HPG 2018; oh, and a hyphen for “Physically-Based” (don’t!)

I mostly wanted to pass on the word that High-Performance Graphics 2018 has their call for participation up. Due date for papers is April 12th. HPG 2018 is co-located with SIGGRAPH 2018 in Vancouver in August.

Also, let’s talk about hyphens. See Rule 1: Generally, hyphenate two or more words when they come before a noun they modify and act as a single idea. This is called a compound adjective.

Update: John Owens wrote and said “Go read Rule 3,” which is: An often overlooked rule for hyphens: The adverb very and adverbs ending in ly are not hyphenated.

So, he’s right! The hyphen is indeed NOT needed, my mistake! I didn’t do all the work, reading through all eleven rules and noting that “physically” is indeed an adverb.

Here’s the rest of my incorrect post, for the record. I guess I’m in good company – about a quarter of authors get this wrong, judging from the list of publications below.

The phrase “High-Performance Graphics” is good to go; “Real-Time Rendering” is also fine. Writing “Physically Based Rendering,” as seen on Wikipedia and elsewhere, not quite [I’m wrong]. The world doesn’t end if the hyphen’s not there, especially in a title of just the phrase itself. Adding the hyphen just helps the reader know what to expect: Is the word “based” going to be a noun or part of a compound adjective? If you read the rest of Rule 1, note you don’t normally add the hyphen if the adjective is after the noun. So:

“Physically-based [that’s wrong] rendering is better than rendering that is spiritually based.”

is correct, “spiritually based” should not be hyphenated. Google came up with no direct hits for “spiritually-based rendering” that I could find – it’s an untapped field.

Not a big deal by any stretch, but we definitely noticed that “no hyphen” was the norm for a lot of authors for this particular phrase [and rightfully so], to the point where when the hyphen actually exists, as in a presentation by Burley, the course description leaves it out.

In no particular scientific sample, here are some titles found without the hyphen:

  • SIGGRAPH Physically Based Shading in Theory and Practice course
  • Graceful Degradation of Collision Handling in Physically Based Animation
  • Physically Based Area Lights
  • Antialiasing Physically Based Shading with LEADR Mapping
  • Distance Fields for Rapid Collision Detection in Physically Based Modeling
  • Beyond a Simple Physically Based Blinn-Phong Model in Real-Time
  • SIGGRAPH Real-time Rendering of Physically Based Optical Effect in Theory and Practice course
  • Physically Based Lens Flare
  • Implementation Notes: Physically Based Lens Flares
  • Physically Based Sky, Atmosphere and Cloud Rendering in Frostbite
  • Approximate Models for Physically Based Rendering
  • Physically Based Hair Shading in Unreal
  • Revisiting Physically Based Shading at Imageworks
  • Moving Frostbite to Physically Based Rendering
  • An Inexpensive BRDF Model for Physically based Rendering
  • Physically Based Lighting Calculations for Computer Graphics
  • Physically Based Deferred Shading on Mobile
  • SIGGRAPH Practical Physically Based Shading in Film and Game Production course
  • SIGGRAPH Physically Based Modeling course
  • Physically Based Shading at DreamWorks Animation

Titles found with:

  • Physically-Based Shading at Disney
  • Physically-based and Unified Volumetric Rendering in Frostbite
  • Fast, Flexible, Physically-Based Volumetric Light Scattering
  • Physically-Based Real-Time Lens Flare Rendering
  • Physically-based lighting in Call of Duty: Black Ops
  • Theory and Algorithms for Efficient Physically-Based Illumination
  • Faster Photorealism in Wonderland: Physically-Based Shading and Lighting at Sony Pictures Imageworks
  • Physically-Based Glare Effects for Digital Images

I suspect some authors just picked what earlier authors did. The hyphen’s better, go with it [no, don’t].

Now, don’t get me started on capitalization… Well, it’s easy, the word after the hyphen should be capitalized. There’s an online tool for testing titles, in fact, if you have any doubts – I use Chicago style.

But I digress. Submit to HPG 2018.