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SIGGRAPH 2014 Report: Days 2 & 3

The second day of the convention kicks off with "Advances in Real Time Games," and in-depth talks on ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ and ‘Guardians of the Galaxy.’

Vancouver was having a bizarre bout of humidity on Monday, yet the conference continued with aplomb. I decided to kick off the day with a talk on "Advances in Real Time Games." There were very impressive algorithms shown on real-time motion blur and depth of field techniques. Anything that can reduce render time can save money in production. It was very technical but also very insightful. 

Monday afternoon was dominated by Marvel in the main hall. There were in-depth talks on Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy. A great deal of time was spent on Rocket Raccoon and Groot and it was fascinating to see how they were developed. Rocket had a raccoon's head but the rest of his body wasn't anatomically correct, whereas Groot had a face made of bark but had to deform somehow without looking "rubbery."

I had the pleasure of attending Solid Angle's party on a boat that they had hired out Monday evening. I ran into some old friends and got a chance to thank "Solid Angle support staff" for their help with the software over the years. Plus there was free sushi!

Tuesday heralded the opening of the Exhibition and it was notably busier around the convention center. I went to a lecture called "Creature Feature" that looked at how creatures were rigged in some recent movies. The standout technique was probably Sony Imageworks procedural tentacle creature from Edge of Tomorrow. It had simplistic animation controls but an extremely sophisticated tentacle generation system under the hood. 

Looking around the exhibition it was clear that 3D printing was the current flavor of the moment. The price point still seems out of consumer reach however, with a decent printer costing at least $3, 000. There were also new innovations from The Foundry, Chaos Group V-Ray and Cinema 4D to name but a few.

Finally the Electronic Theater showed the best of the years CG work, with award winning student pieces, commercials and movie montages. My favorite piece was Disney's short Feast, a wonderful tale about a dog getting all of his owner’s food treats until a lady moves in and things change.

A fantastic few days with plenty more to come!

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Stephen Parish
CG Supervisor
Nice Shoes Creative Studio