Universal Pictures‘ Evan Almighty was designed to have visual effects of mythic proportions, and a raft of houses—including the big facilities Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Rhythm & Hues (R&H)—contributed to this Noah‘s Ark comedy. But alongside R&H‘s photoreal CG animals and ILM‘s flood simulation was an interesting contribution from the Los Angeles-based shop TeamWorks Digital. With its veteran Visual Effects Supervisor David Allen at the helm, TeamWorks temporarily set up shop at Universal Studios to wrangle disparate digital elements in several sequences. One of those sequences included a climactic scene that was added to the film well into postproduction. To achieve it, TeamWorks used an approach that Allen considers “postviz.” To read more, click here.
The premier annual event for the world’s most innovative, accomplished, and amazing digital film and video creators. An internationally recognized jury receives hundreds of submissions and presents the best work of the year in daily Animation Theaters and the Electronic Theater (matinée and evening shows). Selections include outstanding achievements in time-based art, scientific visualization, visual effects, real-time graphics, and narrative shorts.
The Computer Animation Festival is recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a qualifying festival. Since 1999, several works originally presented in the Computer Animation Festival have been nominated for or have received a “Best Animated Short” Academy Award.
Animation Theaters
Sunday - Thursday, 5-9 August
Room 24 & 25
Electronic Theater
Monday - Wednesday, 6-8 August
San Diego Civic Theatre
1100 Third Avenue
For a video preview of this year’s Computer Animation Festival, click here.
The Siggraph 2007 Special Sessions take a behind the scenes look at some of the past year’s top animation and visual effects accomplishments for the feature film industry. Four different sessions will take place in the San Diego Convention Center, each focusing on a different film production–a lineup which includes: Happy Feet, Transformers, Shrek, and Spiderman 3.
For more information on time and locations, as well as more of an in-depth look at the specific topics covered, click here.
Read more about the making of Shrek 3 in Senior Editor Michael Goldman’s recent article in Millimeter here.
Learn more on the creation of Spiderman 3 in Goldman’s article Digital Acrobatics.
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.
Millimeter Senior Editor Michael Goldman sat down with Pixar’s Brad Bird, director of Ratatouille, to discuss that film and the challenges of making and executing color palettes for animated films in general. To listen to their conversation, click here 
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Read the accompanying story on digitalcontentproducer.com.
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.
Welcome to the third annual Siggraph blog from the editors of Digital Content Producer and Millimeter. We’re on our way to San Diego next week to cover the annual tradeshow, which serves the computer graphics and 3D animation industries and also functions as a gathering of the tribes for a diverse collection of high-tech artists.
In the blog we’ll be detailing our participation in Siggraph on many different levels–from exhibitions and events to all the buzz on the show floor. Aside from this we’ll check in with industry players, hit the parties, and introduce you to a group of student bloggers from the Art Institutes, experiencing Siggraph for the first time.
Check back often, as we’ll be updating multiple times a day. Have a great Siggraph if you’re attending, and if not, this is your source for realtime coverage of the show.
(Chicago, IL) - SIGGRAPH 2007 announces the launch of FJORG! (pronounced FORGE), a new international computer graphics animation competition to be held at SIGGRAPH 2007, 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, CA, USA. more…
Press Release:
BOSTON, Mass., August 3, 2006 - SPEC/GPC‘s OpenGL Performance Characterization (SPECopc) project group announced plans for SPECviewperf 10 during a press conference yesterday at the SIGGRAPH 2006 trade show in Boston. SPECviewperf 10 - the next version of performance evaluation software for systems running popular CAD/CAM, digital content creation, and visualization applications - is anticipated for release in the fourth quarter of 2006.
The SPECopc group expects that SPECviewperf 10 will include the following new features and upgrades: more…
