LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Repor ter) - "Family Guy" on Thursday became the first animated show in nearly 50 years to score an Emmy nomination for best comedy series.
more at:http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE56G15O20090717
Saturday, July 18, 2009
''Family Guy'' became the first animated show in nearly 50 years to score an Emmy nomination for best comedy series. Read on the interview with crea
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Repor ter) - "Family Guy" on Thursday became the first animated show in nearly 50 years to score an Emmy nomination for best comedy series.
more at:http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE56G15O20090717
Two weeks until SIGGRAPH
SIGGRAPH. The penultimate conference for CG artists, scientists, game developers, visual effects wizards, animators, architects, toolmakers, inventors, urban planners – anyone whose passion or career, both, either, involves computer graphics.
It’s the reward for a year’s hard work. The place where everyone in the tribe can mix it up whether they speak geek or French, art or engineering, games or architecture, science or cell phones. It’s like jazz and this year, SIGGRAPH is in New Orleans, so let the good times roll. The economic hurricane could spin attendance numbers the wrong way, but it hasn’t changed the quality of the content. In fact, this year, the content has expanded, pulling people in urban design and scientific visualization back into the community and giving gamers their due.
“I think this is going to be a great conference,” says Evan Hirsch, chair of realtime rendering. “We decided not to cut back. The people who make it to New Orleans will definitely have a great time. The quality is really high.”
Realtime Rendering
“I’ve gone to SIGGRAPH for years, and this year, I wanted to give the realtime guys a chance to have a way to show off their stuff alongside the best films,” continues Evan Hirsch. “Games are fully grown up now. They deserve a seat at the table. I wanted to have games included in a way that didn’t belittle the work.”
Each night, the Evening Theater (nee Electronic Theater) begins with a live demo of the top four interactive pieces selected and curated by the jury: Soka University’s DT4 Identify, EA Sports’ Fight Night Round 4, Froblins from AMD, and Flower from thatgamecompany. In addition, live presentations of the 10 other selections screen during the week. “If we had shown tapes, no one would know whether it was real or changed in post, so we’re presenting the work live during the Animation Festival,” Hirsch says.
Among the selections are scientific visualizations and realtime rendering of dynamic simulations. “We didn’t want to limit realtime graphics to games,” Hirsch says. “We wanted games to be a participant, but we didn’t want to exclude the realtime academic pieces from the festival. We wanted to have the best graphics on screen.”
Hirsch also organized a talk on building story in games (Thursday, 10:30) and one on Flower (Wednesday, 1:45), one of the evening selections created by students in the USC games program. “Flower is a refreshingly different interactive game,” Hirsch says. “It’s stunning.” And, for fans of Fight Night 4 and Gears of War 2 who can pry themselves out of bed in time, a production session on Wednesday at 8:30am.
“I’ve spent the last 15 years bending CG to do cool stuff in realtime,” Hirsch says. “That’s what motivated me to organize this. It speaks to my heart about doing great realtime graphics and storytelling. That’s my passion.”
Back At Ya
In New Orleans and parts nearby, people use the Cajun French / Louisiana Creole word lagniappe (lan yap), to describe something a little extra, an unexpected gift or bonus. In that spirit, SIGGRAPH is giving the community of New Orleans, which was hard hit by Hurricane Katrina not that long ago, lagniappe.
On the SIGGRAPH website and via iTunes, you can buy the Basin Street Records SIGGRAPH 2009 New Orleans Music Sampler and help support the Louis Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp. And, you can find out how to help SIGGRAPH establish a computer graphics lab for 50 students at the Algiers Technical Academy.
You can also sign up for something especially thoughtful that could make your experience at SIGGRAPH one you’ll remember for a very long time. On Wednesday, 50 students from the Algiers Technical Academy and from the New Orleans’ Center for Creative Arts, an arts conservatory for high school students, will be at SIGGRAPH and they need guides. SIGGRAPH will make sure that the mentored students have conference passes. All you do is bring a student with you for half a day, and share the love.
Related links:
SIGGRAPH 2009
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SIGGRAPH Early Bird
In Los Angeles last year, you may have seen the truly amazing Rabbit Holes Media images of 3D installations created by many immensely talented members of the community. One particular piece was the hero shot of the Computer Animation Festival; Meats Meier’s ‘Mother’ (above).
It has been announced that this same piece will travel to New Orleans for the conference, and will take its place once again as part of a very exciting show.
If you’re still deciding to make the trek to the Gulf state, remember the Early Bird period will expire on July 24. Check out the prices and the differences.
You still have time to register online and save. After 24 July, the cost of Full Conference Access, Full Conference One Day, and Basic Access passes will be full price.
Full Conference Access Pass on or before the 24 July for an ACM member will be US$1,025, for a non-member US$1,050 or for a student US$400.
You might choose to register on-site in New Orleans when you arrive, go to Hall F of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. The Full Conference Access Pass will be US$1,125 for ACM members, US$1,175 for non-members or US$450 for students, a rise of US$50.
Full Conference One Day Pass will be US$295 for members, US$345 for non-members and US$150 for Students. After 24 July, they go u to US$395 for ACM members, US$445 for non-members, and US$200 for students.
Related links:
SIGGRAPH 2009
Register now!
Rabbit Holes Media
Vicon to showcase boujou 5 in special presentations at SIGGRAPH 2009.
Vicon will be showcasing a pre-release version of its eagerly awaited boujou 5 at the SIGGRAPH conference in two weeks in New Orleans. boujou is the industry leading camera match-moving software for artists to capture complex camera motion and calibration data from image sequences.
Building on its established ease of use and automation, boujou 5 is enhanced with a unique new way of solving 3D camera positioning and motion paths from image sequences. This new approach radically accelerates the solve and allows users more manual interaction within complex shots.
The upgrade includes new features that many existing boujou users will have been eagerly waiting for:
• New Automatic Sequential Solver-Previous versions of boujou took the entire shot into account before delivering a solve. Now, the application looks at a single frame at a time, which not only enables the user to intervene, it can make the entire process a lot faster.
• Fully functional Graph Editor-Lets the user manually tweak the camera data and, if necessary, reprocess a shot. boujou 5 also provides the ability to lock valid sections of solved data or sections which are known to be correct, which animators can then use to improve other segments of an image sequence.
• Reference Frames- Allows users to import still images taken with any camera and use them to assist in a solve.
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