Fantasy Graphics League Results for 2002 (Preliminary)

[If you want to know about how the contest rules work, then click on any blue text in this sentence.]

So, the SIGGRAPH 2002 papers have been announced, and the world pauses in its circuit around the sun as the results are compiled...

The Top Eleven (which sounds more dramatic than "the people with 200 or more points") at this point are:

Points  Name & Lab
=========================================================
306.67  Aaron Hertzmann, Super Butter Dog
277.57  Tim Purcell, Wunky Munky Du
265.00  Hugues Hoppe, Shlomo & Hugues
255.24  Ian Buck, The Frys Addicts
243.57  Henrik Wann Jensen, The Vikings
230.00  Zeki Melek, incompressible fluid motion (?)
227.00  Mathieu Desbrun, The cheap ones (quatloos-wise)
218.57  Cyrille Damez
217.67  Brian Curless and David Salesin, Pixel Polytech
202.00  Dave Zareski, Particle Tracers
200.00  Peter Shirley, Utah Polygonists
out of 78 contestants. {My mindless "hire Stanford students" strategy worked fairly well, putting me in 14th place. Actually, this was a tough strategy to follow, since I couldn't afford everyone. I missed some real winners, such as Christoph "20 will get you 45" Bregler. With Stanford having some part in 10 more papers this year, there will be even more rookies to choose from next year, if anyone tries this strategy.}

[Late breaking news: Pete Shirley noticed that he was worthless this year. This was an error on my part, a stray blank space at the end of a line in a data file caused his name and the paper he worked on to be ignored. The results above show him in his proper place. D'oh, and points for Zoran `last person on the list' Popovic didn't get added in; this fix kicked Aaron Hertzmann into first place! Oh, and another, the accent in Bruno Lévy's name made him at first have no points. Oh, and Dani Lischinski was misspelt, as was Norman Badler, so these have now scored. I'll wait a day before sending out an update. If you notice more errors, let me know.]

Things are not over yet: the sketches first authors are worth 20 points each, and will not be announced until June 7th. Recall that Hanspeter Pfister picked up 60 points last year with the Frisken gambit off the back wall, getting a double quoit in the last chukar. Our current leader, Aaron Hertzmann, was in fifth place at this time last year, but picked up 20 points and finished second once the wildcard sketches were tabulated.

Most impressive this year is that the high scores are considerably higher than last year, a solid 100 points higher. It was interesting to see the effect of resubmits: up until the deadline you could submit a new, revised team - only the last team submitted counts as your entry. Tim Purcell's initial team would have put him in 6th place, but his revision netted him an extra 44 points. Others were not so lucky. Of the four other people who revised their team once, only one person moved up, by 28 points; the other three moved down, by 15, 24, and 60 points. Of the two people who revised their teams twice, each final team was lower than the initial team, down by 25 and 45 points. Conclude whatever you wish.

As far as the researchers themselves go, the most cost effective were:

### Value Cost Efficiency Name
==============================
142 65.00   20   3.2500   Fabio Pellacini
334 60.00   20   3.0000   Marc Alexa
297 60.00   20   3.0000   Ken Perlin
 38 12.00    5   2.4000   Aseem Agarwala
 75 45.00   20   2.2500   Christoph Bregler
548 20.00   10   2.0000   Xianfeng Gu
569 62.00   40   1.5500   Zoran Popovic
324 15.00   10   1.5000   Lorie Loeb
126 30.00   20   1.5000   Douglas DeCarlo
355 15.00   10   1.5000   Mary C. Whitton
555 15.00   10   1.5000   Yanyun Chen
557 15.00   10   1.5000   Ying-Qing Xu
206 15.00   10   1.5000   Ian Buck
345 20.00   15   1.3333   Mark Meyer
479 20.00   15   1.3333   Steve Marschner
226 20.00   15   1.3333   Jan Kautz
512 12.00   10   1.2000   Tom Duchamp
449 60.00   50   1.2000   Ronald Fedkiw
413 12.00   10   1.2000   Paul A. Beardsley
544 12.00   10   1.2000   Wojciech Matusik
564 12.00   10   1.2000   Yung-Yu Chuang
That is, these people gave the most points per Quatloo paid for them. Everyone else was rated 1.0 or less.

The researchers that made the most points overall, regardless of cost, were:

### Value Cost Efficiency Name
==============================
142 65.00   20   3.2500   Fabio Pellacini
569 62.00   40   1.5500   Zoran Popovic
162 60.00   65   0.9231   George Drettakis
449 60.00   50   1.2000   Ronald Fedkiw
334 60.00   20   3.0000   Marc Alexa
195 60.00  100   0.6000   Heung-Yeung Shum
297 60.00   20   3.0000   Ken Perlin
190 50.00   85   0.5882   Henrik Wann Jensen
239 47.00   90   0.5222   Jessica K. Hodgins
 75 45.00   20   2.2500   Christoph Bregler
410 45.00  240   0.1875   Pat Hanrahan
 53 44.00   50   0.8800   Brian Curless
279 42.00   70   0.6000   Julie Dorsey
 40 40.00   70   0.5714   Baining Guo
123 35.00  150   0.2333   Donald P. Greenberg
Everyone else scored 30 points or less.

Finally, the most popular researchers were:

Authors, by popularity on teams
===============================
22 Henrik Wann Jensen
16 Michael F. Cohen
12 Ken Perlin
11 Wolfgang Heidrich
11 Ronald Fedkiw
10 Mathieu Desbrun
10 Steve Marschner
10 Zoran Popovic
 9 Peter Shirley
 9 Paul E. Debevec
 9 Frédo Durand
ranked by the number of labs that hired them. If you're on any of these lists, ask for a raise.

All for now, and keep a Spyonit watcher on the SIGGRAPH sketches page to see how your lab finally stacks up, or just visit here again come mid-June.


From the Higgs boson deficient minds of Eric Haines, Phil Dutré, Dan Kartch, and Ben Trumbore.
last updated: April 29, 2002