Day two of SIGGRAPH

Up at 7:30 and off too the first session of the day, which for me which was on "urban design and procedural modelling". This was very cool, using L-System like grammars to generate building geometry and agents to build city layouts. One of the presenters covered the cityscapes and techniques they use for the need for speed games. The Pompeii and Mayan city recreations were spectacular.

After that we watched most of the "games & FX" segment in the animation gallery. It had a bunch of game intro animations, some good clips out of 300. One of shorts for an animated film called "Arthur and the invisibles" was amazing.

After that we did the keynote speech during which they gave out some awards. The keynote was given by Glenn Entis who is Chief Visual and Tech Officer for EA games. It was a pretty interesting look at CG, how far it has come in the last 30 years and how good real-time graphics have become. He then talked about the problems and some of the solutions when one has characters that look human but don't quite behave human, so we don't bond with them (kinda the problem with Final Fantasy: he Spirits Within). He also showed lots of nice clips from Spore and the Crytech engine.

The rest of the afternoon we spent in the emerging technology area. Some very cool things here such as 3D LCD displays, telepresence helmets (see video below) and tactile feedback devices.

I really liked the soap pointing device. Basically a wireless mouse put inside a bag of cloth in a shaped piece of plastic. It becomes a mouse that you don't need a surface to use, you just hold it in your hand.

One of the best ones was a big green box into which you can put your hand. The system then generates a 3d model of your hand(s) and arm(s) and you can then interact with virtual objects in a 3D scene. If is very cool and can build models of anything the 6 cameras see so if you hold a coke bottle or your mobile phone in thebox, it becomes part of the simulation. Check out the video below.

The electronic theater was a 2 hour showcase of animation, game graphics and special effects. Basically the best CG of the last year. Some amazing FX and some very funny short animations too.

Ok off to bed for another early start :) Here are some videos for you...