"Fast Forward" Session Offers Pithy Paper Previews
by Merrie Ringel
9 August 2004
Conference-goers gathered in one of the Los Angeles Convention Center's many large lecture halls on the eve of the first full day of SIGGRAPH 2004 to hear all 83 of this year's SIGGRAPH papers succinctly summarized. The much-anticipated "Fast Forward" session gives each paper author exactly 50 seconds to explain what their paper is about and to entice conference attendees to hear their full, thirty-minute presentation later in the conference. [read more]

Half a Cup of Neuromancer:
Are we tuned to a dead channel?
by Shyam Sunder
10 August 2004
The course “Seeing, Hearing and Touching: Putting It All Together”, offered by researchers from the University of British Columbia, introduced the state of the art in human perceptual theory and its application to design and testing of interaction. [read more]

Creating a Digital Thespian
“Lord of the Rings”: The Visual Effects That Brought Middle Earth to the Screen Course
by Tai-San Choo
10 August 2004
One of the holy grails of CG visual effects and character animation has always been finding a way to make your characters realistic and believable in both actions and appearance. Many effects departments work months and years on a very detailed character, only to have it end up looking Gumby-like and rubbery. [read more]