Viz department has a big presence
at the 2009 SIGGRAPH conference

Participants at a giant computer graphics and interactive techniques conference in New Orleans experienced the world through the sensory perceptions of animals in an immersive exhibit developed by faculty of Texas A&M’s Department of Visualization.

“The exhibit shows what it might be like to see with birds' ultraviolet vision or hear with whales' ultra-low frequency hearing,” wrote Jason Palmer, BBC News science and technology reporter, in an article on the BBC’s website.

"There is a wealth of information out there in scientific research that is difficult to access and present,” said Carol Lafayette, one of the immersive exhibit’s creators. “Our project makes these fascinating stories accessible to a wider range of people," she said.

For Palmer’s story about the exhibit, visit news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology.

Contributing to the immersive visualization exhibit were Lafayette and fellow Texas A&M visualization professors Frederic Parke, Ann McNamara and Philip Galanter.

The display was just part of the Department of Visualization’s presence at SIGGRAPH, which took place Aug. 3-7 at the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. SIGGRAPH is an organization composed of a diverse group of researchers, artists, developers, filmmakers, scientists, and other professionals who share an interest in computer graphics and interactive techniques.

Ergun Akleman, professor of visualization, presented “Cyclic Plain-Weaving on Polygonal Mesh Surfaces with Graph Rotation System," a paper he co-wrote with Qing Xing, who’s pursuing a Ph.D. in architecture, Jianer Chen, professor of computer science at Texas A&M, and Jonathan Gross, professor of computer science at Columbia University.

Akleman, Xing and their fellow authors presented their findings in the conference’s technical papers session, an international forum for disseminating new scholarly work in computer graphics and interactive techniques.

Tim McLaughlin, head of the Department of Visualization, Ann McNamara, and visualization students Meredith McLendon and Ravindra Dwivedi presented "Connecting the Dots: Discovering What's Important for Creature Motion" at the conference’s Capturing and Visualizing Animation session.

Their paper examines an experiment designed to reveal some of the key features necessary for conveying creature motion in digital animations with the ultimate goal of finding the minimal representation required to communicate recognizable locomotion or traits that may be communicated to the viewer through motion, such as size and attitude.

Jill Mulholland, a visualization lecturer, Dave Walvoord, a former visualization student now at DreamWorks Animation, visualization student Jose Guinea Montalvo and two additional DreamWorks animators, Jim Conrads and Marilyn Friedman, hosted a discussion about the summer 2008 visualization class at Texas A&M that saw Montalvo and fellow students create 30-second animated shorts with guidance from DreamWorks.

Their talk, “Bringing the Studio to Campus: A Case Study in Successful Collaboration Between Academia and Industry,” was presented as part of the conference’s “Education: Learning in the Studio” session.

Below: Watch a video about the department’s doings at SIGGRAPH by Glen Vigus, senior visualization production specialist.

SIGGRAPH 2009 from Glen Vigus on Vimeo.

- Posted: September 08, 2009 -