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Walk up to any computer graphics professional at SIGGRAPH and ask about the first time they attended the conference. Odds are good that their earliest experience was as a student volunteer.

Student volunteers are critical to success of the SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia conferences. In exchange for guiding attendees, manning booths and performing myriad other tasks, student volunteers are exposed to a wealth of knowledge, insight and hands-on experience not available anywhere else. ​Many computer graphics professionals took the first, uncertain steps in their careers while working as SIGGRAPH student volunteers — a startling number of them going on to rise to the top of their respective industries, becoming prominent researchers, teachers, visual effects artists, animators and innovators.

ACM SIGGRAPH Student Services is seeking industry professionals willing to volunteer a tiny slice of their time at SIGGRAPH 2014 to give feedback on student volunteer reels. Each student will be matched to a professional for review of their current reel and portfolio in a 15-20 minute session. Professionals in all disciplines are invited to volunteer. Cookies and coffee may or may not be available, but the true reward is the satisafction of helping young computer graphics students find their footing before launching themselves into the job market. 

Available reel review time slots:

Sunday, 10 August 3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Monday, 11 August 1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, 12 August 9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

If interested in volunteering, please fill out the Reel Review Volunteer Form.

About S3 (ACM SIGGRAPH Student Services):

S3 is the parent organization of the SIGGRAPH Student Volunteers Program. S3 helps to facilitate mentorship and career advice opportunities for students both online throughout the year and at the annual SIGGRAPH conference. 

ACM SIGGRAPH Mentor Program Disclaimer

The SIGGRAPH Pioneers Group is proud to present one of the strongest innovators in today's dynamic film industry. Chris Edwards, CEO of THE THIRD FLOOR, Inc., will demonstrate how more than a decade of computer-aided visualization has enabled filmmakers to tell stories they simply couldn’t tell before. Case in point, Alfonso Cuarón’s "Gravity," in which every composition and camera move was designed virtually, before the actors stepped foot on stage.

This revolutionary process of planning and shooting live-action actors in a mostly virtual world is becoming known as “virtual production.” Please join us for this preview into the future of the art and science of motion pictures. The 2014 SIGGRAPH Pioneers' Reception will take place on Tuesday, August 12, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in the West Building of the Vancouver Convention Centre (Rooms 302 and 303). Light appetizers will be served, and drinks will be available — along with lovely views of the harbor.

The reception is exclusive to active members of the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Pioneers Group.

Any person with 20 years of experience in some aspect of computer graphics and/or interactive techniques is eligible to become a member. The cost for a non-ACM SIGGRAPH member to become an ACM SIGGRAPH CG Pioneer is $47, which includes ACM SIGGRAPH membership. New members can join online. The cost to upgrade an existing ACM SIGGRAPH membership to Pioneer level is $5, and can be done by calling ACM Help at 1-800-342-6626 or by emailing acmhelp@acm.org.

About Chris Edwards:

After five years as a layout artist and character animator at Walt Disney Feature Animation, Chris joined a team of digital artists at Lucasfilm tasked with previsualizing "Star Wars: Episode III" from the third floor of George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch mansion. In October 2004, Chris spearheaded the creation of THE THIRD FLOOR, Inc. in Los Angeles, which has become the world's most prolific previs company.

As CEO and Creative Director, Chris has helped design over 200 feature films, commercials and video game cinematics combined. Theatrical credits include "Avatar," "Alice in Wonderland," "War Horse," "Iron Man 2," "Thor" and "The Avengers." Chris Edwards has also established branches of THE THIRD FLOOR in London and Montreal, and he is one of the founders of the Previsualization Society, which is actively involved in the Virtual Production Committee; a joint effort by a number of professional film societies to study and educate the industry about the latest trends in virtual production.

Register for SIGGRAPH 2014

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The Visual Effects Society has just announced its involvement in a groundbreaking project: the creation of a reference platform for VFX software development. Called, quite simply, the 'VFX Reference Platform,' its purpose is to minimize incompatibilities between different VFX software packages and encourage further adoption of Linux by VFX software vendors.

Some background on the project from the VFX Reference Platform website:

"VFX and animation studios typically integrate off the shelf digital content creation (DCC) tools, such as Maya or Houdini, with in-house software and other 3rd party packages to create a connected end-to-end pipeline for their artists. Since the late 90's an increasing number of studios have started running a flavour of Linux as their primary OS for artist workstations for reasons of reliability, flexibility, cost, performance and as a natural progression from SGI's IRIX.

Due to the flexibility of the Linux platform, there are a number of different distributions on varying release schedules and this combines with software vendors all having their own schedules to create a situation where DCC software packages are often released with different and incompatible dependencies. This complexity results in VFX studios requiring specialist expertise to integrate a pipeline around these dependencies or often even deciding against supporting Linux altogether."

The VFX Reference Platform is a first-of-its-kind collaboration between numerous VFX software solutions providers and the VES. According to Chris Vienneau of Autodesk, the collaboration represents a big step forward. "For the past year, the VES has been collaborating with Autodesk and other software vendors to create a reference Linux platform to address the endemic hassle of ‘version-itis.’ We’re thrilled the VES is taking the lead to rally both the visual effects community and vendors on the Linux platform to organize this working group and benefit all of our customers,” he said.

The first version of the platform, Calendar Year 2014 (CY2014) has been published and is available online.  Next year's version, CY2015, is available in draft form; feeback is invited from developers and studios. The final version of CY2015 will be published in August and announced at SIGGRAPH 2014 in Vancouver, Canada.

The 41st annual Computer Animation Festival at SIGGRAPH 2014 will showcase more than 100 of the best examples of computer animation from the past year. Of the 450-plus festival submissions, just over a hundred were accepted — and only nine were selected to receive top honors in their respective categories. Considering the exceptional creativity and technical skill evident in the pool of entries, the decision process must have been a difficult one for the SIGGRAPH jury.

“Each piece in the festival is truly something special on its own merit,” said Jerome Solomon, SIGGRAPH 2014 Computer Animation Festival Director. According to Solomon, more categories have been added to this year's festival, expanding the festival's ability to incorporate and recognize various branches of computer animation. "The new categories enrich the diversity and richness of the show," he explained.

The SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival is recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a qualifying festival for the Academy Awards. Since 1999, several works originally presented in the Computer Animation Festival have been nominated for or have received a "Best Animated Short" Academy Award. In the words of CAF Director Jerome Solomon, "There's no other stage in the world comparable to SIGGRAPH’s Computer Animation Festival."

This year's Computer Animation Festival winners are as follows:

Best in Show

Box (see image, above)
Directed by Tarik Abdel-Gawad, Bot & Dolly

“Box” explores the synthesis of real and digital space through projection mapping on moving surfaces. The short film documents a first-ever live synchronized performance using 3D projection mapping, robots, and actors.

Jury Award

Paper World
Directed by Dávid Ringeisen, László Ruska, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design

“Paper World” is an image film for the World Wildlife Fund Hungary where the values that WWF stands for become visible metaphorically on the level of a micro-world.

Best Animated Short

Home Sweet Home
Directed by Pierre Clenet, Alejandro Diaz, Romain Mazenet, Stéphane Paccolat, Supinfocom Arles

A house uproots herself and goes on an adventure.

Best Student Project

Wrapped
Directed by Roman Kälin, Falko Paeper, Florian Wittmann, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg

The deterioration of one is the foundation of another one's life. The world, with its never-ending interplay of eating and being eaten, takes on new dimensions when the unexpected forces of nature clash with the existing structures of our society. The only constant is change.

Best Visual Effects

Gravity
Directed by Alfonso Cuarón, Esperanto Filmoj.VFX work submitted by Framestore, United Kingdom

“Gravity,” this year’s VFX Bafta and Oscar winner, turns filmmaking on its head. Rather than adding visual effects to a live-action plate, the film is around 80% computer generated, with the live-action elements (Sandra Bullock and George Clooney’s faces), integrated seamlessly with their CG spacesuits and surroundings.

Framestore VFX pros Per Karefelt, Matthias Baas, Vincent Bonnet, Alexis Wajsbrot, Sylvain Degrotte, Christopher Lawrence, Juan-Luis Sanchez, Russell Lloyd, Nathan Walster and Michael Blain will be on hand for a special SIGGRAPH 2014 session, "Don't Let Go," from 9 to 10:30 am on Thursday, August 14. They will discuss Framestore's visual effects work for "Gravity," specifically: volumetrics in space, destruction of the ISS in a single shot, simulation as a multi-stage production tool and creating the Earth as a backdrop.

Best Visualization & Simulation

Kinematics
Directed by Jessica Rosenkrantz, Jesse Louis-Rosenberg, Nervous System

This video visualizes Kinematics, a system for designing and simulating flexible structures for 3D printing. Kinematics generates customized designs composed of 10s to thousands of hinged, interlocking modules. The designs are computationally folded using rigid-body physics into a smaller form for fabrication by 3D printing.

Best Game

The Crew
Directed by Maxime Luère, Dominique Boidin, Rémi Kozyra, Unit Image

The concept of this full-CGI trailer consists of juxtaposing the two worlds valued highly by car lovers: aesthetically pleasing advertisements and action scenes. The features of the game, such as the novelty of the multiplayer aspect and the feeling of freedom in an open world, are highlighted through this concept.

Best Real-Time Graphics

RYSE: Son of Rome
Directed by Chris Evans, Peter Gornstein, Martin L’Heureux, Crytek

With Ryse, Crytek decided to focus on characters and emotion to serve the game and story. Ryse is an eight hour game with an additional 110-minutes of linear storytelling content. The submission shows gameplay and cutscenes, both utilize the same assets and can be rendered in real-time.

Best Commercial Advertisement

Three, "The Pony"
Directed by Dougal Wilson, Blink Productions. VFX work submitted by MPC.

The pony’s bouncy moves were created using a photo-real CG digital double and extensive R&D to translate human movement to a horse. The film cuts seamlessly between CG and real-life footage. Fur was created using MPC's Furtility tool, and environments were altered using compositing and matte painting.

Want to see more? Check out the 2014 Computer Animation Festival trailer.

A remarkable window of opportunity for augmented reality and virtual reality developers is rapidly coming to a close. Wednesday, June 25 at 22:00 UTC/GMT is the final cutoff for submissions to the SIGGRAPH 2014 AR/VR contest — the spoils of which include a flurry of attention for the top entries and Oculus DK2 headsets for each of the three finalists. The grand prize winner will nab a trophy that would make any hardcore VR enthusiast drool: an Oculus DK2 set personally signed by Palmer Luckey, inventor of the Oculus Rift virtual reality gaming headset.

AR and VR developers interested in harnessing the attention of thousands of tech junkies and landing a state-of-the-art Oculus development kit in a single swoop, take note. The contest is open to absolutely anyone; students, hobbyists, professionals and researchers are all encouraged to submit. Contestants can use any software and hardware they choose, and attendance at the SIGGRAPH conference is not a requirement to enter.

The three highest-rated entries will be demonstrated via video presentation at the Real-Time Live session of SIGGRAPH 2014 on Tuesday, August 12 in Vanouver, Canada. The grand prize winner will be chosen by the audience and announced on stage during the event. Though attendance at the SIGGRAPH conference is not required to enter the contest, each finalist will be expected to send a representative to demonstrate their system during Real-Time Live. Finalists will also have the opportunity to demo their entries to attendees during the (not-to-be-missed) SIGGRAPH 2014 Appy Hour on Wednesday, August 13. 

The contest submission requirements are far from unmanageable for last-minute entrants; they include a five-minute segment of captured video from the project, a representative image and half a page of information on the project and its developers. The three finalists will be selected by a panel of experts in computer graphics, video games and research, and will demonstrate the best use of interactive and immersive technologies from among the pool of entries. Creativity, innovation, performance and overall quality will be weighed equally during judging.

There's no time to spare, so submit your project now! Full contest rules and submission instructions can be found on the Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality Contest page of the SIGGRAPH 2014 website.