Courses Fact Sheet

Co-Chairs: Sara McMains, Peter-Pike Sloan
Conference: Sunday 5 August - Thursday 9 August
Exhibition: Tuesday 7 August - Thursday 9 August

The Facts

• There are 33 presentations in the SIGGRAPH 2007 Courses Program.
• Courses are one of the cornerstones of the SIGGRAPH 2007 technical program.
• Course presentation formats are tutorials, half-day sessions, and full-day sessions.
• More than 180 international researchers and professionals reviewed Course submissions to advise the final jury selections.
• Courses are designed by recognized experts from industry and academia to teach beginning, intermediate, and advanced skills and techniques to computer graphics and interactive technology professionals.
• Skills learned by attendees can be implemented across numerous application areas and disciplines.
• The goal of each topic is to deepen understanding, encourage exploration, and immediately enhance real-world skills.
• SIGGRAPH 2007 Courses span industries from game development to film production to digital art.

A Quote from the SIGGRAPH 2007 Courses Co-Chair:

"From art to animation, interaction to irradiance, games to GPUs, math to meshes, we've selected this year's courses from dozens of proposals to build a program that will educate and inspire every type of computer graphics professional," stated Sara McMains, SIGGRAPH 2007 Courses Co-Chair.

Select highlights from the SIGGRAPH 2007 Courses Program:

From "Shrek" to "Shrek the Third": Evolution of CG Characters in the "Shrek" Films

Organizer: Philippe Gluckman, PDI/DreamWorks

This course proposes unique insights into how "Shrek" characters evolved over three films. The speakers, who've held key positions on all "Shrek" productions, will discuss the choices that helped keep the "Shrek" franchise unique as well as the challenges of constantly adapting to new technical and creative demands.

Advanced Real-Time Rendering in 3D Graphics and Games

Organizer: Natalya Tatarchuk, AMD Graphics, 3D Application Research Group

The amazing power of the latest GPUs has spurred a real osmosis of ideas between game developers and state-of-the-art graphics research. This course presents innovative real-time algorithms from award-winning game engines and ground-breaking 3D rendering that are pushing the visual boundaries and interactive experience of complex virtual worlds.

GPGPU: General-Purpose Computation on Graphics Hardware

Organizer: Mike Houston, Stanford University

Graphics processors (GPUs) have become powerful engines capable of a variety of computations beyond computer graphics. This course takes a detailed look at both basic and advanced issues with computation on graphics hardware (GPGPU) with an emphasis on core computational building blocks and a concentration on applications to graphics and simulation.

Computational Photography

Organizer: Ramesh Raskar, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL)

Participants learn about the latest computational methods in digital imaging that overcome the traditional limitations of a camera and enable novel imaging applications. This course provides a practical guide to topics in image capture and manipulation methods for generating compelling pictures for computer graphics and for extracting scene properties for computer vision.

High-Quality Rendering Using Ray Tracing and Photon Mapping

Organizer: Henrik Jensen, University of California, San Diego

This course provides detailed descriptions of the ray tracing and photon mapping algorithms for rendering complex scenes with indirect illumination, caustics, participating media, and subsurface scattering. The emphasis is on the practical insight necessary to use and implement these algorithms in production of high-quality images in movies, games, architecture, etc.

Database Techniques with Motion Capture

Organizer: Nancy Pollard, Carnegie Mellon University

Motion capture databases are now large, varied, and widely used. This course covers database techniques useful for organizing, processing, and navigating such databases. Topics include choice of distance function, indexing for fast retrieval, and time series prediction for stitching, segmentation, and outlier detection. Current and potential applications are discussed.

Practical Least-Squares for Computer Graphics

Organizer: Fred Pighin, Industrial Light & Magic

This course presents an overview of the least-squares technique and its variants illustrated using computer graphics applications. It provides a "cookbook" understanding of each technique and examples of graphics problems.

Fluid Simulation

Organizer: Robert Bridson, The University of British Columbia

Animating fluids like water, smoke, and fire by physics-based simulation is increasingly important in visual effects and is starting to make an impact in real-time games. This course goes from the basics of 3D fluid flow to the state of the art in graphics.

Mesh Parameterization: Theory and Practice

Organizer: Alla Sheffer, The University of British Columbia

This course is an introduction to mesh parameterization, which is a popular and powerful geometry processing tool. It outlines mathematical foundations, describes recent methods for parameterizing surface meshes over various domains, discusses emerging tools like global parameterization and inter-surface mapping, and demonstrates a variety of parameterization applications.

Interaction Tomorrow

Organizers: Michael Haller, Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences, and Chia Shen, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL)

A comprehensive overview of user-interface technologies in the newly emerging interactive tabletops and large wall displays. Topics include: input devices, interface metaphors, modality of interaction, sensing technologies, applications, and future directions. Examples are drawn from both commercial systems and research prototypes.

SIGGRAPH 2007 Courses start on Sunday morning and run through Thursday of the conference week.

Complete Courses information including topics, prerequisites, and lecturers