News

ACM SIGGRAPH is seeking candidates for four high-level leadership positions in the organization: Treasurer, Director at Large, Chair of the Specialized Conference Committee, and Chair of the Student Services Committee.

Two of the positions (Treasurer and Director at Large) are part of the organization's Executive Committee. These positions have three-year terms beginning September 1, 2018. The successful candidates for Treasurer and Director at Large will be determined by ACM SIGGRAPH members during next summer's election. Interested individuals should review the ACM SIGGRAPH elections page and contact the Nominations Committee Chair to express their interest. The Nominations Committee will meet with potential candidates at SIGGRAPH 2017 in Los Angeles this summer.

ACM SIGGRAPH is also seeking candidates for two committee chair positions: Chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH Specialized Conference Committee and the Chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH Student Services Committee. These positions have three-year terms beginning September 1, 2017. Interested parties are asked to send a vision statement and CV to the Nominations Committee Chair at their earliest opportunity. The May 1 deadline has been extended into early June.

All candidates must be professional members of ACM and ACM SIGGRAPH.

The ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee is seeking submissions to the 6th Annual Faculty Submitted Student Work Exhibit. Images and video will be displayed at the Education Committee Booth SIGGRAPH 2017 in Los Angeles, California, and assignments archived on the Education Committee website. The double curated exhibit is open to all faculty working at Secondary/High School through University levels.

The Education Committee is interested in images of work by your best students accompanied by the project assignment. Any content area is welcome: art, animation, graphic design, game design, architecture, visualization, real-time rendering, etc.

The deadline for submissions is June 19th, 2017.

Purpose

The exhibit gives your school the opportunity to showcase your student’s best work to the rest of the industry. After the conference, the entire presentation will be posted on the Education Committee website along with the corresponding project assignments to share with fellow faculty.

Submission Requirements

• By Faculty/School – no individual student submissions accepted
• Assignment(s) of submitted student work MUST accompany all video(s) and image(s) submitted. PDF format preferred. Student work will NOT be accepted without corresponding assignments.
• All submissions will use the provided PowerPoint Template: FFSW_Template_2017.ppt

Still Images

• Images should be placed in the PowerPoint template.
• Metadata filled in.
• Preferred resolution 1280×720 (JPG/TIFF/PNG format/RGB)
• LIMIT: 50 images per school/university

Video

• Please upload all videos individually to either YouTube.com or Vimeo.com.
• Send video URLs (Word doc).
• Please DO NOT send actual videos.
• Screen caps/still images of videos should be included.
• Metadata filled in.
• Preferred resolution 1280×720 or larger 16:9 aspect ratio format.
• Audio can be included (*may or may not be audible during the conference)
• Video can be short individual clips or full projects/films.
• Videos will be downloaded and embedded in the final PowerPoint screened at the conference. After the conference, the still image and URL will replace the videos in the downloadable PDF version of the PowerPoint located on our site.
• LIMIT: 10 minutes of video per school/university

Metadata for all images and videos should include:

• Student(s) name
• School name
• Program/Department
• Faculty name
• Project name

Submission Options

• Public folder in Dropbox.com, Hightail.com, WeTransfer.com or other similar file-sharing site with links sent to curator (Kevin.McNulty[at]mtsu.edu).
• Physical DVD or flash drive (not returned) snail-mailed to curator (Kevin McNulty).

Due to the anticipated size of files, direct email of submissions will not be accepted.

The SIGGRAPH Education Committee retains the right to archive the project description on our web site for fair use by other faculty.

Materials will be licensed under the Creative Common Attribution – NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.

Physical Submissions

Kevin McNulty
Dept. of Electronic Media Communication
Middle Tennessee State University
Box 58
1500 Greenland Drive
Murfreesboro, TN 37132

Additional information/clarification electronic submissions
Kevin McNulty – Kevin.McNulty [at] mtsu.edu

Deadline June 19th, 2017

By Rick Mingjun Xu, Founder of the Shenzhen ACM SIGGRAPH Chapter

Since computer graphics and interactive technologies increasingly permeate our daily lives, we could hardly go back to the era without CG. Today, from an app, a film, a video game to VR/AR, 3D printing, face recognition, self driving cars, and even artificial intelligence, almost everything needs CG. In China, people are becoming more clear about how these marvelous technologies could benefit their lives. Teenagers enjoy using facial beautifying apps to polish their photos so that they will get more “likes” in social media. Parents know AR books will help them educate their children. Filmmakers love to add appealing VFX in films to engage larger audiences.

It is conceivable that China will become the biggest market for CG in the world, but there is still a gap between industry and academia here. The groups have not had enough contact with each other in the past. Thus, the Shenzhen ACM SIGGRAPH Chapter has taken this responsibility into its own hands, creating opportunities to help people from industry to interact with academia and vice versa.

On March 25, 2017, supported by the Visual Computing Research Center (VCC) of Shenzhen University, the Creative Media Institute (CMI) of the City University of Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong ACM SIGGRAPH Chapter, Shenzhen ACM SIGGRAPH Chapter hosted an international workshop on CG Science & Technology Achievements Between Shenzhen & Hong Kong. There were more than 130 people in the audience, mostly from the industry. The Chair of Shenzhen Chapter, Rick Mingjun Xu, said it was a wonderful experience and honor to connect local industry professionals with researchers who are not only from the universities around Shenzhen and Hong Kong, but also from overseas. The event provided an example, for local Shenzhen people, of the value of the programs provided by the SIGGRAPH conference.

The workshop began with opening speeches from distinguished guests: Professor Hui Huang (Technical Briefs and Posters Co-Chair of SIGGRAPH Asia 2017), Hongbo Fu (Conference Chair of SIGGRAPH Asia 2015), and others.

Next, professors and researchers from VCC, CMI, and Hong Kong University presented, in total, 10 interesting and inspiring technical paper talks about various aspects in CG, such as Functionality Analysis of 3D Shapes Based on General Object-Object Interaction (presented by Prof. Ruizhen Hu), Computational displays and 3D visualization in artistic context (presented by Dr. Lam, Miu Ling), Automatic Image and Video Stylization Using Deep Neural Networks (presented by Prof. Yizhou Yu).

Besides the support from local academia, Shenzhen Chapter was honored by the presence of two brilliant scientists from Autodesk Research, who presented fabulous keynotes to the audience. Jos Stam, recipient of the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award and two Academy Awards for Technical Achievement talked about the Art of Fluid Animation. Jacky Bibliowicz, also Chair of ACM SIGGRAPH Professional and Student Chapter Committee, talked about various projects using novel applications of computer graphics in other domains of science. Both keynotes attracted all the eyes of the audience and lead them on cutting-edge, fascinating CG journeys.

The workshop ended up with a panel discussion about the trend of CG industry and research in the upcoming future which was hosted by Michael Liang who was Featured Session Chair of SIGGRAPH Asia 2016.

Surveys distributed to the audience after the workshop indicated 9 our of 10 attendees significantly enjoyed the presentations and were looking forward to the next workshop. Many of them hope to attend SIGGRAPH and/or SIGGRAPH Asia in the future.

The Shenzhen Chapter will continue to organize more events in China in the near future to build more Chinese interest in ACM SIGGRAPH. Xu believes that the more Chinese citizens attend the SIGGRAPH conference, the tighter relationship between CG industry and academia in China will be.