SIGGRAPH 2016: Computer Graphics Show Round-Up

Continued from page 3

Amazon Lumberyard, Google VR

Amazon Lumberyard is a free game engine, and this year Amazon had a booth demonstrating their new game engine for both games and VR. The game engine is a “cross platform” 3D game engine that creates high-quality games. You can connect your games to the vast compute and storage cloud of the AWS and engage fans on Twitch. You can spend more time creating and managing your social audience and not have to worry about creating your own game engine or the server capacity to handle such a load.

10 – Google VR Booth on Exhibits floor at SIGGRAPH 2016.

Google VR announced how the company was going to combine Google Earth software with Virtual Reality giving users an interactive view of their surroundings. Google VR did demos with their headset on the Exhibit floor.

SIGGRAPH SHOW

Gender Diversity

The Academy Awards had a big controversy about the diversity issue among their members and voters. Violence in the news about diversity issues is everywhere in the news. The Democratic Party nominated a woman for the first time. Victoria Alonzo, Executive Vice President of Physical Production for Marvel Studios, said when she arrived at SIGGRAPH she saw there was a line at the Women’s Restroom, she was surprised and excited at the same time because it meant more women were at SIGGRAPH. I went to a networking event on Monday night sponsored by Industrial, Light, & Magic, Pixar, and Disney.

11 – Women Enpowerment brreakfast sponsored by Disney, (R to L) Pam Hogarth, Jinko Gotoh, Lisa Flom, & Alain Chesnais. Image Photo by Akiko Ashley.

It was a networking and recruiting event for women. Recruiters, senior level women from the studio talked and encouraged women to explore opportunities with their studios.

The following morning I went to a Walt Disney event that was a Women Empowerment event with speakers like: Pam Hogarth, on the Board of the Visual Effects Society; Junko Gotoh from Women in Animation; Alain Chesnais, former President of ACM SIGGRAPH; and Lisa Flom from WITI, who spoke about women in the field of technology. (see image 11 above).

Pam Hogarth said that 15% of the VES are women. Junko Gotoh said that 60 percent of students in computer graphics school were women, though only 20 percent of the computer graphics workforce are women. Alain Chesnais says that it is important to ask the right questions that help women get opportunities. Like, why not? Lisa Flom’s WITI provides women with mentorship and support. WITI membership is currently 150,000.

I met the Curator who is also an astronomer of the Griffith Observatory, Dr. Laura Danly, who said she is hiring and would like to hire more women. As technology and engineering are trying to diversify, you start to look at other professions and what is in place to help support the growth of women in these fields.

Emerging Technologies/Art Gallery

Emerging Technogies showed off tons of new toys for VR. Mech VR is an experimental immersive application that gives you an adventure type ride on this biped robot under your control. Aquarium Earth demonstrated the educational value of VR while attendees sit in a virtual reef watching its destruction through climate change and other factors while a narrator tells you why.

Cyber-archeology is an application of VR that allows you to discover archaeological sites in a non-destructive way. Immersive and Interactive Procedure for Power Line Maintenance is helping crews to refine their skills to prevent accidents and injuries using Oculus Rift technology.

12 – Paper Origami lamp created by attendees at SIGGRAPH 2016 in the Art Gallery section. Image Photo by Akiko Ashley.

Guidance Field, is a vector field for implicit guidance in Virtual Environments which helps guide users through environments (perhaps architectural.).

In the Art Gallery there was a drawing contest but my favorite item was the Paper Origami lamp folding that allowed attendees to use a sheet of paper to create these sustainable paper lamps that had this high end modern design quality. (see image 12 above).

Viktor Jan created this flower that when you whispered into a speaker it lit up. Dimitri Morozov created the Metaphase Sound Machine that capture attendees attention inspired by physicist Nick Herbert’s work.

Production Sessions

I attended several of the Production Sessions. Captain America Civil War revealed that the entire airport scene was created in CG. How they used a Lidar scan of Puerto Rico to the opening scene Lagos; Nigeria is using the scan for a full environment replacement. The Jungle Book showed how they recreated entire jungle environments rendered in Renderman, almost everything you see in the movie is CG.

13 – Captain America: Civil War Production Session. Image Photo by Akiko Ashley.

Finding Dory and Zootopia panels discussed how the needs of their production lead to advancement in rendering software for both Renderman and Hyperion…and the complexity of the animation tools. Star Wars: The Force Awakens gave us a look at Industrial, Light, and Magic (ILM) legendary work on the newest film, building entire fantasy worlds, populating them with characters, and with faced-paced action.

Conclusion: SIGGRAPH is Evolving and Macs Take Newer Roles

On a whole SIGGRAPH is changing and evolving. It is not like the SIGGRAPH of ten years ago. The new attendees are younger students in greater numbers plus more women are attending then ever before.

The Mac is still in the production process but at this point has a different role, and never under estimate the power of their iMacs, Mac Book Pros and their new iPad Pro in production. If you went to NAB, you saw more Mac Pros being used for editing and a lot of Post Production use which is an important part of the production process.

Architecture skills are now expanding into other areas including virtual reality (VR), video games, interactive technology—and if you saw Independence Day, Resurgence, ERSI CityEngine helped build the cities. Captain America Civil War replaced an entire airport inside and out.

As the use for technology to build these environments advances, you will see a huge evolution of tools for architects, artists, designer, and those in feature production. Imagine what VR will do for interactive walk-throughs for clients, NVIDIA is already demonstrating that you can do real time rendering on the fly with huge data sets.

[Editor’s Note: If you have arrived here interested in SIGGRAPH 2016, Architosh has more detailed coverage in previous—and upcoming—reports.]