SIGGRAPH 2001
Sketches & Applications Fact Sheet

Conference 12-17 August 2001
Exhibition 14-16 August 2001

Los Angeles Convention Center
Los Angeles, California USA
www.siggraph.org/s2001

Short, informal presentations on advanced research, artistic adventures, next year's technologies, production breakthroughs, and non-idle speculation are presented in the Sketches & Applications program.

"Sketches and Applications received nearly 300 submissions from 23 different countries and over 130 different companies, research facilities, educational institutions, and individuals," said Dena Slothower, SIGGRAPH 2001 Sketches & Applications Chair from Stanford University. "The final Sketches and Applications program features 138 presentations including emerging work from the technical, education, medical, arts, design, gaming, performing arts, and entertainment communities."

SIGGRAPH 2001 SKETCHES & APPLICATIONS PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

Crashing Planes the Easy Way: "Pearl Harbor"
Scott Benza, Industrial Light + Magic
Aircraft destruction in "Pearl Harbor" was made possible by taking an alternative approach to rigid body systems. This presentation demonstrates ILM's technique for creating realistic dynamic simulations for the film.

Creating Tools for Playstation2 Game Development
Simon Brown, Sony Computer Entertainment
Key challenges encountered in creating a level editor, miscellaneous art tools, and data pipelines for a PS2 title.

The Development of the Virtual Human Abdomen: Algorithms and Methodologies
Kevin Chugh, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York Virtual Reality Laboratory
This sketch presents a haptic simulation of an abdominal palpation examination. The development of both real-time haptic force-displacement algorithms and a non-invasive tissue property collection device will be discussed.

Elmo's World: Digital Puppetry on "Sesame Street"
Emre Yilmaz
The real-time digital puppetry process used to bring five furniture creatures to life for "Sesame Street" and how this process fit into the production.

Linux for the Production Pipeline
Jeffrey Wike, DreamWorks Feature Animation
DreamWorks retooled its entire animation production facilities from high-end proprietary workstations to commodity-based Intel/Linux solutions. The result: dramatic increases in performance and significantly reduced costs.

Mayhem: A New Trend for Virtual Environments (and Online Games)
Manuel Oliveira, University College of London
Nemesis, a prototype massive online role-playing game, uses new concepts and approaches from research to create a constantly evolving virtual environment that scales according to the number of users.

Multi-Modal Translation System by Using Automatic Facial Image Tracking and Model-Based Lip Synchronization
Shin Ogata, Seikei University
A multi-modal English-to-Japanese and Japanese-to-English translation system that also translates the speaker's speech motion and synchronizes it to the translated speech.

Using Color-Changing Textiles as a Computer Graphics Display
Lars Erik Holmquist, PLAY, Interactive Institute
Using photochromically treated threads to create a fabric that changes color when subjected to ultraviolet light. In conjunction with a computer-controlled lamp, the textile becomes a dynamic display.