Enter SIGGRAPH Asia 2019’s ‘Dream Zone’, A Magical Place Of Digital Imagery

SIGGRAPH Asia 2019 commences this weekend with a stellar lineup of content, from visualisations of space and autonomous cars, to the art of animating the year’s greatest movies, to the discussions about technology such as deep fakes and the challenges of cybersecurity. Close to 10,000 visitors are expected to attend SIGGRAPH Asia and will participate in some 15 programmes. This is the Asia Pacific region’s key event that enables you to explore careers in, and the business of, the CGI, FX and Animation industries.

Held for the first time in Australia, at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre from 17-20 November, the Queensland Government is proud to support SIGGRAPH Asia 2019 through Tourism and Events Queensland’s Business Events Acquisition and Leveraging Fund.

‘Dream Zone’ Conference

Kicking off SIGGRAPH Asia 2019 on 17 November is the Conference, themed ‘Dream Zone’, which comprises 250 sessions and features over 800 speakers.

“This year, the SIGGRAPH Asia 2019 team has prepared a truly amazing and inspirational programme for you, putting you in ‘Dream Zone’. And that is with the goal to constantly keep you engaged and smiling while experiencing the best computer graphics and interactive techniques in the region,” said Tomasz Bednarz, Conference Chair for SIGGRAPH Asia 2019.

Highlights of the panel discussions and invited speaker sessions include:

• Keynote: Revolutions in Mapping the Digital Universe by Donna J. Cox, Advanced Visualization Laboratory and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications

• Keynote: Making Things Making Meaning – Frontiers in New Media by Jeffrey Shaw, Center for Applied Computing and Interactive Media, City University of Hong Kong

• Keynote: Why Do I Create Images with Mathematics by Inigo Quilez, Co-Founder of Shadertoy

• Featured Session: Shaping Shocking Moments for “IT Chapter Two” by Josh Simmonds, Nick Tripodi & Alex Halstead at Method Studios

• Featured Session: “Frozen 2” and the Past, Present, and Future of Tech at Disney Animation by Ernest Petti, Studio CG Supervisor at Walt Disney Animation Studios

• Featured Session: Staging the Endgame – Avengers: Infinity War and its sequel Avengers by Sidney Kombo-Kintombo, Animation Supervisor at Weta Digital

• Featured Session: The Cyber Security Challenges for Next-Generation Mixed-Reality by a panel of speakers who will approach the topic from four different directions

• Computer Animation Festival – Panel & Production Talk: MPC Film Presents: VFX of Disney’s The Lion King by Elliot Newman, VFX Supervisor at MPC Films

• Featured Session: The Story of HoloLens by Charlie Han, Product Lead at Microsoft

• Featured Session: Childish Gambino’s Pharos-Real-Time Dome Projection for Live Concert by Keith Miller, Weta Digital & Alejandro Crawford, 2n

• Featured Session: Making of Pixar’s ‘Onward’ by a panel of technical directors & animators from Pixar Animation Studios

• Featured Session: Visualizing “Birth of Planet Earth” for Fulldome Theaters by a panel of speakers from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States of America

• Featured Session: Empowering Storytellers Through Technology, In Conversation with Zareh Nalbandian Animal Logic’s Co-Founder and CEO

• Featured Session: Bridging the Gap between Education and Industry in the VFX, Games and Animation Fields by a panel of experts from the VFX Industry

• Featured Session: Star Wars: Over Four Decades of Storytelling with Innovation by Rob Bredow, SVP, Executive Creative Director & Head, Industrial Light & Magic

• Featured Session: How Weta Digital Created Junior for Gemini Man by Guy Williams, Visual Effects Supervisor at Weta Digital

• Computer Animation Festival – Panel & Production Talk: Featured Session: Proactive Large-Scale Pipeline Efficiency Management by apanel from large-scale Animation and VFX studios to share insight to their challenges

• ACM SIGGRAPH Frontiers Workshop: Deep Fakes, ACM SIGGRAPH Frontiers Workshop panel discussion led by Hao Li, Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California

State-of-the-Art Exhibition

On 18 November the Exhibition commences, a showcase of the latest hardware and software applications for Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. 69 companies and brands, representing 18 countries and regions, are participating in the exhibition, some of which organise Exhibitor Talks. Exhibitors include AMD, Autodesk, AWS, Carpe Diem Solutions, Forum8 Co., Ltd, Foundry, HOUDINI, Industrial Light & Magic, LENOVO, MSI Australia Computer, NVIDIA, PIXAR, Qualisys, Tracklab, Tsinghua University – Tencent Joint Laboratory, UBISOFT, Unity Technologies, VICON Motion Systems, Weta Digital and Xsens, to mention a few.

First-time Programmes

Four programmes are making their debut at SIGGRAPH Asia 2019:

• The Business & Innovation Symposium aims to connect academic, technology, business and creative professionals in the SIGGRAPH Asia community. This will be done through the exchange of market trends, business mindsets, business models and capital.

• Demoscene, which encompasses a party-area to showcase a selection of demos by coders, artists and musicians, a retro museum and inspiring technical talks by demoscene veterans.

• The ACM SIGGRAPH Frontiers Workshops, which touches on positive and negative aspects of deep fake technology, future driver experiences and how artificial intelligence might extend realities.

• The ACM SIGGRAPH Asia Thesis Fast Forward programme, a part of the Doctoral Consortium, provides young presenters with a platform to share their innovative ideas in front of a panel of experts, who select the best performance.

Returning Programmes

Popular programmes to return to SIGGRAPH Asia in 2019 are:

• Birds of a Feather (BoF), which is a graphics-related, attendee-organized, informational discussion of shared interests, goals, technologies and/or backgrounds.

• The Computer Animation Festival, Asia’s premier showcase of the year’s best CG productions, will enthrall attendees with selected top short film screenings and invited panel and production talks.

• Emerging Technologies, a display and exhibit of interactive technologies that will change and improve our lives, such as ‘Co-Limbs: An Intuitive Collaborative Control for Wearable Robotic Arms’ and ‘Hanger Drive: Driver Manipulation System for Self-balancing Transporter Using the Hanger Reflex Haptic Illusion’.

• Real-Time Live!, where you get to see the future of interactive techniques, live on stage. Watch the most innovative interactive techniques as they are presented and deconstructed live by their creators during SIGGRAPH Asia’s Real-Time Live! experience.

Academic Sessions and Presentations of Research Papers

Academics, industry experts and researchers come together to discuss the latest ideas and technical applications for Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. Sessions include:

• Technical Briefs is a forum for leading international experts, academics and industry to present the latest developments and research still in progress. It is a showcase of actual implementations of research ideas, or work at the cross-roads of computer graphics with computer vision, machine learning, HCI, VR, CAD, visualisation and many others.

• The Technical Papers programme features the results of state-of-the-art research on topics from complex geometry and machine learning, 3D shape stylisation, creating realistic character-scene interactions to simulating complexity of fluids and strands in the virtual world, among others.

• Doctoral Consortium is a forum for Ph.D. students to meet and discuss their work with one another, and with a panel of experienced SIGGRAPH Asia researchers in an informal and interactive setting.

• The Posters Gallery & Presentations is an interactive forum for innovative ideas that offer a behind-the-scenes view of new commercial and artistic work, as well as solutions that help solve challenging problems.

Learn more or register at sa2019.siggraph.org.