The Premier Conference & Exhibition In Computer Graphics & Interactive Techniques

The past few years have seen a startling and troubling rise in the fake-news phenomena in which everyone from individuals to nation-sponsored entities can produce and distribute misinformation. The implications of fake news range from a misinformed public to an existential threat to democracy and horrific violence. At the same time, recent and rapid advances in machine learning are making it easier than ever to create sophisticated and compelling fake images, videos, and audio recordings, making the fake-news phenomena even more powerful and dangerous. In this session, Hany Farid will provide an overview of the creation of these so-called deepfakes and describe emerging techniques for detecting them.

The robots are coming! As robotics investment booms and human-robot interaction increasingly enters workplaces and households all over the world, much space has been devoted to talking about robots as replacements for humans. However, looking at our rich history of using animals for weaponry, work, and companionship illustrates that a different analogy can change our conversations, revealing the potential for new kinds of practices, achievements, and even relationships with machines — for the benefit of individuals and society at large.

Having spent so much time using computer graphics to teach math, Grant Sanderson is excited to engage with the graphics community. While making videos that use programmatic visualizations to explain some topic in mathematics, the visualizations themselves often require a lot of interesting mathematics which never get mentioned in the final video. In this session, Sanderson will discuss some of the more interesting examples of mathematical nuances that popped up while illustrating 3Blue1Brown.

With over 30 years in the gaming industry as an artist, animator, game designer, and acclaimed writer and director, Amy Hennig is a pivotal figure at the forefront of some of the biggest games and industry trends of all time. Now, she leads Skydance’s New Media Division in creating a whole new category of content. Joined by SIGGRAPH 2021 Games Focus Area Chair Carlos Gonzalez-Ochoa, Amy will discuss her career in interactive entertainment and offer her views on the future of gaming and where the industry is headed, as well as look forward to the future of interactive storytelling.

In 2019, Sergio Pablos’ The SPA Studios delivered “Klaus,” Netflix’s first original feature animated film, which was brought to life with a unique mix of 2D and 3D techniques. But where do you go from there? How did Pablos and his team move on from that mammoth project and continue to build SPA? The director shares his own story, and the challenges of building an animation studio in Spain, in this engrossing featured session.

Computer graphics has been deeply integrated in the advancement of computer science, technological development, and cultural change. In the last 50 years, we have seen many people take on the challenges of enabling imagery for use in the fields of design, engineering, entertainment, games, and scientific visualization. The cross-fertilization between those fields, computer science, and changing technology has been a great adventure. Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan were honored with the 2019 Turing Award for their role in advancing this field. In this fireside chat, Catmull and Hanrahan will share their perspectives on the events that advanced computer graphics and lessons for the future.

Computer graphics has been deeply integrated in the advancement of computer science, technological development, and cultural change. In the last 50 years, we have seen many people take on the challenges of enabling imagery for use in the fields of design, engineering, entertainment, games, and scientific visualization. The cross-fertilization between those fields, computer science, and changing technology has been a great adventure. Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan were honored with the 2019 Turing Award for their role in advancing this field. In this fireside chat, Catmull and Hanrahan will share their perspectives on the events that advanced computer graphics and lessons for the future.

There is an increasingly high demand for content creation in the industry. Creative professionals are being asked to produce content at higher resolutions and with far more complexity, and audiences everywhere are demanding more of it. Creative studios are looking for new ways to accelerate their content creation pipelines, hire the best talent, and provide flexibility for their teams in order to accelerate content production. Join AWS and special guests from Amazon Studios, Company 3, Epic Games, Netflix, and Weta Digital to learn how cloud technology is helping professionals in creative industries around the world tackle today’s challenges and meet the increased demand for high-fidelity content.

Demands for high-performance, high-fidelity, interactive graphics continues to increase. Hear what Intel is doing to meet these needs through delivering powerful ray tracing and rendering, utilizing a comprehensive, flexible, and scalable end-to-end platform and open, heterogeneous programming. Intel enables the broadest ecosystem with the ability to bring ray tracing and path tracing to large, complex data sets not possible before by using the most advanced, cost-efficient, open-source libraries.

NVIDIA and SIGGRAPH share a long history of innovation and discovery. Over the last 25 years, our community has seen giant leaps forward, driven by brilliant minds and curious explorers. We are now upon the opening moments of an AI-powered revolution in computer graphics with massive advancements in rendering, AI, simulation, and compute technologies across every industry. With open standards and connected ecosystems, we are on the cusp of achieving a new way to interact and exist with graphics in shared virtual worlds.

Once considered nothing more than science fiction, the discussion of spatial computing becoming ubiquitous in our lives is livelier than ever before. Join Unity’s Timoni West as they share their thoughts for where we are today, what’s preventing us from diving in head first, and understanding whether the elements of a tri-metaverse may already be here.