Thud Media @ SIGGRAPH

Between the 12th and the 16th of August 2018, Thud Media had the opportunity to attend SIGGRAPH 2018 in Vancouver, Canada. SIGGRAPH is the largest and most influential annual conference in computer graphics.

At the conference, we had the chance to showcase what we have been cooking for the past year: 3D Content Creation Exploiting 2D Character Animation, a novel technique to use 2D characters in 3D, which is a research collaboration with Centre for Digital Entertainment and Bournemouth University. Our poster was accepted for exhibition and we had many chats with interested parties who saw the project.

VR and Animation Interest

Besides the numerous presentations about academic research on several fields of computer graphics, SIGGRAPH also offered number of experiences and talks from the industrial world. We had were able to attend to several of these presentations, here are some highlights of those which impressed us.

The Electronic Theatre is a Computer Animation Festival which has been held at SIGGRAPH since 1999. They showcase the best in animation, visual effects and more. Of the many films they showed, our personal favourite was One Small Step from Taiko Studios, which also won the Audience Choice Award (good taste).

This year’s edition of SIGGRAPH also presented for the first time the Immersive Pavilion, an area exclusively focused on VR, AR and MR. The area featured the VRcade, a space to test directly numerous VR games or experiences, and the VR Theatre, which was part of the Computer Animation Festival and exhibited the most compelling short films in VR. Also in the Immersive Pavilion was the debut of Cycles; Disney’s first VR short movie.

In the end the Real-Time Live!, a live competition which features the best real-time experiences, from games to VR/AR applications. Our congratulations to Kite & Lightning which won the competition with their Democratising Mocap.

A great event as always and we hope to be back presenting at next year!