SIGGRAPH 2010 Highlights from Los Angeles

(Los Angeles, CA) – SIGGRAPH 2010, the world's premier conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques, welcomed 22,549 artists, research scientists, gaming experts and developers, filmmakers, students, and academics from 79 countries around the globe to Los Angeles this week. In addition, more than 160 industry organizations exhibited at SIGGRAPH 2010.

"We were thrilled to be back in LA this year in the vibrant downtown area, experiencing and enjoying the wonder of all the latest research and innovations," said Terrence Masson, SIGGRAPH 2010 Conference Chair. "SIGGRAPH once again served as the place where art, film, science, research, and technology converged for an entire week. We look to build onto this momentum in 2011 when we host SIGGRAPH in Vancouver - a growing hotbed for the computer graphics and entertainment industry.”

In all, more than 900 speakers participated in the conference through a variety talks, sessions, panels, papers, presentations, and screenings.

Highlights from SIGGRAPH 2010 included:

• Keynote presentations from industry experts:
o Don Marinelli, Executive Producer, Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center
o Jim Morris, General Manager and Executive Vice President of Production, Pixar Animation Studios

• The renowned SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival, highlighting juried and curated animation from around the globe. Winners in several categories included:
o Best in Show Award Winner: “Loom”, Jan Bitzer, Ilija Brunck, and Csaba Letay, Polynoid, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, Germany
o Jury Award Winner: “Poppy”, James Cunningham, Delf Productions, New Zealand
o Best Student Project Prize Winner: “The Wonder Hospital”, Beomsik Shimbe Shim, California Institute of the Arts, USA

• This year, a new program called SIGGRAPH Dailies! focused on the craft, artistry, and behind-the-scenes/never-told stories from the production community. The program featured work from films such as “Toy Story 3”, “Tangled”, “Percy Jackson & the Olympians”, “A Christmas Carol”, “The Princess and the Frog”, “Ratatouille”, “Up”, and more.

• A continued focus on videogames highlighted real-time rendering content with Live Real-Time Demos of cutting-edge real-time rendering applications, including games such as Blur, God of War III, and LOVE. Game studios that presented at SIGGRAPH 2010 included: Activision Studio Central, Bungie, LucasArts, Naughty Dog, Square Enix R&D, Ubisoft Montreal, Valve, and more. SIGGRAPH was the perfect place for film and game professionals to connect, with content specifically designed to appeal to both industries.

• The Disney Learning Challenge was an open competition sponsored by Disney Research with the goal of finding new and creative ways to use technology to make learning fun for children. From a group of 15 finalists, “Refraction: Teaching Fractions Through Gameplay” by Erik Andersen and Zoran Popović, won a majority of the $10,000 prize fund and tours of Disney R&D and Walt Disney Studio.

• Technical Papers, the premier global forum for presenting ground-breaking research from today's leading experts, covered the core topics of computer graphics, such as modeling, animation, rendering, imaging, and human-computer interaction, and also explore related fields of audio, robotics, visualization, and perception by presenters from all around the globe - from the Bangladesh to Switzerland.

• Art Paper presentations on topics exploring the multi-sensory nature of human experience in a technologically enhanced environment. SIGGRAPH 2010 collaborated with Leonardo, the Journal of the International Society of the Arts, Sciences and Technology to publish the SIGGRAPH 2010 Art Papers in a special issue.