SIGGRAPH 2014 Emerging Technologies Media Tour

Click here to take the Media Tour.

SIGGRAPH 2014 Emerging Technologies Chair Thierry Frey (center in lavender shirt) takes you on a tour of this year's advancements in several fields - from displays and virtual reality technology to haptics and robotics, as well as innovations that apply to film and game production. The Vancouver Economic Commission is the official sponsor of the 2014 Emerging Technologies area.

SIGGRAPH 2014 Posts Studio Preview Video

Now you can take an early tour of the wonderful content in this year's SIGGRAPH Studio - a collaborative working environment where the latest technologies and brightest minds come together to learn, experiment, and create. Attendees of the SIGGRAPH Studio explore wide range of new techniques and media with help from experienced hands. Here is where attendees experience the latest in 3D printing, modeling, and animation software.

The SIGGRAPH Studio is made for anyone interested in cutting-edge DIY gadgets, quasi-objects, Rube Goldberg machines, user-generated content projects, software, hardware, processes, workflows, technologies, etc.

SIGGRAPH 2014 Releases Sneak Peek Emerging Technologies Video

The SIGGRAPH 2014 Emerging Technologies program showcases the latest interactive and graphics technologies before they transform the way we live and work. Emerging Technologies presents demonstrations of research from several fields, including displays, input devices, collaborative environments, gaming, computer vision, biometrics, wearable computing, scientific visualization, medicine, robotics, and design.  Here's the new preview video to get you an early peek of the wonderful tech coming to Vancouver.

Take A Tour of the SIGGRAPH 2013 Emerging Technologies

SIGGRAPH 2013 Emerging Technologies Producer, Kristy Pron, takes you on a tour of this year's innovative advancements in several fields from displays and input devices to collaborative environments and robotics, as well as technologies that apply to film and game production.

Get Geeked! SIGGRAPH 2013 Releases Emerging Technologies Preview Video

SIGGRAPH 2013 just released its newest preview video ... .this one profiling the amazing experiences in Emerging Technologies.  Learn how attendees will be able to interact with the latest systems before they become hot topics in mainstream media and blogs. Emerging Technologies presents innovative technologies and applications in several fields, from displays and input devices to collaborative environments and robotics, and technologies that apply to film and game production.

You can learn more by clicking here or just watch the video below:

SIGGRAPH Releases Technical Papers Preview Video

The SIGGRAPH Technical Papers program is the premier international forum for disseminating new scholarly work in computer graphics and interactive techniques. Here's the latest preview of the amazing 2013 technical papers content. To review more content, click here.

SIGGRAPH 2013 Releases Emerging Technologies Preview

SIGGRAPH 2013, 21 -25 July at the Anaheim Convention Center in California, released its list of 2013 Emerging Technologies highlights that will be featured at this year’s conference.

SIGGRAPH 2013 Emerging Technologies presents innovative technologies and applications of the latest developments in several fields, from 3D displays and interactive input devices to collaborative environments and robotics, and technologies that apply to film and game production. The Emerging Technologies program provides attendees a unique hands-on opportunity to interact with select innovative technology before they become hot topics in the mainstream media and blogs.

“We had an incredible response from many fields, including displays, robotics, input devices, interaction techniques, gaming, and computer vision,” said Dylan Moore, SIGGRAPH 2013 Emerging Technologies Chair. “We were especially pleased that our call for assistive technologies was answered. The focus was to only showcasing those technologies that blew the jury away on every level, and meeting a high bar for quality and novelty.  We can't wait to get these technologies in the hands of our attendees to try out."

SIGGRAPH 2013 Emerging Technologies Highlights:

An Autostereoscopic Projector Array Optimized for 3D Facial Display
Authors: Koki Nagano, University of Southern California; Andrew Jones, USC Institute for Creative Technologies; Jing Liu, University of California at Santa Cruz; and Jay Busch, Paul Debevec, Mark Bolas, Xueming Yu, USC Institute for Creative Technologies

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This dense-projector-array display is optimized in size and resolution to display an autostereoscopic life-sized 3D human face with a wide 110-degree field of view. It has multiple applications, including 3D teleconferencing and fully synthetic characters for education and entertainment.

IllumiRoom: Peripheral Projected Illusions for Interactive Experiences
Authors: Brett Jones, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Hrvoje Benko, Eyal Ofek, and Andrew Wilson, Microsoft Research

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IllumiRoom is a proof-of-concept system that augments the area surrounding a television with projected visualizations to enhance traditional gaming experiences. It changes the appearance of the room, induces apparent motion, extends the field of view, and enables entirely new physical gaming experiences.

Light-in-Flight: Transient Imaging Using Photonic Mixer Devices
Authors: Felix Heide, Matthias Hullin, James Gregson, and Wolfgang Heidrich, The University of British Columbia

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Commercial time-of-flight sensors based on photonic mixer devices (PMDs), are used to capture transient images of photons in-flight. Through the use of readily available components, Light-in-Flight is orders of magnitude less expensive than previous approaches, while simultaneously simplifying and speeding up the capture process.

Near-Eye Light-Field Displays
Authors: Douglas Lanman and David Luebke, NVIDIA Research

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Near-eye light-field displays depict sharp images by synthesizing light fields corresponding to virtual scenes located within a viewer's natural accommodation range. This system optimizes optical trade-offs among resolution, field of view, and form factor, and demonstrates a thin, lightweight HMD prototype, containing a pair of microlens-covered OLEDs.

Skyfarer: A Mixed-Reality Shoulder Exercise Game
Authors: Marientina Gotsis, Vangelis Lympouridis, David Turpin, Fotos Frangoudes, University of Southern California; Somboon Maneekobkunwong, Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center; and Maryalice Jordan-Marsh, University of Southern California

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A mixed-reality shoulder exercise game developed for prevention and treatment of shoulder pain for individuals with spinal cord injury.

A detailed list of all SIGGRAPH 2013 Emerging Technologies is available here.

SIGGRAPH 2013 Technical Papers Preview

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The SIGGRAPH 2013 Technical Papers program is the premier international forum for disseminating new scholarly work in computer graphics and interactive techniques. The 40th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, 21-25 July 2013 at the Anaheim Convention Center in California, received submissions from around the globe and features high quality and never before seen scholarly work. Submitters are held to extremely high standards in order to qualify.

Marc Alexa

“Computer Graphics is a dynamic and ever-changing field in many ways,” says Marc Alexa, SIGGRAPH 2013 Technical Papers Chair from Technische Universität Berlin. “The range of ground-breaking papers presented at SIGGRAPH is getting broader every year, now also encompassing 3D printing, and fabricating realistic materials as well as generating ever more realistic images of complex phenomena.”

SIGGRAPH accepted 115 technical papers (out of 480 submissions) to showcase this year representing an acceptance rate of 24 percent (one percent higher than 2012). The selected papers were chosen by a distinguished committee of academia and industry experts.

This year's Technical Papers program also includes conference presentations for 37 papers published this year in the journal ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG).

Highlights From the SIGGRAPH 2013 Technical Papers Program:

OpenFab: A Programmable Pipeline for Multi-Material Fabrication
Authors: Kiril Vidimce, Szu-Po Wang, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley and Wojciech Matusik, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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This paper proposes a programmable pipeline, inspired by RenderMan, for synthesis of multi-material 3D printed objects. The pipeline introduces user-programmable fablets, a corollary to procedural shaders for 3D printing, and is designed to stream over arbitrary numbers of voxels with a fixed and controllable memory footprint.

Opacity Optimization for 3D Line Fields
Authors: Tobias Günther, Christian Roessl, and Holger Theisel, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg

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For visualizing dense line fields, this method selects lines by view-dependent opacity optimizations and applies them to real-time free navigation in flow data, medical imaging, physics, and computer graphics.

AIREAL: Interactive Tactile Experiences in Free Air
Authors: Rajinder Sodhi, University of Illinois; Ivan Poupyrev, Matthew Glisson, Ali Israr, Disney Research, The Walt Disney Company

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AIREAL is a tactile feedback device that delivers effective and expressive tactile sensations in free air, without requiring the user to wear a physical device. Combined with interactive graphics and applications, AIREAL enables users to feel virtual objects, experience free-air textures and receive haptic feedback with free-space gestures.

Bi-Scale Appearance Fabrication
Authors: Yanxiang Lan, Tsinghua University; Yue Dong, Microsoft Research Asia; Fabio Pellacini, Sapienza Universita’ Di Roma, Dartmouth College; Xin Tong, Microsoft Research Asia

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A system for fabricating surfaces with desired spatially varying reflectance, including anisotropic ones, and local shading frames.

Map-Based Exploration of Intrinsic Shape Differences and Variability
Authors: Raif Rustamov, Stanford University; Maks Ovsjanikov, École Polytechnique; Omri Azencot, Mirela Ben-Chen, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology; Frederic Chazal, INRIA Saclay - Île-de-France; and Leonidas Guibas, Stanford University

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A novel formulation of shape differences, aimed at providing detailed information about the location and nature of the differences or distortions between the shapes being compared. This difference operator is much more informative than a scalar similarity score, so it is useful in applications requiring more refined shape comparisons.

Highly Adaptive Liquid Simulations on Tetrahedral Meshes
Authors: Ryoichi Ando, Kyushu University; Nils Thuerey, ScanlineVFX GmbH; and Chris Wojtan, Institute of Science and Technology Austria

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This new method for efficiently simulating fluid simulations with extreme amounts of spatial adaptivity combines several key components to produce a simulation algorithm that is capable of creating animations at high effective resolutions while avoiding common pitfalls like inaccurate boundary conditions and inefficient computation.

Editor's Note: Preview all the amazing SIGGRAPH 2013 Technical Papers here.

SIGGRAPH 2012 Highlights from Los Angeles

The SIGGRAPH 2012 Exhibition continued the tradition of being a top draw with attendees.

Los Angeles – SIGGRAPH 2012, the world's premier conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques, welcomed 21,212 artists, research scientists, gaming experts and developers, filmmakers, students, and academics from 83 countries around the globe to Los Angeles this week. In addition, 161 industry organizations exhibited at SIGGRAPH 2012 representing 44,750 sq. ft. of exhibit space – approximately a 5,000 sq. ft. increase over 2011.  A total of 19 countries where represented on the show floor. 

SIGGRAPH 2012 Chair Rebecca
Strzelec addresses the media.

“As SIGGRAPH 2012 draws to a close, I’m incredibly proud of the body of work that represents thousands of hours of effort from hundreds of volunteers,” said Rebecca Strzelec, SIGGRAPH 2012 Conference Chair from Penn State Altoona.

She continued, “SIGGRAPH is not about a location – it is about the kindred spirit of our community and being able to provide cutting-edge content across many different fields.  In that sense, SIGGRAPH 2012 was a resounding success whether you are an artist, a scientist, a game developer, or a student… we featured incredible content that will continue to inspire everyone into 2013 and beyond.”

In all, more than 1,200 speakers and contributors participated in the conference through a variety of talks, sessions, panels, papers, presentations, tutorials, and screenings.

Highlights from SIGGRAPH 2012 included:

• Keynote Jane McGonigal Says Playing Games Can Improve Health and Lengthen Lives:

Jane McGonigal, director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future (IFTF) treated the audience to a lively discourse on how games are transforming the way we lead our real lives, and how they can be used to increase our resilience and well-being.

McGonigal’s research has shown that scientific studies suggest playing games can and have helped those with autism, ADHD, PTSD and even cancer. She has created the game SuperBetter, which helps players achieve health goals or recover from illness or injury by increasing their personal resilience.

A lively discussion panel during the Business Symposium.

• The second annual SIGGRAPH Business Symposium was held on Sunday, featuring keynote speakers Carl Rosendahl, founder of Pacific Data Images, venture capitalist, and co-director of Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center-Silicon Valley, and John Textor, chairman and CEO of Digital Domain Media Group. The objective of the event was to help shape the future direction of the computer graphics industry.

Noisy Boy from "Real Steel" appeared
at the Computer Animation Festival.

• The Computer Animation Festival presented the world's most innovative, accomplished, and amazing creators of digital gaming, film, and video. A total of 91 films were shown during the Festival. In addition to film screenings, the Festival included interactive sessions and exclusive learning opportunities to gain industry secrets and advice from some of the most successful professionals in the field. 

SIGGRAPH 2012 Computer Animation Festival award winners include:
•  Best in Show Award: Réflexion, Directed by Yoshimichi Tamura, PlanKtoon; France

• Jury Award: How To Eat Your Apple, Directed by Erick Oh, Independent; USA and South Korea

• Best Student Project Prize: Estefan, Directed by Jeff Call, Brigham Young University; USA

• Best Student Project Prize Runner-Up: Globosome, Directed by Sascha Geddert, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg; Germany

• Best Student Project Prize Runner-Up: Herr Hoppe und der Atommüll, Directed by Jan Lachauer and Thorsten Löffler, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg; Germany

• Well-Told Fable Prize: Rosette, Directed by: Romain Borrel, Gaël Falzowski, Benjamin Rabaste, and Vincent Tonelli, Supinfocom Arles; France

The Technical Papers Fast Forward was once again a packed house.

• Technical Papers, the premier global forum for presenting groundbreaking research from today's leading experts. The SIGGRAPH 2012 Technical Papers program featured 94 Technical Papers, selected among 412 submissions. The Technical Papers detailed new advances across many fronts, including 3D display technology, photographic prints for HDR images, textile design, and more.

Entrance to the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery: In Search of the Miraculous

• The SIGGRAPH 2012 Art Gallery: In Search of the Miraculous presented exceptional digital and technologically mediated artworks that explored the existence of wonderment, mystery, and awe in today’s world of mediating technologies and abundant data. From nearly 400 submissions, the Art
Gallery jury selected 12 pieces to be featured.

Download photos from SIGGRAPH 2012 at http://www.siggraph.org/photos

Join Us in Anahiem in 2013
SIGGRAPH 2013, the 40th International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, will be held 21-25 July 2013 at the Anaheim Convention Center in California

Editor's Note: Special thanks to John Fujii, SIGGRAPH 1996 Conference Chair, who served as the official photographer for SIGGRAPH 2012.

Interview with SIGGRAPH Keynote Speaker Jane McGonigal

Listen to Jane McGonigal discuss her thoughts and vision immediately after giving the SIGGRAPH 2012 keynote address in Los Angeles.

Q&A with the 2012 Technical Papers Chair Hanspeter Pfister from Harvard

Following is a brief conversation with Hanspeter Pfister, the SIGGRAPH 2012 Technical Papers Chair from Harvard University. Pfister is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. 

His research lies at the intersection of visualization, computer graphics, and computer vision. He received his PhD in computer science in 1996 from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his MS in Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1991.


Briefly describe your past experiences as a SIGGRAPH volunteer:
I attended my first SIGGRAPH in Chicago in 1992 and got hooked immediately. From 1994 to 1996, I was a student volunteer, hanging out mostly at the International Center and occasionally crimping ethernet cables -- great times! In 2001, I was invited to join the SIGGRAPH Technical Papers Committee for the first time. In 2005, I was jury member of the Sketches program, which I chaired in 2006. And I've been a member of the Papers, Courses, and Sketches Committees for SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia numerous times.

What motivated you to serve as this year's Technical Papers Chair?
It is a huge honor to be asked to become Technical Papers Chair, so when Rob Cook -- chair of the Papers Advisory Group -- asked me, I immediately said yes. The main motivation was to give back to the community that has been a big part of my career for many years. And I was looking forward to being a part of (and shaping) the process that selects the highest quality papers for acceptance at SIGGRAPH. 

How exactly is the Jury selected?
Selecting the Technical Papers Committee is the most important thing a Technical Papers Chair does. The first step was to select the Papers Advisory Board, which consisted of Marc Alexa (SIGGRAPH 2013 Chair), Kavita Bala (SIGGRAPH ASIA 2011 Chair), Fredo Durand, Hugues Hoppe (SIGGRAPH 2011 Chair), Holly Rushmeier, and Peter-Pike Sloan (SIGGRAPH ASIA 2012 Chair). They were a tremendous help throughout the process and helped me to select the committee. We had to identify the experts in various communities, balance the areas in which we anticipated submission, find the right mix between experience and fresh blood, and consider term limits to make sure that new members join us each year. It was a daunting, but very exciting task.

How did the Jury process go this year?
Besides a server crash on submission day, it went exceedingly well. The 53 members of the Papers Committee did a tremendous amount of work, as did the hundreds of external reviewers. I had a lot of support from my assistant Angela Anderson from Talley Management, and a host of other people who helped to run the process smoothly and professionally. Overall we accepted 94 papers out of 449 submissions for an acceptance rate of 21%, and referred another 9 papers to the ACM Transactions on Graphics.

Did you notice any trends in the submissions?
In addition to traditional areas such as rendering, surface modeling, image and video processing, fluid simulation, and character animation, we accepted papers in emerging areas such as 3D fabrication, light field displays, real-time sound synthesis, and tactile feedback devices. I am especially excited about papers that stretch the definition of graphics because they help evolve our field and make SIGGRAPH vibrant and exciting.

Did the content for S2012 meet your expectations?
Seeing the huge number of submissions and considering how much work went into them is humbling. I am deeply thankful to all the authors who sent their work to SIGGRAPH 2012, and to all the reviewers and committee members for selecting the best papers this year in computer graphics and interactive techniques. We ended up with a terrific and exciting program with outstanding papers in all of the technical areas.

How can the Technical Papers program make certain that it remains relevant for years to come?
Looking at the creativity and ingenuity of the submissions this year I am not worried about the future. And the great thing about SIGGRAPH is that it is able to reinvent itself. As long as we continue to evolve the definition of computer graphics and interactive techniques and allow for new and fresh ideas to be published we will remain relevant. And I have no doubts that visual and interactive techniques will continue to play a huge role in our everyday lives.

What is your advice to someone considering submitting a future SIGGRAPH technical paper?
Read the FAQ on our web site! Many of the questions I received have been answered there, and the process is described in great detail. And then of course produce some outstanding work that is inspiring, significant, and maybe unexpected. Then spend the effort and time to write a good paper about it. The quality of the writing really matters, and I would suggest you look carefully at some of the great papers from previous years. It does take effort, but I can assure you that every paper is treated with respect and will receive thoughtful, helpful reviews.

Briefly describe one of your more intriguing ongoing projects at Harvard:
I am very excited to work with my neuroscience collaborators at the Harvard Center for Brain Science on reconstructing the detailed neural circuitry of the brain, one of the grand challenges of this century. We are dealing with tera- and soon petabytes of image data from electron microscopy and are working on fully-automated reconstruction techniques that are scalable and efficient. The challenges are tremendous in all areas of computer vision, visualization, graphics systems, and network analysis -- I am having a blast.

What were some of the key things you took away from your 11 years at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL)?
Work with people who are smarter than you -- at MERL I had the privilege to be surrounded by some of the best researchers and work with some of the best students around the world. Work on practical problems to drive technical innovation -- the other way around is a lot harder. And of course my boss and mentor, Joe Marks, taught me to delegate, delegate, delegate -- a skill that serves me well as a faculty member.

Would you recommend a career in computer science to your daughters and how did you pick their names?
My daughters Lilly (9) and Audrey (6) already monopolize the family iPad and laptop with their games and e-books. They are learning at an early age what makes computers so exciting: the ability to create and simulate anything. I am sure that they will pick up computer science skills in whatever career they choose.

As for how we picked their names: We like old fashioned names and wanted to make sure their names are somewhat unique, so we checked their popularity on Martin Wattenberg's fabulous Baby Name Wizard visualization. Of course the irony is that both names had a huge uptick in popularity since then. I guess we were trend setters.

SIGGRAPH 2012 Technical Papers Preview

The SIGGRAPH 2012 Technical Papers program is the premier international forum for disseminating new scholarly work in computer graphics and interactive techniques. The 39th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, 5–9 August 2012 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, features Technical Papers that detail new advances across many fronts, including 3D display technology, photographic prints for HDR images, textile design, and more.

“This year’s program features papers that propel the field forward as rapidly and vibrantly as possible, while at the same time keeping us well-grounded academically, ensuring that SIGGRAPH remains a breeding ground for significant new areas of research,” said Hanspeter Pfister, SIGGRAPH 2012 Technical Papers Chair from Harvard University.

The papers to be presented were chosen by a distinguished committee of academia and industry experts. Out of 449 submissions, 94 papers were accepted to SIGGRAPH 2012, representing an acceptance rate of 21 percent.

This year’s Technical Papers program also includes conference presentations for 38 papers published this year in the journal ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG). A complete listing of all selected Technical Papers will be available on the SIGGRAPH 2012 web site in late May.

Highlights from the SIGGRAPH 2012 Technical Papers program:

Tensor Displays: Compressive Light Field Synthesis Using Multilayer Displays with Directional Backlighting

Authors: Gordon Wetzstein, Douglas Lanman, Matthew Hirsch, and Ramesh Raskar, MIT Media Lab

This paper presents a new display technology for glasses-free stereo viewing. Combining multiple layers of LCD, directional back-lighting, temporal modulation, and a new mathematical formulation allows for greater depths of field, wider fields of view, and a thinner display.

Practical application as suggested by the Technical Papers Chair: Glasses-free stereo display.

Printing Spatially-Varying Reflectance for Reproducing HDR Images

Authors: Yue Dong, Microsoft Research Asia; Xin Tong, Microsoft Research Asia; Fabio Pellacini, Dartmouth College and Sapienza University of Rome; and Baining Guo, Microsoft Research Asia

When traditional photographs are printed, the range of brightness can be heavily compressed, and the result can look flat. This paper presents a solution for viewing HDR images using a reflective sheet of paper, glossy ink, and a torch light illuminating the paper. With the proposed technique, one can get a better sense of the range of brightness in the scene and adjust it by moving the light or the paper.

Practical application as suggested by the Technical Papers Chair: Printing high-dynamic-range images, keeping brightness fidelity.

Structure-Aware Synthesis for Predictive Woven Fabric Appearance

Authors: Shuang Zhao, Wenzel Jakob, Steve Marschner, and Kavita Bala, Cornell University

3D scans of real fabrics to design new 3D fabrics for rendering. The fabrics are rendered in a physically based way, which allows textile designers to predict how a given weave pattern would look if it were fabricated, resulting in highly realistic results for textile design, ecommerce, entertainment, and apparel visualization.

Practical application as suggested by the Technical Papers Chair: Designing real fabrics by predicting their appearance.

Precomputed Acceleration Noise for Improved Rigid-Body Sound

Authors: Jeffrey N. Chadwick, Changxi Zheng, and Doug L. James, Cornell University

Colliding objects produce impact sounds, usually described by modal synthesis. This paper introduces the effect of acceleration in this model, thus allowing for rendering more realistic, crisper collision sounds, or making a sound audible when the modal component only would be inaudible by humans.

Practical application as suggested by the Technical Papers Chair: Improving collision-sound realism in virtual environments.

Design of Self-Supporting Surfaces

Authors: Etienne Vouga, Columbia University/King Abdullah University of Science and Technology; Mathias Höbinger, Evolute/TU Wien, Johannes Wallner, TU Graz/TU Wien; Helmut Pottmann, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology 

Finding architectural shapes that are self-supporting is a major challenge in masonry. Discrete differential geometry allows the authors to propose a non-linear optimization process approximating a given surface by a self-supporting one. They also produce a quad mesh with planar faces guiding steel/glass constructions.

Practical application as suggested by the Technical Papers Chair: A tool for architects to design constructions that have not been seen before.

Eulerian Video Magnification for Revealing Subtle Changes in the World

Authors: Hao-Yu Wu, Michael Rubinstein, Massachusetts Institute of Technology CSAIL; Eugene Shih, Quanta Research Cambridge, Inc.; Frédo Durand, William Freeman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, CSAIL,

Using an Eulerian formulation and signal-processing principles, the authors amplify subtle changes in videos that could not be perceived otherwise.

Practical application as suggested by the Technical Papers Chair: Easier monitoring of adult and infant patients.
 

CrossShade: Shading Concept Sketches Using Cross-Section Curves

Authors: Cloud Shao, University of Toronto; Adrien Bousseau, REVES - INRIA Sophia Antipolis; Alla Sheffer, The University of British Columbia; Karan Singh, University of Toronto

Cross-section curves are often used by artists to depict man-made objects. This paper exploits perceptual principles to derive a framework for shading these sketches, reconstructing appropriate normals and rendering them in a 3D-like fashion.

Practical application as suggested by the Technical Papers Chair: 3D-like rendering of sketches for improved surface depiction.

What Makes Paris Look Like Paris?
Authors: Carl Doersch, Saurabh Singh, and Abhinav Gupta, Carnegie Mellon University; Josef Sivic, INRIA/ Ecole Normale Sup´erieure, Paris; Alexei A. Efros, Carnegie Mellon University, INRIA/Ecole Normale Sup´erieure, Paris

Particular features (such as windows, lamps, trees) in photographs indicate where the images were captured. Using machine learning techniques and large collections of geotagged images, this technology extracts such elements from photographs and guesses where they were taken.

Practical application as suggested by the Technical Papers Chair: Automatic geolocalization of photographs.

Click here to watch the SIGGRAPH 2012 Technical Papers Preview Video.

SIGGRAPH 2012 Emerging Technologies Preview

SIGGRAPH 2012 Emerging Technologies provides attendees an exclusive hands-on opportunity to interact with the newest developments in multiple fields including 3D displays, robotics, interactive input devices, and more.

SIGGRAPH 2012, 5-9 August at the Los Angeles Convention Center, welcomes 26 of the latest innovations selected by a jury of industry experts from 99 submissions. Countries represented include Japan, Hungary, Canada, Singapore, South Korea, United States, and China.

“Emerging Technologies demos allow attendees to directly experience novel systems. They provide a forum for presenters to showcase technology innovations and new interaction paradigms,” said Preston Smith, SIGGRAPH 2012 Emerging Technologies Chair from Laureate Institute for Brain Research. “Each one has an interactive component that is best experienced in person and involves either new technology or a novel use of existing technology. In many cases, these technologies won’t be seen by the general public for another three to five years and are right out of a research lab.”


Featured highlights from SIGGRAPH 2012 Emerging Technologies:

TELESAR V: TELExistence Surrogate Anthropomorphic Robot

Charith Lasantha Fernando, Masahiro Furukawa, Tadatoshi Kurogi, Kyo Hirota, Katsunari Sato, Kouta Minamizawa, and Susumu Tachi, Keio University, Graduate School of Media Design; Sho Kamuro, The University of Tokyo 

TELESAR V enables a user to bind with a dexterous robot and experience what that robot can feel with its fingertips when manipulating and touching objects remotely.

Chair Feedback: “Historically, robots have always been a popular Emerging Technologies attraction. This trend continues with the intriguing robotic presence of TELESAR V, a fifth generation robot that gives the user both the control of the robot and the experience that the robot is going through. Imagine being able to remotely perform some task, but also being able to feel the task that is being performed. The future applications are endless in the entertainment, science, or medical fields."

3D Capturing Using Multi-Camera Rigs, Real-Time Depth Estimation, and Depth-Based Content Creation for Multi-View and Light-Field Auto-Stereoscopic Displays

Peter Tamas Kovacs, Holografika Kft., and Ferederik Zilly, Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz Institut  

This futuristic system captures live HD footage with a wide-baseline multi-camera rig and estimates the depth map of the captured video streams based on which content is generated and presented on auto-stereoscopic 3D displays.

Chair Feedback: “Prepare to see something big this year at Emerging Technologies. We have a two-fold exhibit with an innovative camera rig for 3D capture, along with the largest (to date) auto-stereoscopic light-field 3D display! The presentation of this new rigging system is exciting enough, but you have to be able to experience this technology to fully appreciate it. Then witness the display of this amazing output on the impressive 140" (diagonal screen) glasses-free multi-view and light-field auto-stereoscopic 3D display. That is something to you really have to experience in person!”

Tensor Displays

Matthew Hirsch, Douglas Lanman, Gordon Wetzstein, and Ramesh Raskar, MIT Media Lab  

This new light-field-display technology system uses stacks of time-multiplexed, attenuating layers illuminated by uniform or directional backlighting optimized with non-negative tensor factorization. Tensor displays achieve greater depths of field, wider fields of view, and thinner enclosures compared to prior auto-multiscopic displays.

Chair Feedback: “’Auto-multiscopic displays’ is certainly a mouthful. But saying ’3D without glasses‘ is well understood by all. Tensor displays are an exciting display technology and is the next logical step in our ever-growing home theater experiences. It allows the user to have a 3D experience via the display but without the assistance of glasses or other such wearable devices."

Gosen: A Handwritten Notation Interface for Musical Performance and Learning Music

Tetsuaki Baba, Tokyo Metropolitan University; Yuya Kikukawa, Toshiki Yoshiike, Tatsuhiko Suzuki, Rika Shoji, and Kumiko Kushiyama, Graduate School of Design, Tokyo Metropolitan University  
 
Since the 1960s, Optical Music Recognition (OMR) has matured for printed scores, but research on handwritten notation and interactive OMR has been limited. By combining notation with performance, Gosen makes music more intuitive and accessible.

Chair Feedback: “Music is something that everyone enjoys and is a universal language. Yet one aspect that is less understood is the technical perspective of writing and reading music scores. This is an innovative device that can read any handwritten score and play that music. It can even follow written instruction as far as what instrument is to be played. This will change the way children and adults learn, create, and interact with music.”

BOTANICUS INTERACTICUS: Interactive Plants Technology

Ivan Poupyrev, Disney Research, Pittsburgh and Philipp Schoessler, University of Arts Berlin 

BOTANICUS INTERACTICUS is a technology for designing highly expressive interactive plants, both living and artificial. With a single wire placed anywhere in the soil, it transforms plants into multi-touch, gesture-sensitive, and proximity-sensitive controllers that can track a broad range of human interactions seamlessly, unobtrusively, and precisely. 

Chair Feedback: “It is not a far stretch to imagine a computer being used to time the watering of plants. But how about using the plant as the actual interface to the computer? Imagine being able to use a plant on your coffee table to fast forward a movie. Lost the remote? Go ahead and use the plant. This is a novel application of a haptic device in a new and inventive way to manipulate technology. Future applications could be in the home or entertainment industry.”

Ungrounded Haptic Rendering Device for Torque Simulation in Virtual Tennis

Wee Teck Fong, Ching Ling Chin, Farzam Farbiz, and Zhiyong Huang, Institute for Infocomm Research  
 
This interactive virtual tennis system utilizes an ungrounded haptic device to render the ball impact accelerations and torques experienced in real tennis. Novel features include the A-shaped vibrating element with high-power actuators. The application utilizes racket mass distribution and high-amplitude bending for torque generation and haptic rendering. 

Chair Feedback: "Many of our current electronic gameplay devices have done away with controllers. However, being able to receive certain feedback in gameplay is helpful for learning and also enhances the entertainment value. Learning tennis could be difficult if you expected to get a similar experience of playing a digital game with no controller and then made the transition to playing the real sport outside with a racket. This clever advancement provides the torque and impact of a real tennis match.”

Editor's note: The profiles of each of the 26 Emerging Technologies will be available on the S2012 website later this month. We will post an announcement here when they are published.

SIGGRAPH 2011 Exhibition Experiencing Dramatic Growth in International Participation

The SIGGRAPH 2011 Exhibition is shaping up to be diverse in both in international (exhibitors from outside the U.S.A.) participation and first-time SIGGRAPH exhibitors at the Vancouver Convention Centre.

SIGGRAPH 2011 is currently running 45% ahead of last year in terms of overall international exhibitors. Specifically there are already 64 international exhibitors committed this year vs. 44 at this point in time last year. Canada, UK, France, Japan, Korea, and China represent the majority.



A vast majority of the *first-time* exhibitors are based internationally. Of the 29 first-timers registered for 2011, 25 are located outside the United States, representing seven countries. In 2010, only 13 had committed to exhibit last year at this point in time.



“We are very pleased with the results from our efforts,” said Mike Weil, SIGGRAPH Exhibits Manager, “First-time exhibitors are important because they often bring new technology and innovation to the industry. In addition to our long-time and important exhibitors, the show will also be filled with many new, and to a greater extent non-U.S. based organizations. And we are not done adding more companies to the show.”

(Pictured left: Mike Weil, SIGGRAPH Exhibits Manager since 1992.)
According to Weil, by more than doubling the number of first-time exhibitors as compared to last year, attendees will be exposed to new organizations they have never seen or heard of before. This sometimes even leads to collaboration amongst participating exhibitors and new possibilities are uncovered on the tradeshow floor. Weil attributes some of the success this year to key assistance by Canadian partners as well as the strength of the conference program and the surging energy in the computer graphics industry in Vancouver and across the globe.

The current list of SIGGRAPH exhibitors is available here.