talk – Disney’s Andy Harkness and Pixar’s Richard Hollander unravel two short films. (CAF, Full) Petree Hall C
Talk – Future History. Behind the scenes of alternate reality films including “Carbon Footprint,” a 50-year time lapse in the running for Best of Show. (CAF, Full) Petree Hall D

Talk – To Ray Trace or… new research and production applications from Katholieke Universiteit, Hokkaido University, NVIDIA, and Rhythm & Hues’ Ivan Neulander. (Full) 502B
Talk – Totally Geeky Geometry with Drexel University, the University of Tokyo, INRIA, and . . . ILM’s Kiran Bhat and Cary Phillips (!).(Full) 406AB
Talk – Many Things Procedural organized by Digital Domain’s Johnny Gibbs: shading crowds in “Wall-e,” foliage in “Madagascar,” AI cars in “Speed Racer,” fast physics for large crowds in “Wall-e.” (Full) 515A

Panel – Test your CG knowledge with panels playing the 35-years-of-CG game. (Full) 403AB

4:30 – 5:30
Invited Screening – Eye Candy from Disney, Pixar, ILM, Digital Domain, Imageworks, Blue Sky, The Orphanage and more. repeats Th & F. (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater

5:45 – 7:45
Competition Screening 4, (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater

6:00 – 8:00
Birds of a Feather – OpenGL. (Basic Full) Wilshire Grand

6:30 – 8:30
Special Event – FJORG! Celebrity judges analyze the results and announce the winners of the “iron animator” competition. Highlights! (Basic, CAF, Full) Hall B

8:00 – 11:00
Studio Night – Sony Pictures Imageworks. A tribute to Stan Winston from “Terminator” to “Iron Man.” (CAF Pass, Full) Nokia Theater

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CHEAT SHEET THURSDAY

THURSDAY
Registration – 8:00 – 6:00 Hall G

All Day (“all day” is bit shorter today):

Exhibition (Basic, CAF, Full) 9:30 – 3:30 See Floor Plan

Job Fair – Post your resume, get tips, hang out in the lounge, network. (Basic, CAF, Full) 10:00 – 1:00 Hall K.

During the Day (and into the night):

8:30 – 10:15
Talk – “Horton Hears a Who” with Blue Sky Studios, (CAF, Full) Petree Hall D

Informal Forum – Suspenders of Disbelief. Synthesizing reality from images, vector fields, facial muscles, and mapping. Also, easy augmented reality. (Full) 505

Panel – Games: Evolving economies of scale. (Full) 408AB

Technical Papers – computational photography and display. (Full) Hall B

10:30 – 12:15
Competition Screening 5, Nokia Theater (CAF, Full)

Talk – The Future of Character Animation Tools Petree Hall C (CAF, Full)
Talk – Science and CG converge in a frighteningly photo-real journey inside the body. Petree Hall D (CAF, Full)

Production Session – “Speed Racer” with overall visual effects supervisors John Gaeta & Dan Glass, plus vfx supes Mohen Leo and Kim Libreri (Imageworks), John Knoll (ILM) and Kevin Mack (Imageworks). Hall B (CAF, Full)

Technical Papers – hair, rods, and yarn. 408AB (Full)
Technical Papers – perception and hallucination. 502B (Full)

Informal Forum – Running Wild. Ideas for sampling complex 3D scenes at interactive rates, artistic visualizations of space as line drawings, speedy workflow and more. (Full) Room 505

12:15 – 1:15
Posters – Poster authors stand by their work to talk and demo. (Basic, Full) 403, 404, 409, 411.

1:30 – 2:15
Invited Screening – Polygon Pictures.. (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater

1:45
Featured Speaker – Takeo Kanade from Carnegie Mellon has written 250 technical papers and holds 15 patents. He shares insights from 30 years of research into robotics and computer vision.

1:45 – 2:15
Talk – “Kung Fu Panda,” the visual design development. (CAF, Full) Petree Hall D

1:45 – 3:30
Panel – Flash animation with panelists from JibJab, Blitz, Cartoon Network, Renegade Animation, Walt Disney Internet Group and Rita Street. (CAF, Full) Petree Hall C

Roundtable – Lighting for Feature Animation, DreamWorks’ Mark Edwards sits down with top lighting creatives and TDs. (Full) Room 411

Technical Papers – tone and color. (Full) Hall B

2:20 – 2:50
Talk – “Stork,” creating a photoreal big bird at Framestore CFC in eight weeks for monster.com. Petree Hall D (CAF, Full)

2:30 – 3:30
Invited Screening – Eye Candy from Disney, Pixar, ILM, Digital Domain, Imageworks, Blue Sky, The Orphanage and more. (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater

2:55 – 3:30
Talk – Altered Realities – Kevin Mack and members of the DemoScene use math to create mind-altering digital images with tiny file sizes. (CAF Pass, Full) Petree Hall D

*3:45 – 5:45
Festival Awards Ceremony: Best of Show, Jury Award, Student Prize, Well Told Fable, and Audience Prize, (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater

Talk – Leap behind the scenes of “El Tigre,” Nickelodeon’s award winning animated series. (CAF Pass, Full) Petree Hall C

Technical Papers - folding and unfolding surfaces. (Full) 408AB
Technical Papers – deblurring and dehazing. (Full) 502B

5:45 – 7:45
Competition Screening 6, (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater

7:00 – 10:00
Reception – Party Hardy with SIGGRAPH movers and shakers and catch the game: LA Dodgers vs Philadelphia Phillies. (Full) Dodger Stadium

8:00 – 11:00
Studio Night – LucasFilm. An advance screening of the animated feature “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” with executive producer George Lucas and director Dave Filoni. Hosted by ILM vfx supervisor John Knoll. (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater

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CHEAT SHEET FRIDAY

FRIDAY
Registration – 8:00 – 3:30 Hall G

During the Day:

8:30 – 3:30
Technical Papers – shape acquisition, differential equations, and performance capture. (Full) 408AB
Technical Papers – humans, non-photorealistic rendering, deformation, painting, sketching, and procedural modeling and design. (Full) Hall B

10:30 – 12:30
Competition Screening 7, (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater

Special Event – Winners of the ACM student research competition summarize their work. (Basic, CAF, Full)

Talk – Lions, Who’s and Hulks – all about rigging with Blue Sky, PDI/DreamWorks and Rhythm & Hues. (Full) 403AB

12:45 – 1:15
Festival Awards Ceremony Repeat, (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater

1:30 – 2:30
Invited Screening – Flash Animation. (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater

2:30 – 3:30
Invited Screening – Eye Candy from Disney, Pixar, ILM, Digital Domain, Imageworks, Blue Sky, The Orphanage and more. (CAF, Full) Nokia Theater

3:45 – 5:30
Talk – Bend Me, Break ropes, statues, and terra cotta soldiers with DreamWorks, Rhythm & Hues, and Digital Domain. (Full) 403AB

Have a safe trip home.

Related links:
SIGGRAPH 2008
SIGGRAPH 2008 Floor Plan [direct link to PDF]

Kevin Mack

Tuesday 22 July 2008 - 00:33AM
Paul Hellard

Academy-award-winning VFX Supervisor Kevin Mack is getting together with members of the DemoScene to combine images with music.

In the DemoScene, Kevin Mack creates abstract digital math paintings that explore the consciousness that the Demoscene artists alter. Kevin Mack's professional and artistic work is based in a wide range of fields, from the mathematics of complexity to neuroscience and human perception. Following his presentation, the talk concludes with a free-form conversation about perception, reality, visualization, and creativity.

Kevin Mack has also created "The Opening" and ten intertitle animations for the Computer Animation Festival at SIGGRAPH. They are abstract animations based on this years themes of "Evolve" and "Complexity". The Intertitle pieces are five seconds each and depict formless shapes that grow and evolve into complex 3D designs. "The Opening" is just over a minute long. The synopsis goes like this: ‘A simple black box contains forces that lead to an explosion of psychedelic visions of complexity.’

“I started with the soundtrack by mixing and re-pitching various abstract sounds that I recorded,” says Kevin Mack. “The idea being to create music from noises. Then I procedurally animated numerous abstract 3D objects to the track. These animations are then used as source imagery to my 3D noise shaders which have parameters that animate to the soundtrack as well. The camera travels through the resulting animated evolving volume. I went back and forth between the sound and visuals as I would stumble upon cool moments in each and wanted to tie them together so that every sound event had a visual event and vice versa."

For the Art Gallery, Kevin also created four minutes of slow moving abstract animation to be shown on three 12 x 16 foot screens. He used a similar process as ‘The Opening’ but the source imagery is animated text of the art gallery themes of Slow Art, Rhythms, Hybrids, Erosion and Traversal. He also has two abstract canvas prints in the Art Gallery, "Neurosymphonic Self Reflection" and "Divine Instruments of Technology".

Kevin will also be grouping with John Gaeta and Dan Glass, Mohen Leo and Kim Libreri from Digital Domain and ILM's John Knoll to talk about the VFX of Speed Racer and other high-end projects.

Related links:
Kevin Mack
Speed Racer Talk
DemoScene Altered Realities

Computer Animation Festival Award Nominees

Monday 21 July 2008 - 11:04AM
Barbara Robertson

Best in Show

Bolides
Supinfocom, France
This imaginative student film treats us to a chaotic, hilarious, wheelchair race through an old age home.

Carbon Footprint
Jellyfish Pictures, UK
Using computer graphics, Jellyfish Pictures drives home the point of global responsibility, presenting the decomposition of a single soda can over half a century, in a single seamless shot.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
DreamWorks Animation, USA
Hilarity, peril, romance, and zoo animals; everything expected from DreamWorks Animation, this glimpse into their upcoming film provides a new perspective on flying with animals.

Oktapodi
Julien Bocabeille, François-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier, Emud Mokhberi, GOBELINS l'ecole de la image, France
Third-year students directed this animated short about two octopi in their comical escape from the grasps of a stubborn restaurant cook.

The Chemical Brothers "The Salmon Dance"
Framestore CFC, UK
Great music combines with hilarious animation to provide a new perspective on aquaria, as a tank filled with rapping, beatboxing, and dancing fish comes to life, featuring over 300 hand-animated fish.

Best Student Piece Nominees

893
Supinfocom, France
Story and style combine in this tale of honor, tradition, and imagination.

Al Dente
Supinfocom, France
Opera, pasta, a knife-wielding chef, and a delicious animated short.

Bärenbraut
Derek Roczen - Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, Institute of Animation, Visual Effects and Digital Postproduction, Germany
This tale of disproportionate love shows how relationships can change over time. This remarkable 2D animation illustrates a complicated subject and a complex relationship using the most limited of color palettes.

Blind Spot
Johanna Bessiere, Nicolas Chauvelot, Olivier Clert, Cecile Dubois Herry, Yvon Jardel, Simon Rouby, GOBELINS l'ecole de l'image, France
Peripheral vision is everything in this animation about a nearsighted grandmother in a convenience store, a clumsy robber, and a surveillance camera that doesn't quite tell the whole story.

Mauvais Rôle
Alan Barbier, Camille Campion, Dorian Fevrier, Frederic Fourier, Frederic Lafay, Min Ma, Jean-François Macem, Emanuel Reperant, Jeremie Rousseau, Olivier Sicot, École Supérieure de Réalisation Audiovisuelle, France
A monster constantly cast in games, finds his perfect job in a game you'd never choose for him.

Jury Award Nominees

Chump and Clump
Michael Herm, Stephan Sacher, Germany
This short shows us just how distracting your friends can be ... and just how they can lead you to miss your bus. Repeatedly.

Mauvais Rôle
(see Best Student Piece Nominees for description)

Oktapodi
(see Best in Show Nominees for description)

Our Wonderful Nature
Tomer Eshed, HFF Potsdam, Germany
This documentary uses time stretching, film camera work, and creative sound design to tell the story of water shrews in the wild.

The Plush Life
Timothy Heath, USA
This film, rendered entirely with NVIDIA's Gelato, shows us what happens when you pick at something that just shouldn't be picked at on your way to work.

Related links:
Computer Animation Festival Awards

SIGGRAPH Technical Papers

Wednesday 16 July 2008 - 14:10PM
Barbara Robertson

Technical Papers
At SIGGRAPH’s core are the peer-reviewed technical papers – the technology everyone will be using two years from now, maybe a bit more, and some studios will implement the algorithms right away. This year, researchers submitted 512 papers describing the latest, most innovative computer graphics techniques. Of those, the technical papers committee of approximately 65 senior reviewers selected 90. You can – and should – catch a preview of this amazing new technology during the often hilarious and always entertaining “Fast-Forward Papers” preview Monday at 6:00.

“One of the really interesting sets of papers are on what I characterize as gradient-based illustration techniques,” says Greg Turk, papers chair. “They offer very powerful techniques for image creation and editing. The applications are as compelling as painting. I expect these ideas to move from academia to the artist within a couple years.”

Two papers Turk expects will be controversial offer methods in one, for changing the features of faces to make them more attractive, and in another, for swapping facial features. “Who would have guessed that face manipulation would be a trend this year,” he says.

In another paper, researchers at Electronic Arts reveal how they bring user-created creatures to life in “Spore,” the irreverent, quirky, and highly anticipated game from Sims creator Will Wright, scheduled for release in September. And, researchers at Cornell University explain how they created the knitted scarf on the cover of the Conference Proceedings.

“We look for novelty, technical advancements, the highest quality results,” says Turk. “And, the wow factor. Some people do things you’d never think of like the bizarre self-animating image.” You’ll have to see it to believe it.

New (emerging) Tech
The New Tech committee selected and invited forty-four exhibits specifically to stretch your mind in interesting ways. You’ll find them in Hall H on the exhibition floor and in the South Lobby; they’re open to everyone with a Basic pass. So, immerse yourself in ancient Rome in the lobby and feel digital ants crawl up your sleeve in Hall H. Watch a robot arm move an egg without breaking it, move your hand through space and touch objects in virtual reality, and use the “Bug,” a peripheral-based controller unit to build own custom camera with GPS. There’s more, of course.

FJORG!
Sixteen three-person teams signed up for this iron-animator competition, which takes place over 32 non-stop hours beginning Monday morning and ending Tuesday. Each team gets the same character animation assignment and it’s a riot. During the 32 hours, interesting distractions show up – Buddhist monks, salsa dancers, mimes, dragon dancers, a DJ, and some of the most famous animators in the industry. They pack themselves into one big room with cots in the back, 515B at last report, so stop by and check out the action. And if you’re an animator, you can help mentor. On Wednesday, the judges analyze all the entries during an awards ceremony, pick the top five, and announce the winners.

Talks
Two kinds of talks this year – those as part of the Computer Animation Festival, which tend to focus on the artistry of visual effects and animation, and talks that are part of the core conference, which dig into technical details. A Full Access Pass gets you into all the talks, a CAF pass opens the doors to CAF talks within the festival.

“One that I’m excited about is a piece on digital cinematography,” says Darin Grant, conference production director, speaking of a full conference talk. “We have Pixar and Blue Sky giving their approaches to cinematography and setting up camera rigs for ‘Wall-E’ and ‘Horton,’ and some work from ILM on their digital environments in ‘Indiana Jones’. It’s an eye cracker on Monday morning at 8:30. But, I’ll be there. And Friday is character TD day.”

Grant also singles out the CAF sessions on ‘Iron Man’ and Cloverfield in ‘Monsters and Machines’ early Wednesday afternoon, ‘Speed Racer’ Thursday morning, and ‘Kung Fu Panda’ early Thursday afternoon, as well as a full conference talk on ‘Madagascar 2’s green grass early Tuesday afternoon. If you don’t have a full conference pass, you’ll find abstracts on the full conference DVD, which you can buy.

Stereo3D
Deep within the Computer Animation Festival is an exciting and new two-day conference on stereoscopic 3D. With nine sessions, two days of content on Monday and Tuesday, and a screening, this has to be the most concentrated look at stereo 3D on the planet. It starts with a tutorial and a history.

“Someone could come in cold, not knowing anything about stereo 3D, and come out with an appreciation for the history and technical challenges,” says Rob Engle, who organized the event. Speakers from Disney, DreamWorks, Imageworks and other studios share their expertise. Other sessions look at 3D in games, theme parks, science, animation and live action films. If you think the future of films is stereo 3D, this is the place for you to be, to meet people, see films, and wear funny glasses. The meeting room in Petree Hall C has a 21-foot screen and a RealD system. If you want to just see the films, show up at 5:45 on Monday.

SpeedLab
Lastly but not leastly, something else new, new new. “Here’s how this came about,” says Adam Finkelstein. “A fairly large group of us were having lunch during the jury meeting for the content of SIGGRAPH 08 and one person lamented that at the conference, we go, absorb information, sit passively and listen, and then leave. We’re not creating anything. ‘We’ in this case refers to the research community. So we talked about it.” And, did something about it. That something is SpeedLab. Here’s how it works. People will show up in a room to be determined on Monday at 3:45, they’ll form into teams, and during the week, they’ll work on an assigned problem. On Friday at 1:45, they’ll present their solution and the winning ideas will receive prizes.

“It’s totally freeform, but I imagine people will exchange information at the meeting, arrange to meet, and in the meantime, think about the problem,” Finkelstein says. “We’ll give them problems that are grand in nature. Not something you could solve by writing a paper.”

The first 50 people that show up will get to play the game. “We hope mixture of artists, students and researchers come,” Finkelstein says. “We’re hoping to make this intellectually stimulating as a creative process and just have fun with it. We think it will be fun, anyway. That’s why we’re doing it.”

Jacquelyn Martino

Friday 11 July 2008 - 04:59AM
Paul Hellard

Jacquelyn Martino is the 2008 SIGGRAPH Conference Chair and has been preparing for the big week since 2004. CGSociety asks how the project is progressing, as she rushes past.

The biggest challenge in preparing for SIGGRAPH 2008 has been what Martino refers to as the ‘zoom factor.’ In her position as the conference chair, she has to shift constantly back and forth from the big overarching picture to getting her head into the up-close details.

“This is a process that starts four years in advance and requires macro- and micro-management skills,” explains Martino, a researcher and graduate from MIT. She holds a PhD in Design and Computation from MIT, where she was also selected as a Presidential Fellow, and has a Master of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute. Martino has attended SIGGRAPH since 1990 and most recently served as Ex-Student Volunteer (XSV) Chair and Courses Chair.

“Also, the roles that the chair has to fill are mind-bogglingly vast,” she describes. “She has to be a visionary, a strategist, and a hands-on implementer as well as a leader, a manager, a mentor and a friend all while holding down a day job. Thankfully, the amazing conference team of volunteers and contractors makes meeting that impossibly tall order a possibility.”

This year is so chocked full that Martino has conceded that picking just a few highlights is next to impossible! “New Technologies are incredibly strong this year though,” she quickly qualifies. “We have an excellent collection of robotics demos and of course Takeo Kanade is a Featured Speaker presenting "My Personal Take on the Last 30 Years in Robotics and Vision." We've also worked very hard at getting Classes that represent old favorites as well as some new items that promise to interest everybody from beginners to advanced attendees.”

IP and IT
There is also a tight core of content that speaks about intellectual property and other legal issues. The Art & Design Galleries are being handled differently this year with a juried show of Slow Art and a curated show of Design & Computation. This approach has opened up the possibility of offering computational topics from the perspective of architects, artists, and designers. You'll see evidence of this in all areas of the conference including Talks, Panels, Classes, and Studio workshops.” Jacquelyn was also very excited about the new format for the Computer Animation Festival. “It's programmed as a true festival with not only screenings, but also production sessions, festival talks, an entire 3D Stereo cinematography track, production studio evenings, and a festival awards session,” she said.

City of Angels
“Los Angeles is really an incredibly popular city with attendees. Having the conference in Los Angeles truly lets us collaborate with the local professional communities. It is easy access for people to attend and it benefits the content offerings as well. SIGGRAPH in LA or elsewhere can never become ‘too big,’” says Martino. “That would be like saying the people who contribute and attend could grow to have too much passion and enthusiasm for their work.”

Life beyond
At IBM where she works, Jacquelyn Martino sees herself as very fortunate to be in an environment where volunteering one's expertise to a community is highly valued. “When I started my research position less than two years ago, I was already deep into the conference planning cycle for 2008 and my managers have been extremely supportive,” she explains. “One of the exciting projects that they asked me to join within my first months was an Academy of Technology study on the Future of Research. We interviewed researchers and lab directors both internal and external to IBM in industry and academia. We asked them what they saw on the horizon for the next 10 years not just in terms of research topics, but also in terms of the way people will be working in research environments. Our findings were very rich and we aim to publish our final report at the end of this year.”

Post-SIGGRAPH 2008, Martino plans to settle back in to her research, return to her art studio, spend more time with family, and read a few good books. “But who knows!” she adds. “The SIGGRAPH energy is hard to leave behind; so you will most likely see me around in some volunteer capacity in the near future.”

Evolution!

Wednesday 09 July 2008 - 06:37AM
Barbara Robertson

Polish your pixels and get ready to ride to the Los Angeles Convention Center where SIGGRAPH has tossed out the old conventions to bring you the New! Improved! Evolved! 35th annual conference.

What could be better than mixing it up with 30,000 fellow graphics gurus and interactive geeks from six continents and a gazillion different mental planes?

All that plus tripping into a fantastic three-day film festival topped by an awards ceremony, an only-could-happen-at-SIGGRAPH awards ceremony with holographic trophies and, and, well, sorry, we can’t say. You’ll have to wait and see for yourself.

“We wanted to keep what’s worked in the past, but also push ourselves by making a more a festival environment for CG,” says Jacqueline Martino, SIGGRAPH chair. A special Computer Animation Festival pass, less expensive than the full-conference, invites people more interested in art and entertainment than technology to see the films and hear the talks. If only for a day.

And, such talks and forums and presentations and classes by artists, propeller heads at, the biggies...Disney/Pixar, PDI/Dreamworks, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Industrial Light & Magic, Rhythm & Hues, Framestore, Digital Domain, Fox/Blue Sky Studios. But, also, tips and tricks from smaller studios like EntityFX and brand new studios like Rob Coleman, Jamy Wheless and John Helm’s Lightstorm Animation.

Want to know why the director John Stevenson cast Jack Black as Po? Ask him on Monday at 3:45. Or, skip into another room and learn why director Rob Cohen asked Rhythm & Hues to give Jet Li an inner mummy and how they did it. Been waiting to see LucasFilm’s “Clone Wars?” You can, Thursday night. Find out what Paul Debevec is inventing now in classes, exhibitor tech talks, and technical papers.

It’s all packed into SIGGRAPH’s new Monday through Friday schedule. Looking for a job? Stop by the animation and effects studios’ booths in the exhibition hall. Even better, get advice and meet recruiters at the expanded job fair, find out where to drop off a demo tape, and if a studio likes your work, pick up tickets to the private suites and parties. Or, if you’re completely flummoxed, take the “How to get a job in the CG industry” class on Tuesday.

Need some collaborative zing on a creative project? Work with any of the six artists in residence in the Studio. Full of good ideas? Meet fellow problem-solvers in the new SpeedLab and compete for prizes.

Check out the latest whiz-bang technology from graphics vendors on the exhibition floor, in tech talks, user group meetings, and late night parties where you can rub shoulders with the scientists who invented the tools you use. Speed through the technical papers in the fast-forward session to learn how technology will change your life next year, and then dig deep into the technology later in the week.

To help keep you from wandering through all the eye-candy in a stunned daze, here are some highlights, don’t misses, and in our next few posts, a day-by-day schedule of our favorites from which you can cherry-pick your own.

The Computer Animation Festival
It’s ALL NEW this year. The Electronic Theater is no more. Instead, the Computer Animation Festival has spread over four days, has content of its own and moves between the Nokia Theater, next door to the Convention Center, and the nearest Convention Center Hall. It’s bigger and it’s better.

The festival kicks off with a compilation reel from the Japan Media Arts festival on Tuesday at 12:30 in the Nokia Theater followed by the first competition screening at 1:45. This year, SIGGRAPH is showing the 80 films selected by the 30 jurors during seven competition screenings. Each screening includes approximately 20 of the highest-rated films by the jury and several of the other film in competition – check the posted schedules to find out which films appear when.

Thirteen films compete for the Oscar-qualifying Best in Show, Best Student Prize, and Jury Awards. In addition, SIGGRAPH is giving a special prize for a “Well Told Fable,” and a people’s choice Audience Prize: attendees can vote for their favorites from all 80 films. RabbitHole created the trophy – a hologram of the “animation mother” that goes to the top three award winners. “It’s gorgeous,” says Jill Smolin, computer animation festival director. “Stunning.”

At night, the Nokia Theater plays host to special studio-sponsored events. On Tuesday, Pixar’s John Lasseter brings Frederic Back and his film “The Man Who Planted Trees” and Leslie Iwerks and friends introduce “The Pixar Story.” Sony Pictures Imageworks pays tribute to Stan Winston on Wednesday night, and LucasFilm shows an advance screening of “Star Wars: Clone Wars” on Thursday with ILM’s John Knoll and director Dave Filoni, right after the awards. Other cool festival stuff: talks, curated screenings, production sessions and the Hall of History.

“We have a new animation company screening their trailer for the first time and talking about building an animation studio,” says Smolin. “We have an hour of retrospectives from different schools, a yummy delicious reel of eye candy from the studios, a compilation of flash animation, an hour of realtime gaming, very cool stuff.”

Related links:
Computer Animation Festival
Computer Animation Talks
All SIGGRAPH Talks
SIGGRAPH 2008

RabbitHoles

Friday 04 July 2008 - 01:48AM
Paul Hellard

There will be a RabbitHoles Media exhibition of artists' work beginning on the opening day of the SIGGRAPH trade show. The exhibition will be held at the Gnomon Gallery in Hollywood.

Alex Alvarez, Aaron Sims, Taron, Meats Meier, Laurent Pierlot, Jeremy Engelman, Kris Costa, Scott Spencer, Pascal Blanché, Fred Bastide, among other artists, will be revealing their first RabbitHoles 3D Motion Art editions at this exhibition. Each RabbitHole will be a limited edition of 11 pieces, available for purchase at the show at the Gnomon Gallery.

RabbitHoles are best described as 3D motion prints, which are two dimensional surfaces that display full-color 3D and animated imagery without the aid of specialized glasses or projection technology. These are digital motion holograms embedded into a specially formulated super high resolution emulsion film.

Veta Bates with RabbitHoles Media, spoke to CGSociety from Los Angeles. She told of the visit she had to Blur Studio, to give Laurent Pierlot a 'quiet look' at the digital motion holograms. "It was really kinda supposed to be a quick peek," said Veta Bates. "But as is the nature of a RabbitHoles display, once you turn the lights on, well I warned him, 'this place was going to go crazy.'"

Blur's open warehouse setting ensured that no one could escape seeing this amazing new display of 3D media. "It was very exciting to watch the reactions," Veta said. "I think RabbitHoles are going to have a huge take in the 3D community especially because they give these visionary 3D artists a medium that reveals the true depth of their artwork and abilities. All of the Gnomon Gallery show artists are thrilled to be a part of the event. Each artist is putting in lots of energy and extra hours, and having seen the works in progress, they are guaranteeing there will be excellent RabbitHoles on the walls."

Related links:
RabbitHoles Media

Computer Animation Festival

Monday 30 June 2008 - 12:00PM
Paul Hellard

SIGGRAPH 2008's newly expanded Computer Animation Festival is spread over the five days with screenings, talks, studio events, with two days of 3D stereoscopic panels and screenings.

As well as the juried screening, the festival offers inspiring studio content, Flash films, DemoScene animation, international school retrospectives, selections from the Japan Media Arts Festival and the latest in real-time game graphics. To be admitted to the Computer Animation Festival, you will need either a Full Conference Pass or a Computer Animation Festival Pass.

The 2008 Computer Animation Festival presents artists and experts in talks on all aspects of production, from animation to visual effects, from shorts to full-length features, from television to movies, from art to science, from learning the history of animation to learning the craft.

Participate in selecting the Audience Prize and see the results at the Festival's first annual award show: a raucous hour of animation, animation directors, prizes, and surprises. And don't miss exciting nightly events hosted by Pixar, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Industrial Light & Magic. There will be a full slate of talks and several production sessions, including a mind-bending look into 'Speed Racer,' a journey behind the scenes of 'Cloverfield' and 'Iron Man,' as well as a review of ideas that didn't quite make it through production.

In the studio reel of the Computer Animation Festival, a trailer be premiered from a yet-to-be-released animated feature from animation director Rob Coleman and the crew at Lightstream Pictures. This is accompanied by a talk from the principal members of Lightstream Animation who will talk about building an animation studio while creating their animated feature. More details on this will be discussed in a later entry.

There is a retrospective animation school reel to be shown and an accompanying talk by five top international schools for the study of film, animation and effects. An amazing exhibition of work is on display from AnimationMentor, Austalian Film TV and Radio School, Bournemouth University, Brigham Young University, Carnegie Mellon, Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Otis College of Art & Design, the Pratt Institute, Ringling College of Art & Design, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Texas A&M University, University of Southern California, Vancouver Film School and many others. Hael Kobayashi and Sande Scoredos worked tirelessly to stage and curate this presentation.

PIXAR's Presto and Glago's Guest are both playing in the Nokia Theater, (Petree Hall C, Wednesday 3:45pm) and there is a joint PIXAR/Disney talk with Richard Hollander and Andy Harkness following the screening.

Nominated for best of show is 'Carbon Footprint,' from Jellyfish Pictures. This is part of a Future History session with Look Effects, at the same time in Hall D on Wednesday. The two companies discuss three projects (Look Effects talks about 'Life After People,' and 'Blown Away: Greensberg Kansas'), all three projects use visual effects to tell alternate stories of the future.

There is plenty more in store as part of the Computer Animation Festival. Stay tuned!

SIGGRAPH Diary 2008

Sunday 29 June 2008 - 23:45PM
Paul Hellard

This early opening of the CGSociety SIGGRAPH Diary wll give you a look at the conference from as many different angles as possible. Throughout these posts, updated every few days, CGSociety will be announcing special features, we'll be interviewing the Chairs, and lighting your way towards SIGGRAPH with our descriptions of the many sessions and attractions. CGSociety will be there!

Over five days in mid-August, the Los Angeles Convention Center and the Nokia Theater will be awash with SIGGRAPH sessions and attractions. Los Angeles is the home of SIGGRAPH and every two or three years, the stage is returned. SIGGRAPH is the place where university labs, studios for film and games, film and animation schools and the CG artists spill their new techniques into the creative community.

The New Tech Demos at SIGGRAPH, which used to be named 'Emerging Technologies,' present creative, innovative technologies and applications in many fields including displays, robotics, input devices, and interaction techniques.

"Many of these cutting-edge technologies exemplify how our past informs our future and how it affects the upcoming opportunities and challenges of computer graphics and interactive techniques," stated Mk Haley, SIGGRAPH 2008 Conference Director of Encounters with Disney-ABC Digital Media. "The technologies and installations in New Tech Demos encourage people to engage with the future, as well as celebrate our past, as we invigorate, explore, and define our potential."

During SIGGRAPH, CGSociety will be at the show in LA, posting a SIGGRAPH diary, updated daily, keeping everyone worldwide up to date with the attractions for the week.

See you there.

Related links:
SIGGRAPH 2008
New Tech Demos