Animation

Dan Maas, my best friend and partner. We ever co-work in Digimax on Quantum Quest. He is a RenderMan expert with excellent animation experience and knowledge. Last year, just after he graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business, he was planning his next business. It turns out in this year, 2012, that he succefully co-founded another company, SpinPunch. The following is my casual interview with Dan, about his idea behind, the new company, the ‘Starcraft in million browsers’ and his vision for future gaming. Enjoy it :) ...

Python, the so-called scripting language but actually more than that, keeps sweeping this CG/Animation/VFX/Game industries in technical programming field. The bigger the stronger. I even start to doubt if PyPy could take over this situation one day by it’s natural power of strength in concurrent programming. > 由 Aardman Animations 與 Sony Pictures Animation 合力製作，於 2011 年放映的動畫。《聖誕快遞》揭示了一個令人難以置信、以前從未見過的答案，關於每一個孩子都曾有過的問題：“究竟聖誕老人是如何在一個晚上送完這些禮物？”答案是：聖誕老人在北極擁有超高科技的協助！但是，電影中心是關於一個家庭的故事，一個有漫畫功能障礙和一個不太可靠的主角阿瑟，一個緊迫的任務，一個必須在聖誕節前黎明的晨光前完成的任務。 Ok, 重點其實不是這部動畫，而是 Aardman Animations 這家動畫公司。這家位於 far far away（相對於台灣搭飛機過去所需要的時間來看）的大不列顛王國的動畫公司，一位技術研發人員於 2010 年釋出了一則有趣的訊息出來：Photoshop Embedded Python Pipeline。把整個 Python 給整合進 Photosthop 裏頭，提供 python programmer 一個管道，可以直接透過寫 python script 來與 PS 互動。放出來的一些圖，示範了可能的互動： ...

{{ flickr drakeguan 6445315283 >}} After spotting this exhibitor DM, it reminds me of one un-answered question: Do we really realize the contribution and advantages of Pixar’s RenderMan? If we don’t, how can we evaluate other renderers (ex, Arnold Renderer) in that soon without any hesitate?

The followings are the research titles in the trailer video with html copied from Ke-Sen ’s work: SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 papers on the web . **Rendering Synthetic Objects into Legacy Photographs ** Kevin Karsch , Varsha Hedau , David Forsyth , Derek Hoiem (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ) Modeling and Generating Moving Trees from Video Chuan Li (University of Bath ), Oliver Deussen (University of Konstanz ), Yizhe Song , Phil Willis , Peter Hall (University of Bath ) Video Face Replacement Kevin Dale , Kalyan Sunkavalli (Harvard University ), Micah K. Johnson , Daniel Vlasic , Wojciech Matusik (Massachusetts Institute of Technology ), Hanspeter Pfister (Harvard University ) Candid Portrait Selection From Video Juliet Bernstein (University of Washington ), Aseem Agarwala (Adobe Systems, Inc. ), Brian Curless (University of Washington ) C1x6: A Stereoscopic Six-User Display for Co-located Collaboration in Shared Virtual Environments Alexander Kulik, Andre Kunert, Stephan Beck, Roman Reichel (Bauhaus-Universitat Weimar ), Roland Blach Fraunhofer IAO (Digital Image ), Bernd Froehlich (Bauhaus-Universitat Weimar ) A Hybrid Iterative Solver for Robustly Capturing Coulomb Friction in Hair Dynamics Gilles Daviet, Florence Bertails-Descoubes , Laurence Boissieux (INRIA, Grenoble, France ) Interference Aware Geometric Modeling David Harmon (New York University ), Daniele Panozzo (University of Genova ), Olga Sorkine (ETH Zurich ), Denis Zorin (New York University ) Controlling Physics-Based Characters Using Soft Contacts Sumit Jain , C. Karen Liu (Georgia Institute of Technology ) Animated Construction of Line Drawings Hongbo Fu (City University of Hong Kong ), Shizhe Zhou , Ligang Liu (Zhejiang University ), Niloy Mitra (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology ) Mixed-Order Compositing for 3D Paintings Ilya Baran , Johannes Schmid, Thomas Siegrist, (Disney Research ), Markus Gross (ETH Zurich ), Robert W. Sumner (Disney Research ) Insitu: Sketching Architectural Designs in Context Patrick Paczkowski, Min H. Kim , Julie Dorsey , Holly Rushmeier (Yale University ), Yann Morvan , Carol O’Sullivan (Trinity College Dublin ) Displacement Interpolation Using Lagrangian Mass Transport (TR ) Nicolas Bonneel , Michiel van de Panne (The University of British Columbia ), Sylvain Paris (Adobe Systems Inc. ), Wolfgang Heidrich (The University of British Columbia ) Sketch-based Dynamic Illustration of Fluid Systems Bo Zhu (ERATO, JST ), Michiaki Iwata , Ryo Haraguchi (National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center Research Institute ), Takashi Ashihara (Shiga University of Medical Science ), Nobuyuki Umetani (The University of Tokyo ), Takeo Igarashi Kazuo Nakazawa (National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center Research Institute ) Modular Radiance Transfer Bradford J. Loos (Disney Interactive Studios ), Lakulish Antani (University of North Carolina ) , Kenny Mitchell, Derek Nowrouzezahrai , Wojciech Jarosz , (Disney Research Zurich ), Peter-Pike Sloan (Disney Interactive Studios ) AppGen: Interactive Material Modeling from a Single Image Yue Dong (Tsinghua University ), Xin Tong (Microsoft Research Asia ), Fabio Pellacini (Dartmouth College / apienza University of Rome ), Baining Guo (Microsoft Research Asia ) Genetic Programming for Shader Simplification Pitchaya Sitthi-amorn , Nicholas Modly, Westley Weimer , Jason Lawrence (University of Virginia ) A Shading Reuse Method for Efficient Micropolygon Ray Tracing Qiming Hou , Kun Zhou (Zhejiang University ) Progressive Photon Beams Wojciech Jarosz , Derek Nowrouzezahrai , Robert Thomas (Disney Research Zurich ), Peter-Pike Sloan (Disney Interactive Studios ), Matthias Zwicker (University of Bern )

Siggraph 2008 的一篇論文：[Upright Orientation of Man-Made Objects](http://www.cs.ubc.ca/nest/imager/tr/2008/upright_orientation/ )。這篇論文的目的是要把 3D 模型給擺正。只要你隨意給一個 3D 模型，使用這篇論文裏的方法的話，就能把一個模型擺正到可以平放在桌面上來。（註：其實是人造的物件為主，如果你是給一隻兩隻站立的狗的話，不曉得會跑出什麼結果來~） 影片觀後感： PCA 很可憐，只要是涉及 domain knowledge 的東西，都會故意拿出 PCA 當作對照組，然後它就會被數落一番… 顯微鏡好用，一路狂用來打 PCA… 小朋友的那段很優，想到用小朋友來示範『把東西擺正』的這件事，實在很有意思。 開場的機器人站起來那段，整個就很驚人，我猜他們看到這結果時，應該非常興奮，就整個覺得 paper 會上了吧。 事後觀點： 放寬 upright 的定義，就可以用在很多地方? 挑對 domain attributes 的話，supervised learning by Machine Learning 挺厲害。ML -> 不是發現新事物，而是定義出看待事物的規則來。 整篇論文的實作不易，都是描述性的文字敘述 Google Scholar 結果 。

今年的 Stupid RenderMan/RAT Tricks 2011，Pixar 的 Patrick Coleman 給了一個簡短的 trick: Illustrating RenderMan for the Masses 。整個 talk 的目的圍繞在一個主題上： 跟你的奶奶解釋 RenderMan 是怎麼協助電影動畫的。 上頭這個副標不錯吧，也很難吧。事實上，你把上頭的 RenderMan 換成任何一個你熟悉的技術或東西，都一樣困難。試試換成 mp3、電子書、網際網路、Facebook、iPad、App…以我自己來看的話，我想 mp3 是最容易解釋的一點 XD 上頭的影片短短的，但可以稍為搭配一下放出來的投影片 ，裏頭至少有幾個關鍵字，包括像是 bucket, grid, shading，好像就這樣。趕緊拿去試試看，怎麼向你的奶奶解釋你平日的工作內容是什麼吧~

Just someone did that test, lol~

上頭是我目前打算在 SIGGRAPH 2011 的暫時（我相當懷疑，參加 SIGGRAPH 可以事先很明確地訂下行事曆來…）的行程。每天的行程看起來都還挺不錯的，至少，幾乎每晚，都會參加一個“晚會“，像是 Taipei Reunion, The Foundry GeekFest, Disney R&D Mixer, RenderMan Users Group Meeting~ 我同行的同事更帥氣，他還找到了 Houdini User Group Meeting 來著，先祝他有個很有看頭的一晚 :) 上頭的行事曆只有列出 studio talk, courses, exhibit talk，並沒有包含任何的 technical paper sessions，（好吧，Papers Fast Forward 算是）我打算在活動的前一天再整個釐清我的行程，現在看起來，這樣就夠累人了，應該是每天都要一杯咖啡來提神才行。 這可能是我第七次(?)參加 SIGGRAPH 盛會，開始覺得前六次的收獲怎麼這麼少而感到懨煩，倒也不是說沒有收獲，只是覺得不夠多，不夠過癮。這次想藉 SIGGRAPH 之名，多與一些人有比較深入的談話，同時帶回一兩個短期的學術研究方向回來~ 希望是這樣~ PS. 一直有人要我帶 Pixar’s teapot………..