Day three of SIGGRAPH

My morning session was the best on so far. It was on the "Morphology of Digital Creatures" and was given by a guy from ILM, Tim McLaughlin and a biologist, Stuart Sumida.

Both were excellent speakers. The session was broken down into three sections: form, articulation and movement. In each case the subject would first be covered by Stuart from a reality/biological point of view and then Tim from a digital creature point of view.

The premise was that digital creatures should behave in ways that people recognize otherwise their suspension of disbelief is lost. Even fantastic creatures which, are often made up of real animal parts, should behave in a similar way to real animals.

For instance with regards to the form of quadrupeds, what they eat tends to drive how they are formed. A herbivore will:

• Have a barrel shaped body to hold its large digestive system since plants are hard to break down due to their thick cell walls
• They typically have a rigid spine to support this
• They walk differently from carnivores because they have a different center of balance
• Their jaw hinge is above their teeth because they grind their food
• Their eyes look to the side because they need to see the predators coming whereas a carnivore's eyes are to the front because they need to see in 3D to catch their prey
  

For birds and fish the fact that they move thru water drives their form and for bipeds (e.g. humans) their gender drives their form: leg length, hips, skull shape etc.

The articulation section covered skeletons , muscle, fat and organs how they work for different types of creatures and how these can be rigged in 3D applications. The last section on movement discussed how form and articulation affected movement.

It was a really great session.

Most of the day was taken up wandering thru the exhibitors hall (which opened today). Lots of interesting products and displays. I was a bit disappointed that there was much in they way of free goodies or heavy discounts on software :)

Some highlights:

• Massive demos which was the software used in LOTR for the armies
• The cybercam which has pro-sports camera type controls but is design to "film" 3D games during big tournaments
• nVidia and ATI technology displays
• Tons of motion capture setups some only costing $5000 !
• Lots of VR, 3D and interactive displays including a massive globe display and a neat minority report type interface
  
• Seeing the stands from Hash and Pixologic whose software I own

The last part of the day was spent back in the animation theaters. I watched the "music" and "madness" segments. Some very neat animations I especially liked Codehunters and Versus. I also discovered that they have DVDs of the electronic and animation theaters, I will have to buy these I think.

Finished off the day early to rest up for the two big sessions tomorrow. Here is a video clip of Young in a VR rig (just so I'm not the only one wearing a silly helmet in a Youtube clip):