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):

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...

First day of SIGGRAPH

Got up at 7am, had breakfast and then dashed down to the conference center. Our first session was and introduction to SIGGRAPH and computer graphics. We did the intro bit but bailed on the computer graphics part and joined into the last part of the special session for Ratatouille which is Pixar's newest film.

This session covered all the work and techniques for the animations of food being chopped and dough being rolled (Ratatouille is all about a bunch of rats helping out a young chef). It also covered the fluid dynamics for the soup and other things like the work flow between the different departments. Very interesting.

We then went to check out the student art gallery whilst waiting for the main art gallery to open. There were some very cool bits of art and a number of great interactive pieces.

For instance there was a piece in which you filled up two jars with corn. Based on the level of corn in each jar the display selected two countries based on their annual corn production. It then displayed various economic stats comparing the two countries. If you rotated the jars then different stats were displayed. Another pieces was a table top that was an interactive book. It had a camera so video of you became part of the book as you "flipped" through the virtual book.

Had a quick peek at the art gallery area before having to go to my afternoon session on OpenGL programming. Some very cool things here:

• An interactive table top on which you placed a "formula" tile. The big screen then started to plot out the function in 3D. Then on the table you put a camera model, depending on where you poistioned the camera or which way the camera was pointed the view of the plotted formula changed. You could then put a model of a surfer on the table and the view changed to the surfer's point of view as he surfed along the 3D model. They also had one which was a 3D model of a car that you could look around by moving the camera model.
• A display that had three sensors that you clipped to your fingers. Based on your biometric readings it created animations and music.
• A 360 display. Kinda like a Star Wars hologram. Its pretty awesome you can walk around the display and see the picture from any angle. Resolution was very good but it did seem to be limited to shades of grey.
• Another interactive table onto which you could place different objects which would be interacted with by different animations. For instances bits of rope were treated as train tracks for an animated train. The tea cup saucer would become the center for a garden of animated flowers and forks the starting point for little cars to zoom from. I discovered that if you formed a loop with one of the bits of rope it would fill in, in blue and little ducks would pop up and swim in the newly formed pond.

I only had half and hour so will have to go back later.

My afternoon session on OpenGL was a good refresher and they covered some of the new things like shaders and GPU programming. Was good to get a concise (4 hours) overview.

The last session of the day was the "Fast Forward" presentation. This gave each presenter of a paper a minute to give a brief summary of their paper to help people decide what they wanted to see. Some of the highlights:

• Photo clipart which uses big image databases (such as Flickr) to add elements such as people and cars or merges images to take away things in images such as buildings. Pretty amazing results.
• Seam carving which is a technique to resize images without any stretching or squishing. It uses the data in the image to add more detail to the image !
• A new technique to do lighting which means a scene with 100,000 lights renders in 15 seconds.
• Antiradiance so that global illumination can be calculated on scenes in "real-time".
• Videotrace which lets you build 3D models out of video footage you take with any old video camera

Definitely going to have to replan the schedule after seeing this.

The "Fast Forward" finished up at 8pm and we had dinner at an Italian place in the gaslight quarter.

Back at the hotel there seems to be a pool party going on. Its very loud so hopefully we will get some sleep. Gotta be up at 7:00 again :)

Getting to San Diego and our first day

Well I'm in the USA for work (honest) going to a conference (SIGGRAPH) in San Diego. The trip up was great, premium economy on Air New Zealand rocks; leg room, service and on demand movies. I even managed to sleep on the plane which is not something I often do.

Security at the US airports is a bit crazy and very slow going so finally getting to San Diego was a relief. The hotel we are staying in (I'm travelling with my colleague Young) is massive but right next to the conference center and near the "gaslight quarter" which is where all the restaurants and bars are.

In addition to being Friday, there was a big baseball game on (Padres Vs. Giants) so the quarter was packed with people. We watched the crowd go by and struck up conversions with heaps of people. Chris and Troy would love it, most of the places use scantily clad girls as maitre ds.

I had to help Young home at around midnight and then foolishly decided to go back into town by myself. I found a nice bar to hang out in and worked my way thru their bourbon selection and then crawled back to the hotel at 3am.

Considering our night out, Young and I still managed to get up relatively early for breakfast down on the waterfront.

We then spent the rest of morning on the Midway which is an old aircraft carrier that has been turned into a museum. They have a ton of planes in the hanger and up on the deck. The ship is pretty big but across the bay at the naval yards is a modern carrier that is really massive.

It is really hot at the moment(high twenties), so we are regrouped at the hotel before heading off to register for the conference which starts tomorrow. Registration was quick and painless so we headed back into the gaslight quarter for lunch at the Rockin' Baja Lobster bar. I had a burger and Young had seafood in a bucket (check out the picture). We then headed back to the hotel to finish off planning which sessions we want to see at the conference (we are only going to be able to see a small percentage of what is on) and to go thru all the goodies we got when we registered.

Reckon we will have a quite night tonight as we have an 8:30am start and sessions till 8pm !

Europe threesixty

360 degree pans of European cities we visited in 2007. Watch the backgrounds not me :)

The Last Post - Amsterdam to Home

Our first night in Amsterdam we did a walking tour of the Red Light District finishing with a live sex show. After the show we split into smaller groups to check out the 'coffee shops' and have a look around. We were glad to head back to the bus as there was a weird vibe with lots of drunken tourists giving all the girls the eye.

Next day was our free day in Amsterdam. We walked around the city and went to Anne Franks House. Dinner that night was in a small fishing village called Valendam. Cool to see icons of Holland like the dykes and even a windmill. for our last night as a group we had an open bar booze cruise back in Amsterdam and ended up at a pub playing pool and drinking.

After a full days drive through Belgium, across the channel back to London we said tearful goodbyes to everyone and checked into our hotel. Met up with Simon, Toby and Anthony for dinner.

Next day went to The Royal Mews looking for Ponies but found carriages instead. Had a look at the front of Buckingham Palace, tubed to Marble Arch and Hyde Park for a wonder then tubed to the airport were Toby met us to say goodbye.

Couldn't imagine a better holiday or a better group to spend it with. Now we just have to get back into the real world...

Germany - Rhine Valley

Currently in the Rhine Valley. Did wine tasting last night then somehow got involved in a drinking game lead by our tour manager. Not sure how this happened as we were going to have a night off from drinking!!

Off on a river cruise up the valley this morning then on to Amsterdam.

Only 2 days left to go now, boohoo!