ACM SIGGRAPH announces the selection of Don Marinelli, a leading Carnegie Mellon scholar and educator, to give one of its keynote presentations at SIGGRAPH, the 37th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, Sunday 25 July - Thursday, 29 July 2010 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California.

Well, as you could tell from my blogs, last week's SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans was eventful despite the rather low turnout. There was a lot of buzz about stereoscopic 3-D, of course, as well as leveraging the GPU for movies, and discussion about the current state of Visualization and what it means for the burgeoning craft of previs. Keep a lookout for some longer interviews I conducted in New Orleans, including Rob Bredow, the new CTO of Sony Pictures Imageworks.

Following its very well received user group meeting at SIGGRAPH 2009 last week in New Orleans, Chaos Software introduces the next step in the development of its V-Ray RT interactive raytracing technology. Massively parallel general-purpose GPUs become more widely available, and with industry-standard APIs now in place to utilize them, the usage of GPUs to accelerate raytracing finally becomes practical.

Press release from ACM SIGGRAPH

(New Orleans, LA) - Winners of FJORG!, the third annual "iron-animator" style competition and GameJam!, the first videogame competition were announced during SIGGRAPH 2009, the 36th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques taking place this week in New Orleans.

Lance Jones and Jessica Brown of the Animation and Visual Effects Program Louisiana State University Shreveport write up their impressions of the films that screened as part of SIGGRAPH's Evening Theater’s Festival & Jury Chair’s Reels.

Read their thoughts on the Evening Theater’s Festival Chair’s Reel.

written by Bill Desowitz for Animated Travels

written by Bill Desowitz for Animated Travels

written by Bill Desowitz for Animated Travels

Naturally Autodesk had some big announcements, including 2010 versions of Maya, MotionBuilder and Mudbox and along with new suites for digital entertainment creation and new education initiatives.

Maya 2010 has all the features of Maya Unlimited 2009 and Maya Complete 2009, including the Maya Nucleus Unified Simulation Framework, Maya nCloth, Maya nParticles, Maya Fluid Effects, Maya Hair, and Maya Fur.

With Bill Desowitz away at SIGGRAPH, it's my pleasure to give you the Digital Musings this week. Coming soon to a VFXWorld page near you will be an interview with DreamWorks artist Gary Lee on his new live-action/visual effects short, HECTOR CORP. Next week we're excited about our interview with DISTRICT 9 director Neil Blomkamp.

Don't miss our Houdini 10 and Flare reviews from this week. And you can get all the latest from SIGGRAPH at the Animated Travels blog on Animation Blogspot.

Rick DeMott

written by John Morgan Brewer and Jessica Brown of the LSU Shreveport Animation and Visual Effects Program for Animated Travels

Monday nights’ Evening Theater began with the introduction of host Miles Perkins, senior staff at Industrial Light and Magic. He kicked off the award ceremony by paving the way for Scott Farrar, visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic. Scott presented the awards for SIGGRAPH’s 2009 animation festivals. Out of 770 submissions the following were selected for three categories.