SIGGRAPHITTI Issue 2 - May 2013

Advance Program Now Available

Get detailed information on who's speaking and what's happening at SIGGRAPH 2013.
The Advance Program is your best planning resource for five days of learning, exploring, and amazing interaction with tomorrow's technologies. Download the Advance Program.

SIGGRAPH By The Numbers

Experience five full days and nights of learning the latest in computer graphics and interactive techniques at the premier conference. Here are some of the highlights offered at SIGGRAPH 2013:

152 Technical Papers
120+ Posters
80+ Computer Animation Festival pieces
75+ Talks (includes Studio and SIGGRAPH Mobile)
56+ Birds of a Feather sessions
45 Dailies presentations
23 Courses
17 Production Sessions
16 Emerging Technologies demos
15 Art Gallery works
11 Studio workshops and 12 Studio projects
10 Real-Time Live! demos
7 Art Papers

SIGGRAPH 2013 Production Sessions

SIGGRAPH 2013 Production Sessions showcase the world's most elite and talented computer graphic experts and creative geniuses. Creators explain their processes and techniques for creating compelling content that is featured as part of the Computer Animation Festival. Following each presentation, attendees have the opportunity to ask questions about the challenges and issues associated with complex productions.

Details on the preliminary list of the 2013 Production Sessions:

Industrial Light & Magic Presents: 'Cancel the Apocalypse' – The Visual Effects of “Pacific Rim”
Panelists: John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Lindy De Quattro and Eddie Pasquarello

From aliens that threaten Earth’s very existence to massive human-piloted robots, this panel will discuss the wide-ranging scope of Industrial Light & Magic’s effects work on Guillermo del Toro’s science fiction epic “Pacific Rim.” The artists will cover creative and technical challenges overcome in the areas of asset development, character animation, lighting, digital environments, advanced fluid simulation work and more.

LAIKA Presents: The Fusion of Stop-Motion and Visual Effects Technologies in LAIKA's Feature Films
Speakers: Georgina Hayns, Creative Supervisor, Puppet Fabrication and Brian McLean, Director of Rapid Prototype.

LAIKA, the Oregon-based animation studio behind the remarkable features ParaNorman (2012), Coraline (2009) and The Boxtrolls (in theaters 17 October 2014) has inspired audiences -- and industry professionals -- with an unprecedented visual artistry. Animators breathe life into meticulously hand-crafted puppets while visual effects artists seamlessly enhance the performance with cutting-edge technologies. This unparalleled fusion of stop- motion and computer graphics has garnered the studio two Oscar nominations and worldwide acclaim. In this session, Georgina Hayns and Brian McLean address the key interdependent and collaborative relationships between these uniquely different but critically important departments.

The presentation will address the following:

The use of Maya and Zbrush to enhance practical sculpts;
3D Printed material and subsurface scattering to allow puppet builders to break free of previous design limitations;
The advancements in color 3D printing and the enabling of puppet builders to evolve beyond prior design limitations;
The use of in-house developed silicones which enable character performance previously unseen in stop-motion animation;
The utilization of 3D Printers to pre-vis puppet construction issues and control how practical materials perform;
The use of laser cutting fabrics to enhance the design and functionality of the puppets costumes.
Production puppets will be displayed during the presentation.

OLM Digital Presents the Anime Spirit: From Pokémon, Pac-Man to Live Action Films
Panelists: Koichiro Sato, CGI director OLM Digital, Masashi Kobayashi, CGI Producer OLM Digital, Moto Sakakibara, CEO and creative director Sprite Animation Studios and Ken Anjyo, R&D supervisor OLM Digital

Anime has gained great popularity in the world for its unique expressiveness in contrast to western animation. OLM Digital, a digital production company in Tokyo, keeps trying new anime styles, making the Pokémon movies over 15 years. This session presents the company’s various works in 2D anime, 3DCG and live action films. The showcase focuses on how the anime spirit of OLM Digital is put into various visual forms. The brand-new Pac-Man animated TV series, which is a collaborative work with Sprite Animation Studios, is also one of the highlights of this session.

Rhythm & Hues Studios Presents: How to Bake a Pi

Learn first-hand about the story behind the Oscar-winning visuals of “Life of Pi” as Rhythm & Hues takes you on a journey from script to screen through a world of vast oceans, carnivorous islands, flying fish, bioluminescent jellyfish, whales and tigers. Leaders from the visual effects team will discuss in detail how they attempted to tackle the project, share the hard lessons learned along the way and explain the complex process used to seamlessly combine live-action with extensive digital environments and hand-crafted character animation in a fully-stereo pipeline that required a total rethink of much of the traditional vfx process.

Sony Pictures Imageworks Presents: Take a Journey Down the Yellow Brick Road
Presenters: Scott Stokdyk, Senior VFX Supervisor; Troy Saliba, Animation Supervisor and Francisco De Jesus, Digital Effects Supervisor

Sony Pictures Imageworks, under the direction of VFX supervisor Scott Stokdyk, created the majority of the visual effects for Disney's OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL. As a cinematic prequel to L. Frank Baum’s first book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” the film explores the backstory of the wizard character. The goal of the film was to create a beautiful stylized environment for the land of Oz and bring to life computer graphics characters that accompany Oz on his journey, including Finley the monkey, the porcelain China Girl, and various creatures that surprise them along the way.

Walt Disney Animation and Pixar Animation Presents: Scare School 101: The Making of "Monsters University"

The filmmaking team will guide attendees through the production process of the summer 2013 Disney•Pixar film, "Monsters University." Twelve years after the original film, see how creators rebuilt the Monster world; updated familiar characters into college-age versions of themselves; designed, built and lit a campus fit for a monster; and populated the university with a student body of diverse, unique and terrifying monster types.

Walt Disney Animation Studios Presents': Frozen: The Craft of Cold

The team from Walt Disney Animation Studios gives a first-time, behind-the-scenes look at the their November 27, 2013 film, "Frozen." Attendees will learn how the team of artists and technologists created the film's characters through visual development, rigging, animation and advanced rendering tools and discover how the elements of cold - ice, snow and frost - were brought to life through new simulation techniques.

SIGGRAPH 2013 Courses

During Courses, offered at SIGGRAPH 2013, attendees learn from experts in the field and gain inside knowledge that is critical to career advancement. Courses are short (1.5 hours) or half-day (3.25 hours) structured sessions that often include elements of interactive demonstration, performance, or other imaginative approaches to teaching.

Courses range from an introduction to the foundations of computer graphics and interactive techniques for those new to the field to advanced instruction on the most current techniques and topics.

SIGGRAPH 2013 Courses Highlights:

Rendering Massive Virtual Worlds

Authors: Graham Sellers, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.; Juraj Obert, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.; Patrick Cozzi, University of Pennsylvania; Kevin Ring, Analytical Graphics, Inc.; Emil Persson, Avalanche Studios; Joel de Vahl, Avalanche Studios; and J.M.P. van Waveren, Id Software, LLC

This course explores issues associated with rendering massive virtual worlds in real time. Topics include: procedural content generation, data compression and transmission, out-of-core rendering, and virtual texture applications.

Lights! Speed! Action! Fundamentals of Physical Computing for Programmers

Author: Erik Brunvand, University of Utah

This course covers the use of basic electronics and hardware interfacing in simple physical-computing components, including LEDs, servos, motors, sensors, and switches.

Recent Advances in Light-Transport Simulation: Theory & Practice

Authors: Jaroslav Krivanek, Charles University in Prague; Iliyan Georgiev, Universität des Saarlandes; Anton S. Kaplanyan, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie; Juan Cañada, Next Limit Technologies

A survey of recent advances in robust light-transport simulation methods. Based on a clear exposition of the path-integral framework, the course discusses a wide range of algorithms and the issues that arise when these advanced methods are applied in practice.

Image Credit: Rendering Massive Virtual Worlds, Graham Sellers, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

SIGGRAPH 2013 Art Gallery

Artists, scholars, and creative practitioners from around the world gather to present their exceptional digital and technologically mediated artwork at the SIGGRAPH 2013 Art Gallery. This year’s theme, XYZN: Scale, draws representations to a key critical affordance of computer-based authorship: the ability to iteratively scale digital representations at will: in-out-up-down, back and forth, + and -. These core functions enable us to change size and location over time, and at different degrees of resolution.

SIGGRAPH 2013 Art Gallery Highlights:

Digiti Sonus

Authors: Yoon Chung Han, University of California, Santa Barbara and Byeong-jun Han, Korea University

Digiti Sonus is an interactive audio/visual art installation based on fingerprint sonification. Transforming the unique patterns of fingerprints into sonic results allows the audience to discover sensory identities. The sonification of data produces a real-time music composition as a representation of integrated human identities. The distinct visual features of fingerprints as an open musical score are executed in diverse ways and converted into three-dimensional animated images. By controlling the starting point of animated visuals, the musical notes are reorganized in different orders and duration, which resonates with attendees' bodies and minds.

Rhumb Lines

Authors: Barbara Keating, E CLIPS; James McAleer and Sam Keating

Rhumb Lines is a playful, immersive, cinematic, interactive video installation that explores how we think we know where we are in time, space, and history, by inviting viewers to navigate a mesmerizing series of interlinked videos using location data, and scanning the horizon, seeking out hidden co-ordinates and signs of the River Tyne's magnetic attraction for artists over the centuries. It could be staged on any waterway in the world with sonar-scan survey data.

The Long View

Authors: Daniel Lunk; Lee Cherry; Jim Martin; Dwayne Martin; and Pat Fitzgerald, North Carolina State University

The Long View is a gesture-based interactive installation that offers viewers the ability to affect animated elements in a projected space in ways that the artists hope will increase awareness of our fragile and temporary relationship to our planet.

This Exquisite Forest

Author: Sabah Kosoy, Google, Inc.

Conceived by Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin and produced by Google and the Tate Modern, This Exquisite Forest was inspired by the surrealist game the exquisite corpse and its idea of collaborative creation. The project encourages users to create short animations that build on one another as they explore specific themes. The result is a collection of branching narratives resembling trees that anyone can contribute to. The project also includes a physical installation at the Tate Modern for a 10-month exhibition, where museum goers can explore the project as a life-sized projection and contribute using high-end digital tablets.

Image Credit: The Long View, Patrick Fitzgerald, North Carolina State University

Highlights of SIGGRAPH 2013 Emerging Technologies

SIGGRAPH 2013 Emerging Technologies present innovative technologies and applications of the latest developments in several fields, from 3D displays and interactive input devices to collaborative environments and robotics, and technologies that apply to film and game production. The Emerging Technologies program provides attendees a unique hands-on opportunity to interact with select innovative technology before they become hot topics in the mainstream media and blogs.

SIGGRAPH 2013 Emerging Technologies Highlights:

An Autostereoscopic Projector Array Optimized for 3D Facial Display

Authors: Koki Nagano, University of Southern California; Andrew Jones, USC Institute for Creative Technologies; Jing Liu, University of California, Santa Cruz; Jay Busch; Paul Debevec; Mark Bolas; Xueming Yu, USC Institute for Creative Technologies

This dense-projector-array display is optimized in size and resolution to display an autostereoscopic life-sized 3D human face with a wide 110-degree field of view. It has multiple applications, including 3D teleconferencing and fully synthetic characters for education and entertainment.

IllumiRoom: Peripheral Projected Illusions for Interactive Experiences

Authors: Brett Jones, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Hrvoje Benko; Eyal Ofek; and Andrew Wilson, Microsoft Research

IllumiRoom is a proof-of-concept system that augments the area surrounding a television with projected visualizations to enhance traditional gaming experiences. It changes the appearance of the room, induces apparent motion, extends the field of view, and enables entirely new physical gaming experiences.

Light-in-Flight: Transient Imaging Using Photonic Mixer Devices

Authors: Felix Heide; Matthias Hullin; James Gregson; and Wolfgang Heidrich, The University of British Columbia

Commercial time-of-flight sensors based on photonic mixer devices (PMDs), are used to capture transient images of photons in-flight. Through the use of readily available components, Light-in-Flight is orders of magnitude less expensive than previous approaches, while simultaneously simplifying and speeding up the capture process.

Near-Eye Light-Field Displays

Authors: Douglas Lanman and David Luebke, NVIDIA Research

Near-eye light-field displays depict sharp images by synthesizing light fields corresponding to virtual scenes located within a viewer's natural accommodation range. This system optimizes optical trade-offs among resolution, field of view, and form factor, and demonstrates a thin, lightweight HMD prototype, containing a pair of microlens-covered OLEDs.

Skyfarer: A Mixed-Reality Shoulder Exercise Game

Authors: Marientina Gotsis; Vangelis Lympouridis; David Turpin; Fotos Frangoudes, University of Southern California; Somboon Maneekobkunwong, Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center; and Maryalice Jordan-Marsh, University of Southern California

A mixed-reality shoulder exercise game developed for prevention and treatment of shoulder pain for individuals with spinal cord injury.

A detailed list of all SIGGRAPH 2013 Emerging Technologies is available on the website.

Image Credit: MicroTips: Augmenting Information for Microscopic Inspection, Kyungwon Yun, Seoul National University

Birds of a Feather

Informal presentations, discussions, and demonstrations for people who share interests, goals, technologies, environments, or backgrounds.

Complete information on how to propose a Birds of a Feather event.

View the full list here.

Register by 31 May and save!

Register for SIGGRAPH 2013 on or before 31 May to receive a discounted registration rate. Learn more about becoming an ACM SIGGRAPH Member to attend SIGGRAPH 2013 at the best discounted rate, as well as enjoy a wide array of membership benefits year-round.

Join the international SIGGRAPH community of digital innovators, inspired researchers, award-winning producers, provocative artists, energetic executives, and adventurous engineers at SIGGRAPH 2013. Select the registration category that works for your schedule and budget and register today! Register at the Full Conference level to enhance the value of your conference experience.

Reserve your room now in one of the SIGGRAPH 2013 hotels with rates specially reduced for conference attendees.

Full Conference Access Pass

 Includes admission to ALL conference programs and events, including: Art Gallery, Awards Presentation, Birds of a Feather, Computer Animation Festival (Daytime Selects, Electronic Theater), Courses, Dailies, Emerging Technologies, Exhibits Fast Forward, Exhibitor Tech Talks, International Resources, Job Fair, Keynote Session, Panels, Posters, Production Sessions, Real-Time Live!, SIGGRAPH Mobile, Studio, Talks, and Technical Papers and all days of the Exhibition. The registration also includes a ticket to the Reception and the Full Conference DVD-ROM.

Full Conference One-Day Pass

 Includes one day admission to ALL conference programs and events and the Exhibition (Tuesday - Thursday). The registration does not include Reception ticket or Full Conference DVD-ROM.

New Registration Categories: For SIGGRAPH 2013, registration categories have been revised to simplify the registration process, clarify the programs available in each category, and enhance the value of the conference for each attendee.

SIGGRAPH 2013 Job Fair

Looking for opportunity? Interested in meeting with some inspiring companies?

Job Fair exhibitors will be posting their jobs on the CreativeHeads.net and ACM SIGGRAPH job boards one month prior to the conference. This allows SIGGRAPH 2013 attendees to connect with employers before the conference, during the conference via the Job Fair, and after the conference via the CreativeHeads.net job board and candidate profiling system.  