Grimage
Put any object into the interaction space and it is intantaneously modeled in 3D and injected into a virtual world.
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If you hurry (you have until 2 p.m. today) down to the bowels of the San Diego Convention Center (rooms 15 and 16 on the Mezzanine Level), you can still enjoy the Guerilla Studio experience, make some art, meet some collaborators, or just goof around.

With Gibson guitars wailing in the background, I discovered artists, students, and curiosity seekers “playing with lots of cool toys,” as one of them described it. Down there earlier, I watched a young man get his face scanned using a Polhemus handheld scanner so that he could “play with myself,” so to speak, using animation software. I also watched artists sketching on Wacom tablets, people animating stacks of colorful teacups, folks printing out all sorts of CG drawings, sketches, and previsualizations, and I listened in as artists hotly debated new ways to animate organic shapes to do all sorts of “reverse engineering,” whatever that is. In other words, this is the colorful, expressive, and free little corner of Siggraph where anything goes. more

One of the great joys of each Siggraph is the hodge-podge of hopeful students and professionals that gather in the juried Emerging Technologies pavilion. Described by the Siggraph organizers as chock full of “Digital innovations that change the way we work, live, and play”, the exhibits are mostly fresh out of the R&D labs and university computer science departments. (See http://www.siggraph.org/s2007/attendees/etech/ for more.)
In the darkened hall, you‘ll find pools of light shining on hardware and software galore: 3D displays, robotics, input devices, interaction techniques, computer vision, sensors, audio, speech, biometrics, wearable computing, scientific visualization, and more. more

Moving from an arcane, difficult black science to wide acceptance in the Hollywood community, motion capture systems are also now dropping in price and complexity.
As reported yesterday, Vicon is enjoying success with its new turnkey FK Extreme, which delivers an eight-camera system complete with its new ‘Blade‘ software for about $50,000.
One small company, Reallusion (www.reallusion.com) out of San Jose, Calif., is taking it a step further, with plans to make “mo cap in a cubicle‘ a reality, as the product manager told me. Their iClone2 Studio already garnered interest over the past year for its “3D real-time filmmaking” capabilities. With easy-to-create actors/avatars, clothing, 3D scenes, and special effects, the inexpensive Windows-based software claims some 400,000 users worldwide. more

The SIGGRAPH Papers program is the premier international forum for disseminating new scholarly work in computer graphics. This year the Papers Committee accepted 108 papers, a new record. These papers span the core areas of modeling, animation, rendering, and imaging, but they also touch on related areas such as visualization, computer vision, human-computer interaction, and applications of computer graphics.

New for SIGGRAPH 2007
To promote a lively exchange of ideas during the Papers program, we are introducing a system of per-paper discussants. Each paper in the program will be allotted 25 minutes, 20 minutes for presentation and five minutes for discussion of the paper, with the session chair serving as discussant.

For a video preview of this year’s Papers, click here.

For a list of Papers presentation times, click here.

Artwork that illuminates the role the digital media plays in shaping, extending, and reflecting world views and cosmologies will be showcased throughout the SIGGRAPH 2007 Art Gallery: Global Eyes. Global Eyes will take place during the 34th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques held 5-9 August 2007 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California, USA.

Global Eyes will explore ecological, social, and political issues in imaginative and innovative ways through a variety of submitted and curated works. This year there were more than 660 submissions from 30 countries that were evaluated by a prestigious international jury. The main categories presented during Global Eyes include animation, artist books, panel discussions, papers, digital performances, art installations, as well as monitor and wall-based works. These works aim to foster respect, tolerance, and empathy among people and nations.

“The SIGGRAPH Art Gallery is known for consistently presenting the work of the world’s most talented digital artists,” stated Vibeke Sorensen, SIGGRAPH 2007 Art Gallery Chair from the University at Buffalo. “Global Eyes is an exciting forum for showcasing alternative ways to think about nature and art, and how the two interact.”

For a video preview for the 2007 Art Gallery: Global Eyes, click here.

The SIGGRAPH 2007 Emerging Technologies exhibition features a broad range of installations from research labs, universities, independents, and industry giants that explore the dynamics between humans and digital systems. Of 75 submissions, 23 installations were selected to be showcased at SIGGRAPH 2007. Submissions came from six different countries including France, Hungary, Japan, Korea, and Sweden.

“The SIGGRAPH 2007 Emerging Technologies program provides a unique look into the future capabilities of computer animation technologies in very practical, everyday environments,” says John Sibert, Emerging Technologies Co-Chair from The George Washington University. “This year’s selection of technologies explores how advance computer technology significantly impacts human interaction.”

For a video preview of this year’s Emerging Technologies, click here.