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In this changing world, ACM SIGGRAPH requires a new and bolder vision. In response to this need, the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee (EC) commissioned a diverse cross-discipline team to develop an overarching five year strategic initiative to ensure our organization and community remain relevant and continues to be recognized as the premier global organization for computer graphics and interactive techniques. The five year vision our strategy team brought forward is "Enabling everyone to tell their stories." As ACM SIGGRAPH is much more than the annual conference, the EC wants this vision to be the guiding light behind a number of tangible benefits that are relevant and tangible to our members throughout the entire year.

During the Keynote Session at SIGGRAPH 2017, our outgoing President, Jeff Jortner, outlined the strategy teams’ vision as centering on five specific areas of focus:

• Establish a 21st-century digital presence
• Grow and develop an active CG community and idea marketplace
• Enable and welcome new technologies and vertical markets
• Streamline our organization
• Develop a strategic marketing plan

A cutting-edge 21st-century digital presence would enable the organization to better focus on education and professional development for its membership year-round, leveraging the many grassroots efforts present in the community and exploring the upcoming digital platforms that will inform and mobilize our community.

One of the many initiatives under the area defined as "grow and develop an active CG community and idea marketplace" is for the organization to create a moderated worldwide graphics listserv where computer graphics researchers and practitioners can learn about graphics-related conferences, exhibitions, submission deadlines, open positions, and news. This listserv has been created. To sign up, please visit http://listserv.siggraph.org/, click on the GRAPHICS-WORLDWIDE link and subscribe. This group is actively working with ACM on creating an ACM SIGGRAPH Proceedings of the ACM (PACM) for the specialized conferences which have stringent review processes comparable to those of journals. In the past, conference-centric publishing put the graphics research community at a disadvantage compared to other scientific disciplines because the significant work produced has not been recognized as such. ACM SIGGRAPH Specialized Conferences have demonstrated high quality and high impact on the field, and PACM will help recognition as such.

The new technologies program is creating a "Talk and a Coffee" program for the first session of each day at SIGGRAPH to provide an opportunity to hear expert researchers and practitioners from adjacent fields as well as graphics. The hope is that these talks will inspire us to think about new problems with applications that go beyond the traditional definition of graphics.

Streamlining the organization has been an active project for the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee for the last year, and has resulted in a set of suggested bylaw changes which after approval by ACM will be presented to the membership in a special election in January. The aim is to get members to engage, participate or contribute, and become part of an elite organization who supports and helps throughout ones career. One way will be to limit the amount of volunteer hours needed to be president of the organization, and to increase the number of volunteers by highlighting opportunities to participate that only require between 40 and 80 hours per year.

More information will be coming out in the coming months as the initial team continues to meet and solidify metrics and plans of action. More information will be coming on these ideas as well as the marketing initiative in the coming months as the team continues to meet and solidify metrics and plans of action.

By Ian Failes. Republished with permission from Spark CG Society.

Perhaps the most talked about sequence in Luc Besson’s Valerian & the City of a Thousand Planets is the interdimensional journey undertaken by the title character through a merchant world. Here, Valerian (Dane DeHaan) dons special goggles that enable him to be in two ‘worlds’ at once — a desert and the market world — as he attempts a secret mission.

ILM led the visual effects effort on the scene, with its Vancouver office the main contributor under visual effects supervisor Philippe Rebours. Hybride also worked on the sequence. Spark CG Society found out more in this Q&A with Rebours.

Watch a portion of the sequence as Valerian stumbles into a toy shop in the merchant world.

This is one of the most stunning scenes in the film, but also one of the most complicated. How was it explained to you, and how was it conceived?

Philippe Rebours: We received the script and then a few of us from ILM went down to LA to meet Scott Stokdyk, the overall visual effects supervisor, and Sophie Leclerc, the visual effects producer, and Luc as well. We saw the sequence the way Luc shot it with his students. He has a school in France next to his stages, and he took his students and for a couple of weeks they shot the entire sequence on the stage. They were just using tables and whatever they could find and would walk around and act it out.

Then Luc took that and edited it and showed that to us. Interestingly, I remember being there and it was a 22-minute sequence, and I was, even then, I was completely into it, even though there was no environment. I was completely into it and it felt like a Luc Besson movie. The position of the camera that he chose, the lenses, the movement. I told him it was very interesting because right away you could feel his signature.

The good thing is, Luc also did his homework. He edited the sequence and then he would say, ‘Okay, that’s what I’m going to shoot,’ and shot by shot we could define and we coloured each shot or we put a dot on it to say, ‘This shot is in the desert,’ and, ‘This is shot in the marketplace,’ because the sequence happens on two worlds, right at the same time.

Or, ‘This shot is a POV,’ which means we’re going to use a third look which is like when the tourists put their goggles on. Then Luc took that and scheduled his shoots based on that, meaning that everything that was in the desert we shot it on a stage where that was the desert world with the sand, and the blue screen all around. Everything that was in the merchant world, or almost everything that was in the merchant world, we would shoot it on the blue stage where we just had markers and poles here and there to define the scale of the street, these kind of things. It was like a real animatic, but actually with shot people.

When it came time to sort of show Valerian in both worlds at the same time, in that sort of virtual reality look, how did you approach that side of things?

Philippe Rebours: So, what is interesting is when you’re in the desert, you see all the tourists and the tourists are in that world. They’re wandering around and they see the other worlds through their goggles. The merchants, they’re in their world but they have to interact with the tourists as well, with the tourists being in the other world. In the merchant world, all the tourists show up as holograms. They have this blue treatment on them, but that’s where the sequence becomes also fun because Laureline (Cara Delevingne), who does not have the googles, is invisible in the merchant world, is never seen in the merchant world. She’s incognito, basically. Valerian at some points becomes invisible because he’s being spread by some technology that makes it that his hologram doesn’t appear in the merchant world, so the merchants cannot see him — he’s sneaking in and he’s using this transmitter box.

When you buy something in one world, the idea is you put on a glove, you see the other world, you walk in the compound, it’s like you’re walking in the other streets. You touch the things, you feel them with the glove and then when you want to buy them you buy them and you go somewhere where those transmitter boxes are and what you bought appears in your world. It’s being transferred from one world to the other one. What Valerian does is he puts his hands with a gun in one of those boxes and transfers his hand and the gun in the other world, so he’s invisible in the merchant world but his hand and gun appears.

Then at some point, he cannot retrieve his hand and so he’s being chased slightly invisible. So you have those shots where you only see the box with his hands running around, and all the other tourists are blue. All the aliens that are in the merchant world are regular merchant world, but that means that those aliens are not seen in the desert world. Interestingly, with the cuts, it all works. You don’t question it, which I think is due to the good editing.

How were you tackling those shots that just showed his hand or the gun?

Philippe Rebours: Well, it depends on the shots. So, you have the shots where we’re on set, let’s say, into Igon Siruss’ store and that was a set. There we shot multiple passes. We would replace the actor that was playing Igon Siruss with our CG creature. Then we had for some shots we had Dane there and the hand holding the gun and we used that as a reference. I mean, we used his take and his hands and the box that he was holding. In some cases, we replaced the box and the hand in CG. When it’s on the blue screen, when we were on the other world where, well, in the streets that were fully CG, we had a pass with Dane walking around so we had a good reference on the movement, and then we would replace it if we needed to. We either painted him out or just picked the hand and the box, or made the box and the hand CG animated. Then the interesting aspect is when he is in the desert, we painted out his hands and the gun because you wouldn’t see it there.

What were some of the visual effects challenges in making the two different environments — the desert and the market?

Philippe Rebours: For the desert, we were on set and it was in this huge stage. The desert world was defined by sand. Those rocks that were tilted in one direction, you imagine that it’s like rocks that had been pushed by the wind in one direction. We had some initial reference for the sky, but then we got a new reference which was from a commercial shown in France and it was basically cumulus clouds stacked on top of each other but all having different colors. That gave the full look of the desert, which was this yellow sand, blue sky, stones with multi-colored clouds.

Now, the other environment, the merchant world, we had tonnes of artwork representing the streets here, a street there, the canyon and all that. What we did in some of the shots is — it’s very subtle — but you could imagine that as the sun is moving, the awnings are moving with it so all the time the streets are in the shadows. We created all those details in a library of elements that we used to dress the set.

Also what Luc gave us was a lot of artwork of very specific stores. It was interesting because he wouldn’t say, ‘I absolutely want this one in this shot.’ He’d just say, ‘These are all the artworks that I like. Please use them. Choose the ones that you feel would work the best,’ and left us a lot of freedom.

Then he did the same thing with the aliens, there was tons of artwork as well, and there was also some that he chose from the comic book. Each time we did a creature, you do one but then you have to do variations as well. He would give us the initial information for the costumes, and then we would go and create variations on the costumes.

It’s interesting because sometimes I would say, ‘No, this is not working because this is not our universe.’ Even though there’s a lot of variations, there is a very specific look to the movie, and if you had too many very strong details everywhere, it might become another sci-fi movie. For example, Luc didn’t want any straight lines. You know when you’re on a street and you see the buildings and everything, it’s straight? He was like, ‘No, no, I don’t want that. I want round. I want them to be tilted, a little bit off,’ and I think that was true with the creatures as well. Most of them would very, fairly round, round shapes, or not too many angles. However, he absolutely wanted as well to have these very simple aliens, let’s say, that are like geometry shapes. A pyramid or a cube or octagon, that were flying around.

In terms of the huge environments and complex world of that market, were there any special tools or approaches that you were using?

Philippe Rebours: Our approach was kind of like LEGO, where you build pieces and assemble it together. Then what our generalist group was working in was Clarisse from Isotropix, and it’s great software because you can have a lot of geometry and a lot of set dressing. The library would be live in the scene in a sense, on the side, and then you could just choose and pick which one you wanted to set dress. For a big fly-through that we did, most of the set dressing was first done procedurally, and then when the camera goes closer, we enter a street, for example, there we went more manual and did a proper set dressing, or adding details here and there.

With the set dressing, you place the object and the object comes with materials and textures that were modeled, some by our generalist department but some by our modeling, digital modeling department, and so they were model and textures before and imported afterward. We had also a library of materials inside Clarisse so we could add more variations by switching these. For example, you have a vase and the vase was made of earth. Then you say, ‘Well, actually let’s switch that to a metal vase,’ and so you could switch the material like that.

All images and clips, copyright 2017 Entertainment One. All Rights Reserved.

On June 15, members of ACM SIGGRAPH who were in good standing as of May 31, 2017 were sent voting information in an email message or letter from Election Services Corporation (ESC). If ACM does not have an email address on file, members will receive voting information via postal mail. Members also have the option of requesting a paper ballot. If you have not received an email from ESC, please contact them at acmsiggraph@electionservicescorp.com or toll-free at 1-866-720-4357.

Voting closes August 15. The newly elected directors will take office on September 1, 2017. For more information on elected positions within ACM SIGGRAPH, and the elections process, visit the elections page of our website.

If you'll be at SIGGRAPH 2017, join us at the "Meet the Executive Committee Candidates" session on Thursday, August 3, from 12:00-1:00 p.m. in room 511BC of the Los Angeles Convention Center. The candidates will discuss their visions for the future of ACM SIGGRAPH and answer your questions.

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2017 ACM SIGGRAPH Election Candidates

View the candidate bios and statements on ACM.org.

Candidates for President

• Jessica Hodgins
• Alain Chesnais

Candidates for Vice-President

• Evan Hirsch
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Candidates for Director-at-Large

• Peter-Pike Sloan
• Hernando Bahamon

By Ian Failes. Republished with permission from Spark CG Society.

We’ve all probably sent emojis from our smart phones, in our emails, and in messaging apps. Now Sony Animation has taken us into the animated film world of the ubiquitous ideograms with Tony Leondis’ The Emoji Movie.

Behind the animation was Sony Pictures Imageworks out of its Vancouver and Los Angeles studios. We caught up with animation supervisor Sacha Kapijimpanga, who described the unique challenges of giving life to the many and varied emojis in the film.

These emojis at first appear to look quite simple in design, but as an animation supervisor, how do you jump on character designs and where did you look to add emotion and personality to these seemingly flat shapes?

Sacha Kapijimpanga: You’re right. These characters, out of any movie I’ve worked on, they’re super simple. They’re very basic in terms of design. How these characters are going to behave comes mostly from the performances of the actors and the casting. We had really good casting for this movie. Once we get the voices, we start doing kind of explorations in animations.

In terms of design, now, there isn’t a body, right? It’s basically a head with arms and legs. It’s really challenging to find poses that can convey what we’re trying to get across without all of these tools that we’re used to using, like the body posture. On these basic spheres we had the ability to slide the arms around, because he had a moving shoulder basically and moving hips that could connect anywhere in his body that helped us nail some poses down.

That was really challenging, but I think we overcame that and discovered ways to make them work really well. One of the really cool characters we had was Gene’s dad, Mel Meh, who was voiced by Steven Wright. He has a really super monotone type delivery. Once we got the voice for him, we started exploring ways he could move in a way that kind of worked with his voice.

We discovered that he has a really slow delivery, and really there’s not a lot going on in terms of inflexion and stuff like that. We tried different things like delaying his gestures to see if that would make something unique out of his character and try different things like dragging the gestures out, so he would be gesticulating with his arms. Even his gesticulations would go on for a little bit longer than you would typically animate, just to make him a little bit unusual.

The Gene character is a ‘meh’ which means he’s not supposed to react very much to anything, but Gene actually does — what range of emotions did you have to deal with?

Kapijimpanga: Well, Tony set up this rule where we could stay within a certain range. So, for Smiler, for example, we had to stay within 10% to 15% of a smiling expression no matter what her delivery was. That was a tough thing to do, because even when you start getting into some of the tighter ‘O’ shapes and some of the smaller mouth shapes that you have to make to even just deliver dialogue, you’re starting to get off model with her a little bit. With the mehs, it’s the same kind of thing. You try to stay within 10% to 15% of being meh at all times. That’s the only thing that makes these characters kind of unique, in a way.

One character that really jumped out straight away was Hi-5, James Corden’s character. Here you had extra things you could animate, with the fingers, so how did you approach this character’s personality?

Kapijimpanga: He was one of my favorite characters actually in the movie. He was a big challenge at first, because Tony didn’t want to do too much squashing and stretching. He didn’t want to get too cartoony with our emotions in this movie. A lot of the storyboards for Hi-5 had him in kind of poses that felt like they were just a little bit more cartoony than the other characters. Like, he didn’t have arms, for example, so he used his pinky as an arm, and his thumb as an arm sometimes. Some of the poses we had to get into, we kind of just had to embrace the idea that we had to break his joints in his pinky to use that as an arm.

We had to embrace the idea that he was going to have to do that and not always look like a hand. Those challenges of turning that pinky into another arm kind of made him one of the most fun characters. Like some of the things the animators came up with were fantastic. I think he was a bit more pushed than some of the other characters, both because of James Corden’s performance, and just the design of the character forced us to be a little bit more cartoony with Hi-5. That was a lot of fun.

That’s interesting — you could go anywhere with having that much range of movement. Did you ever feel like you had to hold back?

Kapijimpanga: Initially, when we did some tests for the movie, we had all kinds of emojis that we were doing early tests with. We had a beer mug and some of the animation tests they did made it look more like there was liquid inside the mug as he was moving along. We also had some tests where we had an ice cream cone. We had a lot of squash and stretch in the ice cream as the ice cream was walking along. We were just doing some early kind of walk cycles to get things in front of Tony to see how he responded to things.

The rule he kind of established was that all of these characters, like the ice cream cone, for example, shouldn’t feel like ice cream in a cone. These were kind of plastic-y representations of characters. The beer mug, even thought it looks like a glass of beer, there’s no real beer inside. It’s an icon, so it’s not a liquid inside. We did all kinds of explorations for that stuff.

Can you talk about the face shapes and eyes and mouths? Did you investigate only having say a 2D face shapes approach at all?

Kapijimpanga: We did have fully 3D faces on the main characters, but we used 2D face shapes on some of the secondary and tertiary characters in the background. It was a design thing, because it was a simpler look for those characters, and sometimes they were further away, but also we were under serious time constraints on this movie as well. I think we have around 260 characters. Had we rigged all these characters with full 3D faces, it would’ve been impossible. We would never have gotten through the number of characters we had to.

They actually developed a system that used a 2D decal face rig, where we were basically animating almost 2D shapes on to the background characters. This worked really, really well. Then we would add a little bit more depth to them down the pipe. Then if a character ended up getting a slightly bigger part, then we can invest the time into making that a fully 3D character, but we tried to keep most of our development time and most of our rigging time into characters like Gene, who has full 3D faces, and a really, really broad range of movement.

This interview can’t finish without mentioning Poop, who’s voiced by Patrick Stewart. Did he have any unique challenges?

Kapijimpanga: All the animators who were interested in getting on the project were lured in by the idea of having Poop as a character you can animate. All of us has that in us, I guess — that inner child that just loves poop somehow. He’s a great character. Patrick Stewart’s voice was really fun to animate to. The idea was that he was a very proper kind of character who’s the butt of these jokes and he’s a little bit above all of that. He’s a really fun character to animate.

All images and clips copyright © 2017 Sony Pictures. All Rights Reserved.