Just in time for SIGGRAPH (so I wouldn’t get those “when’s the next issue coming out?” questions), here it is.
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Tags: ray tracing
There will be a Birds of a Feather gathering at SIGGRAPH 2010 about GPU Ray Tracing: Wednesday, 4:30-6 pm, Room 301 A.
A brief description from Austin Robison: We won’t have a projector or desktop machines set up, but please feel free to bring your laptops to show off what you’ve been working on! Additionally, I’ve created a Google Group mailing list that I hope we can use, as a community, to share insights and ask questions about ray tracing on GPUs not tied to any specific API or vendor. Please sign up and share your news, experiences and ideas: http://groups.google.com/group/gpu-ray-tracing.
Tags: GPU, ray tracing, SIGGRAPH 2010
I’ve messed around with various scheduling methods over the years for SIGGRAPH, but find I dislike the form factor of PDA-like devices: you can see a few hours, or maybe a day’s activities at best. Taking notes can be tiresome, you need lots of clicks needed to find stuff, and sometimes the battery dies.
So for the past few years I’ve locked onto classic graphite stick & cellulose technology. Honestly, I like it a lot: folds up and fits in my pocket, it’s easy to see conflicts among events, I can instantly figure out when I’m free, and lots of room on the back for notes and whatnot. At the end of the conference I automatically have a hardcopy, no printing necessary. I mention it here as an honestly useful option, as this low-tech approach works for me. The main drawback is that you look like a nerd to other nerds. Hey, I like my iPod Touch, I’ll put the SIGGRAPH Advanced Program on it with Discover, but the sheet o’ paper will be my high-level quick & dirty way to navigate and write down information. It’s sort of how I like RememberTheMilk for reminders more than Google Calendar: I can enter data very simply, without time wasted navigating the UI. Now if only the sheet of paper would automatically unfold when I take it out of my pocket, I could increase efficiency by 0.43 seconds.
Tags: scheduling, SIGGRAPH
Try it – it’s a blast (keep hitting “refresh” to see new titles). Here’s a few that I got:
- Bidirectional Rendering of Caustics for Light Fields
- Reflective Normal-mapped Light Fields
- Rendering of Inverse Geometry
- Texturing of Multi-resolution Geometry using Polygonal Approximation
- Displacement Mapping of Reflective Geometry for Surfaces
Can’t tell them from the real paper titles…
Tags: humor
A few days before the official release date of July 1, the book GPU Pro is out. Think “ShaderX, but now with color”. The example programs and source code are free to download. As mentioned before, more about it at Wolfgang Engel’s book blog.
Tags: books
Last month I noted some resources for finding out about graphics conference due dates and meeting dates. Naty pointed out that we, in fact, host one ourselves, by Ke-Sen Huang. Other people noted this nice one and this detailed one.
I’m posting today because Yamauchi Hitoshi has updated his own conference calendar (due to suggestions from readers of this blog), and also made the generator free software. He originally just made this page for himself, but the power of the web and all that… I like the layout a lot. The visual presentation of deadlines, notifications, and actual conference date is (I imagine) quite useful for deciding where to submit a paper and what alternatives there are if it is not immediately accepted.
Tags: calendar, conferences
Some computerish graphicsy photos from my trip to Shanghai. First, they’ve got the right definition of 3D:
But what about Cartesian coordinates? This pavilion certainly predates those, definitely 3D:
A cool sculpture from the World Expo (Robin Green comments “…hsync timing issues”):
Thomas, a happy customer of our 2nd edition:
Given the number of “name-brand” watches, purses, clothing, software, etc. in the (literally underground) market at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum metro stop, name infringement like this is very small potatoes:
Magical technology from this market, no doubt shipped back from the future: USB flash drives with up to 880 GB!
Near as we can tell, they hack the driver on a small flash drive to make it look like 880 GB or whatever to your computer. Think of them as “write-only USBs”. Just as well: if you were to try to fill a real drive of this size at its 7 MB/sec transfer rate, it would take 35 hours.
Some have heard, some haven’t, so I’ll mention it here: Martin Gardner passed away a few days ago, age 95. If you’re saying “who?”, then you’re in for a treat, as there’s a great set of books and articles you haven’t yet discovered. He wrote about mathematical ideas and puzzles (he popularized Conway’s Game of Life, among many other things), debunked pseudoscience such as homeopathy and dianetics, explained magic tricks, annotated Lewis Carroll’s works and others, wrote about science and a little philosophy – what a great guy, and my #1 childhood hero. Need to know more? Check say this NYT article (which includes some puzzles) and Wikipedia.
I just noticed on Amazon you can get all of his Scientific American “Mathematical Games” articles on CD-ROM – cool. Me, my favorite books are “Aha! Insight” and “Aha! Gotcha” because I could give them to my children and pass on the word.
I’ll get back to graphics soon, but for now: a toast to a life well lived, and may we all do at least half as well!
Oh, come to think of it, I do have something that’s somewhat graphical, or at least geometric. This is from the book “The Mathemagician and Pied Puzzler: a Collection in Tribute to Martin Gardner”: You have a cube and you select at random three (different) corners. What is the chance that the triangle formed by these corners is acute (all angles < 90 degrees)? is a right triangle (has one angle == 90 degrees)?
Answers are here, along with another puzzle.
Bonus followup: I just noticed that the book I mentioned, “The Mathemagician…”, is available as a free PDF download.
Tags: Martin Gardner, puzzles
SIGGRAPH’s early registration deadline is June 4th, after that the price goes up $175 or so, depending. News of which made me look around for graphics conference calendars. I didn’t find much – if anyone knows of others, please do let me know.
The Upcoming Graphics Conferences page on wikidot lists most of the graphics conferences I know about, and tons I don’t. It doesn’t list HPG 2010, however. I wrote the website maintainer about this omission but it’s a week later and no response or update.
A handy schedule of computer graphics conferences is available from a student at the Max Planck Institute. This one’s handy for researchers, as it gives submission dates. Oddly, HPG 2010 is again missing.
Tags: conferences
One of the challenges of SIGGRAPH is doing it all. My own method is to take a sheet of lined paper (remember that stuff?) and make columns for the days, each line being a half hour. One whole sheet holds it all, vs. me dorking around with my Palm/phone/Touch/whatever, scrolling around to see what’s what. Old school, but it works great.
Anyway, Naty’s recent summary of courses didn’t have course times. Here goes, mostly for my own benefit, in time order. Bolded are the ones I personally plan to attend and why, FWIW:
Perceptually Motivated Graphics, Visualization, and 3D Displays - Sunday afternoon
Physically Based Shading Models in Film and Game Production - Sunday afternoon. Toss up for me between this and the previous course. Naty’s the only speaker for this one, so it’s tempting to go, just to see his head explode after lecturing for 3+ hours.
Stylized Rendering in Games - Monday morning. I’m particularly pumped for this one, having done NPR work this last year.
Recent Advances in Real-Time Collision and Proximity Computations for Games and Simulations - Monday afternoon
Color Enhancement and Rendering in Film and Game Production - Tuesday morning. Naty’s a speaker.
Filtered Importance Sampling for Production Rendering - Tuesday morning
An Introduction to 3D Spatial Interaction With Videogame Motion Controllers - Tuesday afternoon
Advances in Real-Time Rendering in 3D Graphics and Games – all Wednesday. Traditional course, usually quite good.
Volumetric Methods in Visual Effects - Wednesday morning
Gazing at Games: Using Eye Tracking to Control Virtual Characters - Wednesday afternoon
Beyond Programmable Shading - all Thursday. The DICE talk last year was amazing, the others were also worthwhile.
Advanced Techniques in Real-Time Hair Rendering and Simulation - Thursday morning
Global Illumination Across Industries - Thursday afternoon
The “Advances” course used to always be Monday. Which was terrible last year, as it was scheduled against the last day of the colocated HPG conference (not a problem this year, since HPG is in Europe alternate years). I suspect someone realized that putting Advances and Beyond next to each other, and alongside the exhibition floor days, was good for pulling in game devs. Anyway, looks to be a great set of courses, other than the risk of head explosion.
If you want something lighter to start with on Sunday, try Glassner’s “Processing for Visual Artists and Designers” course. The Processing language is easy to learn and fun for quick bit-twiddling or other 2D effects, with all the usual 2D primitives and mouse support (and much else) built in.
Tags: SIGGRAPH
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