Special Event: SIGGRAPH

Iridas, which first introduced non-destructive color grading technology in 2003, announced the release of SpeedGrade OnSet, a look creation tool for cinematographers, which provides a means for communicating looks to all parts of the post-production and film finishing pipeline. The new application uses the same .look file format as SpeedGrade DI allowing for direct collaboration between cinematographer and colorist. SpeedGrade OnSet runs on both the Mac and Windows platforms.

Pipelinefx, a leading provider of render farm management software for 3D animation and interactive entertainment companies, will demonstrate version 4.0 of its flagship product, qube!, at SIGGRAPH 2005, being held at the Los Angeles Convention Center from July 31 to Aug. 4.

We turn our attention to digital art this month good timing with Comic-Con happening this weekend in San Diego (for those attending, please stop by our booth, #418). Ellen Wolff gets great insight from ILM concept artist Ryan Church on what it was like working on both REVENGE OF THE SITH and WAR OF THE WORLDS. Mary Ann Skweres gets a sneak peek at what we can expect at the SIGGRAPH 2005 Art Gallery next month. And Henry Turner catches up with the talented and tireless Syd Mead. Have a good show at the Con!

Bill DesowitzEditor

Autodesk Inc. will offer its 2005 SIGGRAPH Conference Master Classes for Autodesk 3ds Max, VIZ and Combustion software. Classes will be taught by leaders in the computer graphics, architectural visualization and visual effects industries hailing from award-winning facilities, including Frantic Films, tbdesign, cgtraining, The Orphanage and Blur Studios.

SIGGRAPH 2005 Panels program offers insights into the current state of computer graphics and interactive techniques.

SIGGRAPH 2005, the 32nd International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, will take place July 31-Aug. 4 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Disney Consumer Products chair Andy Mooney announced that the Pixar-less TOY STORY 3 will open in the summer of 2008 at the International Licensing Show in New York City.

This comes on the heels of Disney Feature Animation announcing at Los Angeles ACM SIGGRAPH earlier in the week that it will be heavily recruiting CG talent for TOY STORY 3 at SIGGRAPH 2005.

The SIGGRAPH 2005 Art Gallery: Threading Time will showcase digital artwork that maps or traces threads through time and space. Six world-renowned artists were invited to exhibit their works in the SIGGRAPH 2005 Art Gallery in addition to the featured juried works. A record number of 1,100 pieces were submitted from which 53 artists were chosen. Works include 11 Art animations, six Art Papers, three Art Symposia discussions, six Art Installations (to be shown in the adjoining Emerging Technologies area) and three distributed performances on Access Grid.

Film and game industry experts from Digital Domain, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Turner Studios and Weta Digital are scheduled to present Alias MasterClasses at SIGGRAPH, Aug. 1-5 in Los Angeles. May 31 is the early bird deadline to receive 20% off the cost of classes. Getting in early guarantees the opportunity to learn techniques that push the boundaries of creativity and improve production workflows.

The SIGGRAPH 2005 Papers program, the forum for presenting the finest research in computer graphics and interactive techniques, has selected 98 papers for presentation from a total of 461 submissions.

The leading contributors to this year's Papers program include: Microsoft Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Stanford University, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, the University of Washington, Carnegie-Mellon University, California Institute of Technology and ETH Zürich.