SIGGRAPH 2015 Day 5 Last day!!!!

First, I have to say, this is my first SIGGRAPH, an event I dreamed for a long time, it happens right after my intern at DWA, so I can meet a lot of old pals. Today is the last day of this intensive experiences. At beginning I would like to make some tips for participating in the SIGGRAPH.

0. Carry a good camera with you (no video but picture is OK), if you want to carry cellphone to take picture, do remember to carry one fully charged phone charger or you won’t survive half of the day!

1. Try to sync the daily schedule with your google calendar. Try to find a way to narrow down the things you want to do.

2. For what you should do? It depends on your purpose of the event. If you try to hunt job as a artist, there will be a lot of HR from big animation studios hanging all over the place. You should carry a tablet to show best of your work to them, they may immediately show you to some director so do your homework for their work. You may not get a job offer here but make your future interview easier by letting people remember your work and see your progress is not a bad idea. Also, large graphics companies may host special sessions for young people who want to be in graphics area, you may get a lot of chance to ask questions and know the story behind the screen. So if the SIGGRAPH is hosted near you, it is definitely worthy the price to join the event even you don’t have any contributions.

If you are an zealot of technology, exhibition hall is the place for you, it is also good for job hunting too since a lot of front-end workers of the company there, giving you opportunity to ask anything about their working environment and experience.

I don’t feel the tutorial or conference would be that beneficial if you are not at least studied them for a year. Even they say it is intro level, the professors and instructors basically try to cover one semester’s knowledge in 45 mins. Don’t expect you can understand too much if you haven’t been in that area for a while. However, if you have been studying the area for a while, the tutorial can help you sort your idea out since you may not listen to the creator of the theory on how to do the work.

If you are movie fan, well, the world’s top VFX studios are here!

3. Find a place close to the conventional center to live. You can find them on Airbnb easily and price should be much better than the hotel.

4. Rent a car if you can drive, download ParkWhiz from App store, It could find the parking place super easy for you near the conventional center. Also it may give you the first time parking for free.

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OK, now go back to the last day. In the morning I don’t feel there is too much to do so I went to the color section, Surprisingly I meet the professor who are from UC Irvine for the ray tracing graphics course. I recognized him and said thank you for his good explanation on the youtube for the physics of light. And I also meet the research lead of Microsoft Dr. Hoppe. My Phd work on edge feature is actually derived from his NPR rendering. It is like finally all the things finally reveal and make sense.

The height difference is also the academic difference between us...
The height difference is also the academic difference between us…

In the afternoon, I majorly listened Dr. Hao Li’s tutorial about Digital human. He host the presentation with colleages from MIT Media lab. This is a great way to solve some questions in my mind about face tracking and animation transfer. For the pdf file you can find more information on Dr. Hao Li’s website: Click Me. It should be on the section of “MODELING AND CAPTURING THE HUMAN BODY: FOR RENDERING, HEALTH, AND VISUA-LIZATION“.

Trust me, the seat is full during the talk. Everyone is active about face.
Trust me, the seat is full during the talk. Everyone is active about face.

I also tried to catch up with the behind scene talk about Averanger: Age of Ultron. This is super great to know how each different character is handled differently by the international VFX studios to make the amazing movie. Of course, ILM still have the super advanced muscle simulation system to simulate the real layers of tissues so the body of Hulk and Dinosaurs do not too much artist manual work to detail since the rig movement directly manipulate the different layers to the top skin. The real-time visual feed back of the rigging suite Mr. Blade wore also helps him to see how Ultron looks like during the rehearsal. Actually, one thing I notice is that the boundary between off-line rendering and real-time rendering is blur. The movie industry and game industry needs talents from each other’s side.

IMG_20150813_171856 IMG_20150813_171953 IMG_20150813_171959

Yes, it is so amazing experience and I am glad I can keep my memory here at the first day of 2016. It gives me the hint about what I want to do and I know how I can do it. Just need to be a geek guy, go to gym, and eat healthy and leave all other times on the thing you try to created. This is a way to NERD, but it is also my choice.

Hope to see you around in 2016!
Hope to see you around in 2016!

SIGGRAPH 2015 Day 2

On Monday after our poster presentation, we can fully enjoy the conference!

IMG_20150809_164633First thing I chose to do is to join the Panel talk offered from research leaders at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Intel, Ford Motor, and Microsoft on the Topic “The Renaissance of VR: Are We Going to do it Right This Time?” In which, we know that VR is not new, all these veterans have tried on VR/AR even before I was born. The key information is that due to the hardware is achievable by normal people now, it may be a good chance for the VR/AR to get into people.

 

A great Keynote speech about what leads the graphics in the coming future from MIT Media Lab Director.
A great Keynote speech about what leads the graphics in the coming future from MIT Media Lab Director.

Secondly, I go to the large hall to listen to the Keynote speech offered by MIT media lab director Jochi Ito. Then I know that MIT media lab (MML) does not hair tenure professor since they want to keep the research active and new. In term of the research, MML focuses on iso-discipline area, which is the total empty space in the research. That is so cool. He also purposes the manufacture power of Shenzhen, China and the innovation from that region. I feel that it sounds like it is because Shenzhen does not have regulation on copy rights (sometimes rules become the boundary, but I still feel that the ignorance of copy rights is not a good sign for long term development).

 

The magicians of Industrial Light and Magic!
The magicians of Industrial Light and Magic!

The most amazing thing is the ILM 40 year anniversary! OMG it is like life dream comes true. I sat in the first group of chairs just below those big hero who

These are the people behind the first star wars!
These are the people behind the first star wars!

worked with the first Star Wars movie. They talked about how they make the first Star Wars, why they start the ILM at the beginning as to create the special effects, specifically about mechanic motors system to make capturing the same scene from same camera angles possible. In this way, multiple layers of footage can be obtained. Then the films can be composted as what happens now in digital version production. However, since the event only lasts about one and half hours, I think they talked too much about the old days. But at the end, ILM X Lab is announced with out surprise. Mr. Rob Bredow gives an amazing demo about how interactive high quality rendering can be achieved in the cloud and stream into the tablet to give more story from different characters’ point of view. I personally feel that ILM X Lab shows everything they have for the advanced movie production this time. But I still feel that expose so many details about one story line to the audience is still not a good way for VR/AR experience. Too much brain is used and we are looking for entertainment right? But without doubt, this is an amazing new direction!

Dream comes true with this talent artist + tech genius.
Dream comes true with this talent artist + tech genius.

In the afternoon, it is time for some academic topic! Face Reality technical paper section attracted so many audiences, including the supervisors from ILM and other studios. Four presentations covers a lot of the technologies on how to represent facial animation  either in real time or high resolution model sequences. The EPFL’s paper is really interesting. To follow the paper in more detail you can access the document at here.  And it is also amazing to say hi to my old friend Laura. And also have a chance to meet the super star Dr. Hao Li. His facial retargeting work with depth sensor, super amazing experience in ILM and Weta, and multiple hits on SIGGRAPH really make me speechless. To work with him as a post-doc really jumped into my mind during the meeting with him.

Then it is the reception, where the people meet and talk. I meet another amazing professor Mark Sagar from New Zealand. He is the leader of Baby-X project (as shown below).

FX Guide Phd course about Baby-X project

So nice he is, highly recommend to study with this MIT PhD at University of Auckland and of course, visit Weta!
So nice he is, highly recommend to study with this MIT PhD at University of Auckland and of course, visit Weta!

I got the information about Baby-X from FX Guide (Thanks for my colleagues from DreamWorks to tell me this amazing website!) At that moment I could not help and sent him a email to show my excitement about his ambition project. He comes to SIGGRAPH this year alone and I recognize him in the reception. He is really nice to share his work and we really have a good conversation. This is also the first time Baby-X is revealed in SIGGRAPH so I best wish him a successful presentation during the Real-time Live! event. And I also notice that the research leader of Microsoft also attends SIGGRAPH 2015! But that is another story I will talk about in next post.

Great Monday!!!!