The CG creations on display are more than just for entertainment. All images courtesy of SIGGRAPH. © MIRALab - University of Geneva.

For the past 34 years, artists, researchers, students and industry professionals celebrate their achievements at the International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, commonly known as SIGGRAPH. The best way to get a sense of the scope of these accomplishments is to attend the Electronic Theater, key event of the Computer Animation Festival.

The logo of SIGGRAPH 2007 in San Diego was a stylized face of an android, reminiscent of Futura, the robotic female from Metropolis. As in Fritz Lang's masterpiece, the driving force behind computer graphics is the quest to capture reality, recreate it, give it life and, eventually, transcend it.

Serving as this year's chair of the Computer Animation Festival, Paul Debevec is no stranger to SIGGRAPH or the Electronic Theater. His first film, The Campanile Movie, based on his Ph.D. work, was presented in the Electronic Theater in 1997, while his first paper appeared in SIGGRAPH proceedings the year before. He served on its jury a few times since. Under his guidance, this year marks a return to a more balanced selection of animations, with a larger place given to research work.

Capturing Reality
Capturing reality is a recurring theme in Debevec's work. From HDRI techniques to Light Stage, an aspect capture system used in several movies from The Matrix to Spider-Man 3, the techniques he developed to facilitate the realistic integration of real and computer generated imagery have influenced computer graphics for more than a decade.

From the complex behavior of skin deformation (Capturing and Animating Skin Deformation) to recreating the look and feel of haute couture garments too fragile to observe in motion (High Fashion in Equations), representation of reality is still at the core of research in Computer Graphics.

The SIGGRAPH 2007 Papers Preview, narrated by CG pioneer Jim Blinn, showed a brief summary of the record 108 papers accepted this year. These papers are representative of the core areas of research in modeling, animation, and rendering. The focus of many papers this year is on particles, flames, liquids and cloth simulations. Submissions also span into the related areas of imaging and visualization, addressing image processing into multiple formats, such as content aware image resizing for use on cellphones or challenges created by gigapixel photographs. Other prominent topics are related to non-photorealistic work with interactive scientific cut outs or watercolored videos. Some would say they are just an excuse to abuse a digital bunny and a mutant armadillo.

It is easy to look at current state of computer graphics and assume that we have already discovered all there is to know. This selection of papers shows that this assumption couldn't be more wrong. There is still plenty to discover.

Beyond research work, Debevec's dedication and technical knowledge of Computer Graphics are clearly visible in the instructions he gave to this year's jury: comb through 905 submissions (from 726 last year) to select a state of the art and innovation across all aspects of computer graphics --storytelling, science, broadcast, games, visual effects, art. The result is a selection of 39 pieces for the Electronic Theater and 93 in the additional Animation Theater.

Games like Gears of War show off the technology advances that have happened over the past years. © Microsoft 2006.

Realtime Advances
Among many firsts this year, such as the submission of movies in high- definition video, there was a major representation of realtime technologies, starting with the pre-show event.

The startling contrast of moving from a game of Plasma Pong with realtime fluid dynamics simulations to a game nostalgia piece with classic arcade games such as Asteroids, Tempest and Star Wars, projected in vector graphics as a laser show was an experience only possible here. The best part of the pre-show was the presence of celebrity players at the controllers of these games -- CG pioneers Blinn and Ken Perlin, Glenn Entis (VP, chief visual and technical officer, Electronic Arts, and featured speaker this year) and John Knoll (co-author of Photoshop and visual effects supervisor at ILM).