SIGGRAPH 2011

SIGGRAPH 2011, Vancouver BC
2011 was my first time attending SIGGRAPH. It was also my first time traveling to Canada. I have wanted to attend for 12 years now. I had hoped it would be as entertaining and educational as I had always heard. I turned out to to be just that.

I found out the conference was actually smaller than the previous ones held in L.A. If that's the case I can't imagine an L.A. SIGGRAPH. One may need GPS to get to everything. The conference was held at the Vancouver Conference Center and was split in between two main buildings, East and West. Most of the talks I attended were held in the West Building. A lot of the game orientated talks were held in the East building. I did manage to catch an in depth making of for Kill Zone 3, but most of my time was spent listening to the film talks and attending workshops.

On the first day I took in a long but interesting discussion on 3d scanning, printing and mapping. It was about half tech talk and half industry education. Since I don't follow this industry by far most of the information was new. I was also super impressed with how small 3d printers had become. They can literal fit on a work desk now and are getting smaller every year. The speakers went in depth about how the manufacturing industry and medical prosthetics really hold the key to 3d printings future. Beyond that, they discussed how the industry has come into it's own and terms like "3d printing" are needing to be fazed out for more accurate terminology. Again, all new information to me but intriguing none the less. Below is a (bad) picture of the 3d printers on display.

 After that I attended my first workshop. The workshops we're laid out fairly well. Despite multiple workshops being held in the same large room the sound quality of the speakers was pretty good. This particular workshop was on the new ZBrush release and how to get the most out of it. I don't do much sculpting in my pipeline but it's an incredible program that is also fun to use. I got some good practice in and came away wanting to use it more. We'll see if I can work some more tutorials in my own time.

 When the workshop was over I sat in on a discussion involving satellite production pipelines. The speakers were from Pixar and  Dreamworks. The talks revolved around the challenges of linking studios from all over the world. Both representatives agreed that work still must be done with a "one studio" mentality. The serves and tech must allow creatives to produce without having to look for or lose assets. Manage a asset database such as one used for a animated motion picture can be immense. Unfortunately none of the speakers went too in depth about the tech side of how they make that happen. I assumed mostly do to the practices being trade secrets. Still, it was interesting to hear. That talk concluded a very informative first day.

Day two started off with a presentation by TuboSquid's Michelle Bousquet. The presentation centered around TurboSquid's new quality standards for models on their site. The lengths they had to go to come up with their Checkmate system were pretty pains-taking. It involved months of constant R&D and communication with clients in all cg industries. Eventually they got the system  up and going and it is now currently in use on their site.

 I also got to see a technical breakdown of the hair, cloth, and flesh simulations for ILM's first fully animated feature film, Rango. Since a lot of this presentation was based on proprietary algorithms, a lot of it was over my head. Still, being able to see the work that went into the HCF simulations gave me that much more respect for the production of animated films. In my opinion the lighting for Rango set a new standard in how a cg film can be lit. Which is yet another reason Rango is one of my all time favorites.

 After day two things began to run together but the rest of the highlights are as follows...
Pixar gave a tech talk on the lighting of Cars 2. That was something to see. The amount of problem solving and trouble shooting that had to be done was enough to make your head hurt just to listen to. How  they pulled off the neon lights with a raytraced point cloud system was something I'd never heard of before. Also the list of tricks they had to do to render certain scenes just made you shake your head. The last Tech Talk I sat in on was a very in-depth presentation on the making of Kill Zone 3.

  On the last day I went to a Birds of a Feather discussion group where the speakers where Greyscale Gorilla founder, Clint Campbell and The Basement's Creative Director, Brian Phillips. I also viewed all of the shorts and features at the Computer Animation Festival including the Electronic Theater. I wrapped up SIGGRAPH 2011 with a visit to the exhibition floor and landed a Pixar wind up teapot. Not a bad way to end my first SIGGRAPH.