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!

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