Lee Lanier’s Beezle Blog

Motion Portrait

Silicon Studio presented a brand new piece of software that can convert a single digital photo into a rigged 2D facial animation system with a full range of expressions, eye movement, and fairly substantial head turns. They had me pose for a quick photo, and within seconds they had a photoreal avatar that was looking about, making funny faces, and sneezing! I just about died laughing. A super-cool tool that will no doubt find its way into web animation. As a bonus, the software can take any photo and make it come alive. For example, they used pictures of an Easter Island stone head, a cat, and an anime girl.

The author as an avatar, upper left.

ZBrush 3

Alright, I’m revising my opinion about ZBrush. I hated the 2 1/2 D canvas interface with version 2. However, version 3 has gone full-on 3D and behaves more like a standard 3D program. It all makes for a good workflow. And, of course, the sculpting brushes have gotten more powerful.

Animation Theater with 4K

A special session of the Theater featured 4K projects with 4K projection, including a short film by Peter Jackson. It looked as good as 35mm, but without the grain, scratches, or dust. There was a tiny bit of stairstepping on thin, diagonal, high-contrast lines. However, those artifacts would be hard for the average person to spot. Without a doubt, motion picture film is pretty much dead as soon as digital delivery formats are agreed upon by studios and theaters. By the way, Peter Jackson’s film was shot with the new “Red” camera. Very sweet indeed.

The invasion has begun: Insanely large high-def projectors

Book Signings

I participated in two author appearances. One with Wiley & Sons / Sybex and one with the Breakpoint bookstore. Only a few Maya groupies showed up, I’m afraid to say. The CS author who wrote about three-dimensional information ordering has a cult following - the lucky bastard. Nonetheless, Beakpoint did sell all the copies of both my books, which is always a good thing.

Contributor Reception

Perhaps the best party of the conference was the one created for the thousand or two contributors. It was held in a little peninsula park a block from the Marriott. There was so much food that you were given a map to all the food stations at the entry. Tables were set up along the ocean, so it was super-nice to sit, watch the sunset, and enjoy the cool breeze. They even threw in a precision performance by four vintage WWII fighter-trainers. I assume Siggraph arranged for the aerial show - otherwise the goverment was spraying the world’s top computer jockeys with some experimental chemical (”Damn those geeks and their precious iPhones and knowledge of Linux!”). I sat down at a table alone, and became the anchor for a group of individuals who had arrived on their own. A computer science professor from Belgium, and game programmer from Sweden, a student from Japan, a research associate from IBM, a Photoshop master from Seattle, and an experimental video artist from New York filled the seats. The IBM man had constructed a stereo microscope from scrap video camera parts and was working the eTech show. The Photoshop master, Barry Scharf, was also a fine artist who has paintings hanging at the Los Angeles County Museum. An interesting bunch. That’s the great thing about the event - it’s very easy to talk to just about anyone.

Down by the ocean…

SoftImage House of Blues Party

Here’s a party that was the exact opposite of the Contributor Reception. It was the loud. Loud enough to make your ears bleed with techno of some type pounding the very foundation of the building. There were go-go dancers in fur boots gyrating the voyeurs sitting in balcony seats. Siggraph attendees were also dancing - so close to the speakers that I was afraid their heads would explode. Of course, there was a painfully-long line to get in. Once you were in, it was difficult just to walk down the hall for all the people who you could barely see because the lights were restricted to a “horror film” theme. Not that I don’t like that environment (I’ve done my share of dancing to trance music in the early a.m.) - I only wish the music was a few hundred decibels lower and I didn’t need a flashlight to find the bar.

“When Programmers Go Wild”

Pics

Here are those, ahem, pics I promised yesterday. I feel so dirty…

Left: Sketch babe guarded by men in white shirts at Sony booth
Right: Motion capture babe at rest (stalked by garbage can and man)

Exhibition Hall

The exhibition hall opened today to a mad rush of attendees. Several hundred booths were filled with software companies, hardware vendors, studios, book sellers, and schools. The first task, of course, is to keep an eye out for swag. Swag - as in promotional giveaways, which can range from pens, to playing cards, to toys, blinking lights, mint tins, buttons, Chapstick, bags, stickers, CDs, DVDs, demo software, and all manner of odd stuff. Some studios are famous for fine swag, such as Pixar. Others, with smaller budgets, have a bowl of hard candy. Of course, it’s all about the technology! Everywhere you look, there’s a demo of the latest and greatest must-have thing.

The Autodesk mega-booth keeps a watchful eye
over the slightly wimpier SoftImage structure.

Yes, but are there “Booth Babes”?

Some conventions, which will remain unnamed, have been notorious for adding “booth babes” to their displays. These young women are scantily clad and know little about the products available. They are, of course, eye candy for all the men. Siggraph, like these events, is mostly male (perhaps as much as 80%). However, the organizers have not stooped to a low level. Instead, one can find the more dignified “Sketch Babes” and “Moton Capture Babes.” Sketch babes pose for drawing sessions for prospective students or prospective employees at booths that provide drawing tables. Motion capture babes dress up in leotards with ping-pong balls stuck to them and prance about little sets. (I will try to get a photo later without getting slapped.)

Solid Printing

I was most impressed by the advances in solid printing (that is, 3D printing). Costs have fallen drastically and you can now buy such a machine for as little as $15,000. Still a chunk of change, but it’s a move in the right direction. With such a printer, you can quickly prototype just about anything out of solid ABS plastic or similar “binder.” Some will even integrate color into the prototype, such as the ZPrinter 450. The prototype can be very intricate and can include permanently set, functional gears, or extremely thin cloth-like layers. It’s perfect for engineering products or creating maquettes for special effect purposes. Someday, solid printers will become cheap enough for the average joe to own one. I can’t wait!

Solid, like a 3D print job.

“Uncanny Valley”

This panel was absolutely fascinating to me. It explored the theory of the “uncanny valley” and recent research into its existence. The “uncanny valley” refers to a robotic, synthetic, or computer-generated human that is close to convincing, but nevertheless appears creepy and unlikeable. The theory goes that the more human-like the artificial person is, the more the real person is empathetic towards it - that is, until the difference is very subtle and the real person feels put off by the artificial person because it is “just not right.” The “uncanny valley” can be witnessed in recent human-like robotics and 3D where the characters suffer from “dead” faces (”Final Fantasy,” the film, or “The Polar Express”). Recent studies have indicated that people are the most disturbed when they cannot tell if a human-like thing is actually a real human acting strangely, or some artificial construct. Humans are very sensitive to variations in human movement and expression. In fact, we’re all hard-wired o recognize subtle differences in symmetry and scale in the human body. The “uncanny valley” will undoutably be overcome, however. Recent 3D characters are becoming amazingly good, such as the resurrected Orville Redenbacher in a commercial directed by David Fincher.

Psyop

Ran it an old 3D pal, Jeffrey Dates, and his wife Kim. Jeff started in 3D at ReelFx in Dallas, moved to Janimation, and is about to join Pysop in New York to create a new 3D animation department. Psyop was responsible for “Happiness Factory,” which played in the Electronic Theater. It’s an awesome plug for Coke.

The Electronic Theater

The Theater is getting better each year. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there is very little scientific visualization. It’s now mostly composed of short films and visual effects reels. A few pieces, such as “Ark,” “The Recent Future Helper: ROBOT Z,” and “En Tus Brazos,” were rather tedious (many will disagree with me). The best of the bunch was “Raymond,” which featured clones of a lazy man being driven around a room by remote control. Hard to describe, but hilarious. Of course, the crowd loved “No Time For Nuts” by Blue Sky, “A Gentleman’s Duel” by Blur, and “LIFTED” by Pixar.

Theater for the mind - and the belly laugh.

Wiley & Sons Author Dinner

Authors, editors, and marketing folk gathered at a secret waterfront location. (Wiley publishes all the Sybex titles, two of which I recently wrote.) The conversation drifted from L.A. film locations, to the Transformers, to Linux, to scientific visualization, to bad reality TV shows. Much fun.

You see - Maya, Max, and Blender folk can sit at the same table!

Adobe Maxon Party

More milling about the Marriott. I almost attended the incorrect event when I joined a line composed wholly of young Asians. Luckily, I spotted the error in time and was still able to claim my Maxon drink ticket.

Oooh - I think I’ll sit for this party…
My feet are killing me…

Sun Cafe

Animators cannot survive on courses and papers alone, so they must eat now and then. There is a food court at the Convention Center, but it’s way over-priced and has an impossible line at peak times. You can’t really haul food around since you’re carrying too much stuff anyway. Luckily, there are dozens of restaurants within a few blocks. The Gaslight District is covered with them all the way up 5th Avenue. For breakfast, I found the Sun Cafe. This is your classic, greasy-spoon diner that has been around for most of the previous century. It retained most of its original fixtures, which all look tired but functional. The place was clean, but the crust between the cracks and crevices had layers that would excite a geologist. The whole place would make a texture painter faint from sheer joy.

The world can use more architecture like this.

100,000,000 Served

The conference is just plain enormous. Around 25,000 people attend from all over the world. It’s hard to relate the scope of the crowds through photographs. Some of the courses are held in rooms as large as football stadiums, if not larger. If you sat in the back, only a person with 20-20 vision could see the person speaking, and he or she would be a little-bitty speck (hence, they have large “jumbotron” style monitors in the rooms).

Siggraph entry tube. All hail the tube!

“Surf’s Up: The Making of an Animated Documentary”

This course covered all the groovy stuff from the penguin movie, from camerwork, to rigging, to water effects. They treated the entire movie as if it were really a surf documentary, complete with handheld cameras, multiple frame rates, and step-printing. Their pipeline was able to take normal animation and stretch or shrink it to hit 15 fps, 200 fps, etc. This course was in one of the “smaller” rooms and filled up quickly. The overflow room, with remote viewing, was also sold out.

Fjorg!

Where else can you see packs of Vikings walking about yelling in a strange tongue? Why, Fjorg, of course. Fjorg is a 32-hour competition between 3-person teams of non-professional animators. Within that time, they create a short film from scratch. Yes, scratch. Story, storyboard, animatic, modeling, rigging, animation, rendering, editing, and sound mix. I volunteered as a mentor and was allowed to wander amongst the teams in case they had technical questions. They were a sharp bunch and were cranking away rapidly.

(L to R) Lee Lanier, Arno Kroner (Walt Disney), Carey Richards (Westwood Online)

Sketches

There are numerous, short paper presentations that cover a wide range of technical computer graphics issues. The most impressive of the day was “Photo Clip Art” by Jean-Francois Lalonde and others. Here, holes in photos are automatically filled by appropriately hunting for similar photographs in a monster database. For example, you can erase out a car sitting on a road in a photo, and the algorthym searches through thousands of photos until it finds one that can provide pixels that logically fill in the hole in the road. Many times, the results were near perfect and the manipulation cannot be detected.