The mind-blowing immersion in gaming cinematics will be complemented by interactive sharing sessions from renowned gaming experts. Presenting a publisher’s perspective in the gaming industry, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences will take audiences through four key questions in the business of game publishing in the session East Meets West: The Power of the Pitch. Game developers keen to keep up-to-date on the latest in game technology should attend the Recent Advances in Online Game Technology session, which will gather key experts from Intel Corporation, Crytek GmbH, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) Korea as well as NCsoft. The session will discuss the current state-of-the-art technologies in games development, touching on the latest from clients to servers. Of Agony and Ecstasy: An Exploration of Artistic Development and Direction in Video Games will explore and contextualize the complex process of big-budget, 21st-century game development.

Movie magic unmasked
The use of computer graphics in movies continues to captivate special effects and animation fans worldwide with ever-advancing cinematography techniques, realistic rendering and life-like simulations. SIGGRAPH Asia 2010 presents computer graphic enthusiasts with the latest innovations and techniques that are helping to push the possibilities in production.

Through more than 100 spellbinding clips from established studios and emerging talents, SIGGRAPH Asia will present visitors with an update of the latest benchmark in computer generated storytelling. Additionally, leading production houses such as Disney Animation Studios, Industrial Light & Magic, OLM Digital, Inc. and Pixar Animation Studios will be present at SIGGRAPH Asia 2010 to share their experiences and latest successes in recent landmark productions.

Among the sessions to note is “Toy Story 3” Double Feature: Characters and Lighting which will explore how Pixar Animation Studios rebuilt and relighted the characters and sets in Toy Story 3 using the latest in technology available today. In the Session Geometry Simulation for Feature Films, Seunghun Lee, the lead creative technical director from Industrial Light & Magic will introduce how simulations use flesh mesh, cloth mesh and rigid bodies in VFX movies such as Avatar, Terminator, Indiana Jones and Transformers.

SIGGRAPH Asia 2010 also seeks to bring audiences closer to tomorrow’s technologies through transitional concepts and ideas that have the potential to impact the future of movie-making. In its CUDA Workshop, NVIDIA will be holding a talk entitled Using 3D Stereoscopic Solutions in Broadcast and Film Production. The leading visual computing company will also present a case study from Avatar, which will describe how it has successfully overcome the complex rendering and lighting required by leveraging on sophisticated algorithms and techniques.

The complementing Technical Papers sessions will feature several research works aimed at making computer-generated images more realistic through enhancements in modeling, rendering and sophisticated animation techniques. Highlights include Animation Wrinkling: Augmenting Coarse Cloth Simulations with Realistic-Looking Wrinkles; Motion Fields for Interactive Character Animation; Morphable Crowds and MovieReshape: Tracking and Reshaping of Humans in Videos.

Thorsten Thormählen, Team Leader at the Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik in Germany explains, “The Technical Paper we are presenting at SIGGRAPH Asia 2010, MovieReshape: Tracking and Reshaping of Humans in Videos, presents a method for quick and easy manipulation of the body shape and proportions of a human actor in a video footage. In the past, this was only possible in still images. With the new technique developed by researchers in our laboratory, the body shape of humans in videos can be manipulated too. Today, Hollywood actors and actresses have to visit the gym or go on a diet to bring life to some of their roles. With this revolutionary technique, a muscular body can be just a mouse click away.”

In all, 190 leading computer graphics professionals and academics representing close to 80 research and education institutions will share their knowledge and insights into new ideas through 50 Technical Papers presented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2010.

Innovations in computer graphics applications