Slashdot Mirror

Hate to follow my post with my own reply, but there is also the Art Gallery website:

Well it set to open around Thanksgiving, Pixar has been working hard on it for a few years now. During SIGGRAPH they actually had a course in which in one part they explained all about the hair rendering and dynamics for Sullivan (the blue monster voiced by John Goodman). You could probably get the course notes by a library loan, or buy the CD from the ACM.

Pixar introduced a new gemetric primitive, RiCurves, a few years back, which is used for stuff like hair and the like. Here is the Application Note from Pixar:

No, SIGGRAPH prohibits you to take pictures from any of the technical sessions (courses, papers, panels, sketches and applications) and from the computer animation festival. You can't take pics during the session, though nothing prohibits you to take pics after one. Here it is directly from their website:

a/v Recording Guidelines

Only registered media representatives who have completed and signed the SIGGRAPH 2001 Audiovisual Agreement may be granted photography/ videography permission. The Audiovisual Agreement will be available on-site when you pickup your media badge.

Images or video obtained at SIGGRAPH 2001 may be published or aired only by a credible media outlet. Material may not be commercially sold or bartered. Media representatives must obtain permission from the person they are recording.

NO CAMERAS ARE ALLOWED IN THE TECHNICAL SESSIONS OR COMPUTER ANIMATION FESTIVAL, INCLUDING THE ELECTRONIC THEATER. ALL CAMERAS AND RECORDING EQUIPMENT MUST BE HAND-HELD.

Any media representative in violation of these guidelines may have their credentials revoked and may be removed from the Los Angeles Convention Center for the remainder of the conference.

And here is the link where it states so:

Now there were plenty of people that would sneak in video cameras and record those sessions but they would sit in a place where they could hide, if you noticed.

There were several places where they did forbid explicitly any recording, the Virtual Stars session (where John Dykstra showed the SpiderMan clip), and the 2001 special session (with Bob Abel, Syd Mead, Peter Hyams and Dennis Muren).

Well, the SIGGRAPH 2001 website has already posted some pictures from some of the venues here:

SIGGRAPH also had a TV camera crew walking around the Convention Center so probably in the near future they will put up some clips up. I also took quite a bit of pics for a website, ilmfan.com, but since I use "analog" 35mm it'll take me some time to put up a report ;-)

Heh. That's probably just an artifact introduced by the rather interesting border between neck and upper chest. I'd have Eskil, my colleague who actually did the modelling (as well as pretty much designed Verse) answer that himself, but he's in LA for SIGGRAPH 2001, so he can't. ;^)

Heh. That's probably just an artifact introduced by the rather interesting border between neck and upper chest. I'd have Eskil, my colleague who actually did the modelling (as well as pretty much designed Verse) answer that himself, but he's in LA for SIGGRAPH 2001, so he can't. ;^)

At SIGGRAPH this year there will be the first major gathering that includes both authors from -Game Studies- (and those doing similar work) and hard core game developers and graphics researchers. On Monday and Tuesday there will be panels in the Art Gallery (lower admission cost than main SIGGRAPH) which include those from both worlds, and then many more discussions, demos, and presentations in the main program Wednesday through Friday.

Hmm, that's a bit harsh. Although games have never had a scientific conference or a peer-reviewed journal of their own, they have had their place in many journals and conferences for quite a while now. A few among the many: SIGGRAPH, which sponsors many conferences including of course SIGGRAPH 2001, GI the Canadian conference which often focuses on interactive rendering and animation, Eurographics, which sponsors many publications, journals, and conferences on rendering and animation, etc, etc. Gaming is one of the stronger motivations of all this research, and they do talk about other aspects of gaming. For instance SIGGRAPH had a course on game AI for at least the past 2 years, and often presents articles on 3D sound.

Just seems slightly sensationalistic to claim that the field has been ignored by the academia while it has been a driving force of so much research for at least 5 years, perhaps 10.

-- Eric Plante,
M.Sc. in CompSci on hair dynamics,
University of Montreal, 1999.

Hmm, that's a bit harsh. Although games have never had a scientific conference or a peer-reviewed journal of their own, they have had their place in many journals and conferences for quite a while now. A few among the many: SIGGRAPH, which sponsors many conferences including of course SIGGRAPH 2001, GI the Canadian conference which often focuses on interactive rendering and animation, Eurographics, which sponsors many publications, journals, and conferences on rendering and animation, etc, etc. Gaming is one of the stronger motivations of all this research, and they do talk about other aspects of gaming. For instance SIGGRAPH had a course on game AI for at least the past 2 years, and often presents articles on 3D sound.

Just seems slightly sensationalistic to claim that the field has been ignored by the academia while it has been a driving force of so much research for at least 5 years, perhaps 10.

-- Eric Plante,
M.Sc. in CompSci on hair dynamics,
University of Montreal, 1999.

More info: here.

There will indeed several places where FF will be discussed at this years SIGGRAPH. The Advanced RenderMan course will have 2 sections with Kevin Bjorke, rendering supervisor, about the work. The original AWGUA (Alias/Wavefront) plan had also a talk about FF, but now it's scaled down. But there will probably be presentations at their booth. Mach Tony Kobayashi will have 2 presentations at the RenderMan user group meeting part of the Stupid RAT tricks part. There might be other here and there.

Great link. Just to clarify it does mention about PDI and their Linux use. But also the main focus is on Dreamworks own animation facility (they did Road to El Dorado), which is separate from PDI's and they have also made a big change to Linux. Actually there is also a SIGGRAPH Sketch this year about Dreamworks Linux pipeline:

Well for one thing PDI uses almost propietary in house built software. They did use Maya for modeling some of the stuff and certain fire FXbut as far as rendering, animating, etc. they used their own stuff. CGW did a report on Shrek. What they have done is that they have po0rted most of their software to Linux. Daniel Wexler, the guru behind their renderer has posted very interesting statistics on their rendering and Linux use. Last years SIGGRAPH had a Sketches section devoted to it and this year there will be a course. VES 2001 also had a talk about some of their technology used. And the current issue of Cinefex, THE magazine of the FX industry covers Final Fantasy in detail:

So it isn't exactly like no info was out before.

Well for one thing PDI uses almost propietary in house built software. They did use Maya for modeling some of the stuff and certain fire FXbut as far as rendering, animating, etc. they used their own stuff. CGW did a report on Shrek. What they have done is that they have po0rted most of their software to Linux. Daniel Wexler, the guru behind their renderer has posted very interesting statistics on their rendering and Linux use. Last years SIGGRAPH had a Sketches section devoted to it and this year there will be a course. VES 2001 also had a talk about some of their technology used. And the current issue of Cinefex, THE magazine of the FX industry covers Final Fantasy in detail:

So it isn't exactly like no info was out before.

Well for one thing PDI uses almost propietary in house built software. They did use Maya for modeling some of the stuff and certain fire FXbut as far as rendering, animating, etc. they used their own stuff. CGW did a report on Shrek. What they have done is that they have po0rted most of their software to Linux. Daniel Wexler, the guru behind their renderer has posted very interesting statistics on their rendering and Linux use. Last years SIGGRAPH had a Sketches section devoted to it and this year there will be a course. VES 2001 also had a talk about some of their technology used. And the current issue of Cinefex, THE magazine of the FX industry covers Final Fantasy in detail:

So it isn't exactly like no info was out before.

In Quebec, which is fairly social-democrat compared to the rest of North America, by law an employer must spend an amount corresponding to at least 5% of the salaries budget on employee training and education. This applies to any company with at least a certain number of employees (I believe the threshold is something like 10 or 20). This helps companies realize that there are benefits to letting your employees learn more. Many companies in the high tech business end up spending much more than that. For instance, it's funny to see how many people speak Canadian French at SIGGRAPH.

Siggraph is -the- computer graphics conference (look it up) and is pro-active about computer graphics as art. 2 things I saw there: This wasn't GG, but it is art, whereas this is computer graphics, and art, and maths, and cute.

If you can get it via a library or someone who went to Siggraph, look up the Siggraph Electronic Art and Animation Catalog and show it to the people who aren't convinced.

Having just completed a Master of Interactive Multimedia we did quite a bit of study around the nature of Art, Art Theory, Semiotics and everything else. But on ABC TV last night I saw this on The 7:30 Report. It was an interview with the new Australia Council boss discussing how New Media is the next revolution ...

As other /.'ers have mentioned, art is by defition what you define it as. There are a fwe art prizes around and orgainsation that will take your work, eg http://www.siggraph.org/.

As other people have mentioned, computers are just a tool. It's like the old debate of photography versus paintings (actually heard arguments for both each).

But if you need support just contact someone from SIGGRAPH, at least from the closest professional chapter. SIGGRAPH is the largest organization in Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, and covers all aspects of CG: straight art, animation, latest research, commercial projects, etc. Each year they have an art show (could be seen by mopre than 40,000 people this year) at the annual conference. After the conference the art show travels around the country. There are numerous panels on art at the conference and countless artists of all kinds.

It's too late for this years conference, but youy can still check out the following links for help and ecouragment:

As other people have mentioned, computers are just a tool. It's like the old debate of photography versus paintings (actually heard arguments for both each).

But if you need support just contact someone from SIGGRAPH, at least from the closest professional chapter. SIGGRAPH is the largest organization in Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, and covers all aspects of CG: straight art, animation, latest research, commercial projects, etc. Each year they have an art show (could be seen by mopre than 40,000 people this year) at the annual conference. After the conference the art show travels around the country. There are numerous panels on art at the conference and countless artists of all kinds.

It's too late for this years conference, but youy can still check out the following links for help and ecouragment:

As other people have mentioned, computers are just a tool. It's like the old debate of photography versus paintings (actually heard arguments for both each).

But if you need support just contact someone from SIGGRAPH, at least from the closest professional chapter. SIGGRAPH is the largest organization in Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, and covers all aspects of CG: straight art, animation, latest research, commercial projects, etc. Each year they have an art show (could be seen by mopre than 40,000 people this year) at the annual conference. After the conference the art show travels around the country. There are numerous panels on art at the conference and countless artists of all kinds.

It's too late for this years conference, but youy can still check out the following links for help and ecouragment:

It's for Windows and it isn't freeware any more, but it only costs US$35, which is an order or two of magnitude cheaper than a lot of the tools that geo folks use.

It accepts DEMs and a number of other 3D geo input formats and produces 3D output in VRML and Terragen, all sorts of 2D image formats, and even MPEG and AVI movies of flythroughs.

I don't get a commission or anything. I just think it's a cool tool, and converts geodata to some potentially very useful formats.

On the off chance you're in geoscience and don't know about GeoVRML, click here.

3D geodata flythroughs on the web may be an answer to Jim Blinn's famous comment about finding a use for real time 3d.

NPRQuake was done a year ago by Chris Herrman, Andy Gardner, Steve Dutcher, Erik Bakke, and me.

We aren't working on it any more -- we've all pretty much moved on. Although it did lead to some research presented at I3D this year. You can see some of that here.

Sorry for it being Windows only, but since we only had like two weeks to do the project, it was pretty much just hack hack hack. And since my Linux box doesn't have a 3D accelerator...

It wouldn't be too hard to port -- mostly just exchanging the DLL code for shared library stuff. Although the code is rather unsightly.

There are a lot of things that could be vastly improved. Silhouette edges, for instance--even a naive method would be fast enough. Also, transforming geometry to screen space and drawing there would help various things.

I think it would be great if someone wanted to pick it up and apply it to some real mod with a rendering style focused on that mod. For example, do a comic-book style for some comic-based mod, or a traditional toon-style for some "cartoony" mod.

Alex Mohr

Pixar has improved their shadow algorithms greatly since "Geri's Game". Based on a new method presented at SIGGRAPH 2000, hair can be self-shadowed in a more efficient manner while producing a higher quality result. Categorized under the Image Based Representations paper section, Deep Shadow Maps (PDF available) will greatly enhance modelled hair, fur or smoke. I've heard that this new algorithm has already been encorporated into Renderman and I believe was even used in Toy Story 2. Who needs clothes when you can cover every character in fur or hair? :^)

Pixar has improved their shadow algorithms greatly since "Geri's Game". Based on a new method presented at SIGGRAPH 2000, hair can be self-shadowed in a more efficient manner while producing a higher quality result. Categorized under the Image Based Representations paper section, Deep Shadow Maps (PDF available) will greatly enhance modelled hair, fur or smoke. I've heard that this new algorithm has already been encorporated into Renderman and I believe was even used in Toy Story 2. Who needs clothes when you can cover every character in fur or hair? :^)

Does the Web3D Roundup count?

30+ demos of Web3D content using all kinds of technology. Contestants are give between one and five minutes to show their stuff with a screaming crowd heckling them and the first five rows shooting ping-pong balls if they run long (or even just for the hell of it). Product demos got booed off the stage while an application for teaching ASL to deaf children got a standing ovation. Very cool!

And, if you were lucky enough to get a ticket, a great party with free drinks and a pyro group after the show!

Tim Childs rules!!!

Maybe he'll take about it at SIGGRAPH. He si actually giving a talk down there about free software and graphics. Here is the link: How Free is Free Software makes me wonder why Slashdot has not posted anything about SIGGRAPH (Darryl Strauss of DRI, Titanic, and Linux Glide fame will also give a talk).

Maybe he'll take about it at SIGGRAPH. He si actually giving a talk down there about free software and graphics. Here is the link: How Free is Free Software makes me wonder why Slashdot has not posted anything about SIGGRAPH (Darryl Strauss of DRI, Titanic, and Linux Glide fame will also give a talk).

A fair amount of work has been done on using graphics accelerators for collision detection in the field of robot motion planning. SIGGRAPH 90, Lengyel et al. describes one such approach. One striking demo of this being used showed motion-planning for moving a piano through a ridiculously complicated maze, with low obstacles and narrow halls. It involves twisting the piano, backing up, etc.

The approach calculates the "Minkowski sum" for a given robot and a given set of obstacles - the Minkowski sum being a stretched-out version of the obstacles that accounts for the closest possible approach of the robot to the obstacle. Then, you repeatedly render the robot into this Minkowski sum rendering (the M. sums are polyhedra) and basically "stumble" around by looking for overlaps between the robot polyhedra and the environment. Dynamic programming is used to prevent repeat checks.

Try searching SIGGRAPH articles for more.

When Stephenson began working on Snow Crash, he intended it to be a video game (super-interactive novel). Unfortunately, we're only getting to the point where that would be a plausibility. Or is that fortunately? If Ion Storm can succeed at Deus Ex, someone can succeed at Snow Crash...though Juanita's avatar tech is still a ways away (see Pixar's advances in this realm!)

Speaking of Pixar, it's always easier to fake tech in a movie; you get to pre-render everything. Snow Crash would make a great movie without too much trouble, because of its many high-octane visual elements. Also: the political/social satire that runs rampant is surprisingly easy to do visually: just show the Uncle Nunzio Pizza billboard and you're done.

Of course the movie would be radically different from the book, but it wouldn't be an insane adaptation like LotR--you just cut out the boring stuff, and you've got a whole bunch of cool action sequences. Stephenson's namshub mumbo-jumbo barely makes sense anyway (though it _nearly_ fits together quite neatly); the book could do with the bit of narrative tightening a movie would provide.

Snow Crash is hobbled by the importance of Juanita to the outcome of the book, and her near-complete absence from the book. A rewrite that dealt with the narrative problems caused by her would be welcome. My suspicion is the whole rewrite issue is what's killing this project: the book, while amazingly cool and smart and readable and one of my all-time favorite books, is seriously flawed by its tenuously connected plot threads.

Visually, the movie would be great in so many ways: the avatar world could be done anime-style, the Sumerian backstory (if it even entered) could be covered in a killer animation sequence like that from Todd McFarlane's Do the Evolution video, etc.

Stephenson deliberately drew on pop-culture ideas and imagery for the book, and took a lot from movies. Snow Crash could make a very good movie.

It probably would make a better computer game, but I'm not convinced we really have the tech for it.

Well your are correct, all if not most of the backgrounds are live actions plates and all other thing (dinos and FX) were composited over them. Though plates were digitally manipulated and digital matte paintings were used.

This year at SIGGRAPH (the premier event in Computer Graphics) they will have a course on the making of Dinosaur. Here is the course list for anyone interested:

Last SIGGRAPH they actually had a panel where one guy from Disney showed some clips of the work in progress. Interestingly enough on that same panel there was a guy from Square that also showed some clips from the movie: one was a something like a space station blowing up, the other this big huge Harrier like ship (probably the one pictured as the first prop), landing on a deserted street at night and blowing trash and a car away because of the exhaust vents. Looked pretty good IMHO. One more reason to go to SIGGRAPH, you never know what cool things might one could look at.

Well your are correct, all if not most of the backgrounds are live actions plates and all other thing (dinos and FX) were composited over them. Though plates were digitally manipulated and digital matte paintings were used.

This year at SIGGRAPH (the premier event in Computer Graphics) they will have a course on the making of Dinosaur. Here is the course list for anyone interested:

Last SIGGRAPH they actually had a panel where one guy from Disney showed some clips of the work in progress. Interestingly enough on that same panel there was a guy from Square that also showed some clips from the movie: one was a something like a space station blowing up, the other this big huge Harrier like ship (probably the one pictured as the first prop), landing on a deserted street at night and blowing trash and a car away because of the exhaust vents. Looked pretty good IMHO. One more reason to go to SIGGRAPH, you never know what cool things might one could look at.

XFree, being an implementation of an X server, has pretty much nothing to do with OpenGL. There are two limited ways they deal with each other:

• They both draw stuff to the framebuffer, and...
• GL can cooperate with an X server by using the GLX extension to X. GLX basically moderates contention for the graphics hardware between X and GL.

Mesa is an implementation of the OpenGL API. So is SGI's OpenGL® Sample Implementation. In fact, the reason SGI first started calling it "Open" (instead of simply "GL" for "Graphics Library") was because they cleaned up and published the API, then gave people permission to implement it.

As has been posted elsewhere on this thread, SGI is making vague noises about OpenGL and Mesa merging. This would be a wonderful example of how open source licenses actively discourage forking (as discussed in the context of the GPL in Linuxcare back in November).

If you want to know more about the hoary guts of OpenGL, and not just the API, I'd suggest looking up some of Akeley's articles on the hardware from prior SIGGRAPH proceedings.

Both Inventor and Performer are toolkits developed by SGI to run on top of OpenGL and simplify application development. Inventor is targeted more at interactive applications, like modelers (I wrote one in Inventor before it was released in less than five days, having never seen the library before - see Paul Strauss's and Rikk Carey's SIGGRAPH paper). Performer is targeted more at walkthroughs, flight simulators, and the like.

Here are some general resources that might help you get started:

The OpenGL standard is an open API for doing graphics, 3D and animation in particular. On Linux there is a free implementation called Mesa (software only and 3D accelerated). The OpenGL Programming Guide, published by Addison-Wesley for SGI is a good starting point. Its also not a bad introduction to the ideas behind 3D programming, and of course libraries that conform to OpenGL are widely available to start playing with.

Also, don't overlook Foley, Van Dam, Feiner, Hughes, Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice. It is considered the "definitive" guide on computer graphics. It is much more than just 3D graphics and animation. It really covers just about everything on the subject. It's not really a practical guide though, it is more of a introduction to principles. It's a little dated (1990, 2nd ed 1992), especially by your criterion.

Finally, the Graphics Gems books and Siggraph publications showcase a lot of specialized, cutting edge techniques. The Siggraph videos are pretty mind blowing.

Animation and 3D are big topics; once you've looked over some general resources, you'll have to pin down your project more.

Good luck.

Better yet, there's the ACM SIGGRAPH organization, with local professional chapters, and annual convention held each August. Check out www.siggraph.org, and contact someone in the NY chapter for more information about work in the area.

Or come to Los Angeles! Plenty of visual effects companies out here...

Well, probably the 2 most famous are Blue Sky Studios and R/GA Digital. Blue Sky has worked on "Joe's Apartement", "Alien 4", "Star Trek: Insurrection", "Armageddon", and many others. R/GA mainly does commercials now, but they were responsible for the FX of the Predator movies. Another one on the East coast is Kleiser-Walczak Construction Company who worked on things like "Clear and Present Danger", "Stargate", and the Spiderman ride at Universal Studios.

Also check out http://www.ecdc.org/ for a list of companies. Other good places are VFXPro, Visual FX, and VFXHQ.

Keep in mind that most companies in the US are in California, after all they have to be close where the business is. And if you are thinking about jobs, better start saving and planning for SIGGRAPH 2000.

The only way you can beat that system for 3D graphics performance is to spend $2000+ on a high-end graphics card such as the Intergraph Wildcard 4105. Of course you still have to buy a well configured PC to stick that card in. As far as 2D graphics goes the SGI VW 320/540 is unbeatable. Check out the review at Lumis3D.

If you're not doing highend 2D/3D graphics then don't buy the SGI VW320.

Admittedly, if you needed to do graphics work on the 320 today, you'd have to run WinNT, but it looks like SGI is committed to making Linux do 3D graphics well, in the very near future. There's gonna be some serious Linux goings on at SI99RAPH

I just wanted to emphasize that mental ray has been available on Linux x86 and Alpha for at least a couple of years now.

Another major rendering package, Pixar's Photorealistic Renderman Toolkit AKA PRman may already be available for Linux as well. I saw a demo at ACM/SIGGRAPH'98

I just hope that the various 3D modeling and animation packages are ported to Linux as well. The Sidefx Houdini port is a great first step, but I'm hoping that Alias|Wavefront Maya and Softimage|3D are not far behind.