Computer Graphics World

September / October 2017

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2 cgw s e p t e m b e r . o c t o b e r 2 0 1 7 SIGGRAPH 2017 WRAP-UP nother exciting SIGGRAPH is in the books! This year, the 44th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, also known as SIGGRAPH, was held July 30 through August 3, 2017, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, with more than 16,500 attendees roaming the conference halls, venues, and trade show floor. There was definitely excitement in the air, fueled with buzz of the latest technologies that have begun to take hold within the industry. In particular, real-time technology and techniques are fueling new methods of interactive storytelling. And this was generating a lot of excitement. Virtual reality is taking off in ways that far exceeded expectation, while augmented reality and mixed reality are gaining fast traction. Additionally, deep learning is providing windows into areas previously closed to us, thanks to the computational power provided by the GPU vendors. In the not-so-distant past, the show floor and additional areas around the convention center were heavily populated by 3D printing companies and service providers. This year, they still had a presence, albeit a small one on the trade show floor as well as in the Experi- ence Hall for hands-on learning. Speaking of hands-on experience, there was a very unique special guest this year – a definite first for SIGGRAPH. A three-year-old, 12-foot-tall, real-life giraffe named Tiny was brought into the conference center area, and attendees lined up to participate in an animal drawing workshop featuring this true-to-life model! Also in the Experience Hall, Epson printers and other tools of the trade were available for artists to try out in various workshops. Once again, the conference hall saw its share of motion-capture vendors – some mainstays like Vicon and OptiTrack, and newcomers such as REALIS. And with little wonder, as motion capture and facial capture continue to evolve and find their way into innovative and cutting-edge projects (see "Moving Forward," page 19). OptiTrack, in fact, is focusing efforts on the burgeoning genre of "warehouse-level" virtual reality, where demand for high-end VR experiences requiring large-scale mocap is on the rise. Both Nvidia and AMD are breaking down barriers in the GPU realm, offering solutions that give users untold capabilities. For instance, Nvidia demonstrated supercharged ren- dering with OptiX 5.0's new AI-accelerated denoising running on an Nvidia DGX Station, delivering the rendering performance of 150 servers. AMD, meanwhile, reinvigorated the high-end PC market with new Ryzen Threadripper CPUs and Vega GPUs. The company elicited oohs and ahs at its Capsaicin event with the Radeon Pro SSG card sporting 2 tb of onboard memory. AMD also showed how its Radeon Pro WX 9100 enables real-time visualization with hyper-realistic rendering techniques, delivering up to 12.3 tflops of peak single-precision computing. Nvidia also brought its technology unveiled at the GPU conference this past spring, including: Isaac and Project Holodeck. Isaac is an AI-enabled robot trained using a simulation environment. Project Holodeck is a collaborative and physically accurate VR environment that enables humans to be part of a simulation and interact with a robot in a VR environment. At Nvidia's booth on the show floor, I was given the chance to play dominoes with Isaac in the real world. But, using a VR headset, I was able to enter a simulation via Project Holodeck, where our small, sparse area was turned into a large, playfully decorated space. The robot had been taught the rules of dominoes via deep learning and computer vision; as a result, it was able to sense and respond to my pres- ence, understand the state of the gameplay, and could determine which tile to select and whether or not I made a legal game move. Who won? Well, we will keep that be- tween Isaac and me. But the bot did give me a finger wag when I made an illegal move. Continued on page 32 A R E C E N T A W A R D S THE MAGAZINE FOR DIGITAL CONTENT PROFESSIONALS E D I T O R I A L EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Karen Moltenbrey e: karen@cgw.com t: 603.432.7568 DIRECTOR OF WEB CONTENT Marc Loftus e: mloftus@postmagazine.com t: 516.376.1087 CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Courtney Howard, Jenny Donelan, Kathleen Maher, George Maestri, Martin McEachern, Barbara Robertson PUBLISHER / PRESIDENT / CEO William R. 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