Siggraph 08

[mcernusca]

This may be redundant given the entire forum dedicated to this at cgtalk, but I was curious who was attending Siggraph this year in LA.

This might be wishful thinking, but has there been any talk of a tech-artist.org meet-up?

edit:

I guess I should lead by example:
I’m flying in the friday before the event and flying out Sunday. If anyone makes it to FJORG! stop by and say hi, I’m part of team DarkNauts. Can’t miss us, we’ll be the only team using 3ds max haha.

Moderators please delete this thread if it isn’t appropriate or is redundant.

[Rob_Galanakis]

I won’t be going, but a couple people from here will, and I know Bobo is giving a class there. Would like to go next year, probably, but not too into it this year.

[Erilaz]

Flight from Australia + Massive ticket cost = No Go. :):

I’ve been wanting to go for many years (especially for the Bobo masterclasses), but I can’t justify almost 5 grand in expenses for one event.

[mcernusca]

[QUOTE=Rob Galanakis;344]I know Bobo is giving a class there. [/QUOTE]

Yeah I’m excited for that. i don’t know how many classes I’ll be able to afford, but I’m going to be sure to make it to that one. Also excited for Javier Solsona’s class.

Definitely understand the expense issue. This is the last time I’ll be able to take advantage of the student discounts so I’m going to make the most of it.

[bcloward]

I’ll be attending Siggraph this year. Anyone else? It would be cool to hook up with some of you.

If you are going, what classes/sessions/events are you the most interested in? I’m still trying to flesh out my schedule and it would be neat to see what other tech artists will be attending.

[mcernusca]

I started this thread a while back: http://tech-artists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=66
Doesn’t look like many members will be attending. Hopefully people just missed that thread and will reply here.

[Rob_Galanakis]

Poof!!

[wdavidlewis]

I’ll be attending. I’m flying out the Sunday before and then staying over the weekend after to visit with some friends. Fly back early Monday morning in time to arrive at work (a little late…)

I usually hit industry presentations over academic ones (you can usually get the academic ones on DVD/download afterwards).

Sessions I’m most looking forward to:
[ul]
[li]Pursuit of Awesomeness (Kung Fu Panda)
[/li][li]Flow Simulations using Particles
[/li][li]The rigging talks in “Lions+Hulks+Whos” and “Rigging Outside the Box” (who thinks up these titles?)
[/li][/ul]

— David

[lkruel]

I’ll be going too, leaving here Sunday night, coming back Saturday morning.

After reading wdavidlewis’ post I took a closer look at the classes, and more specific the talks, and I found a ton of classes I want to go, there’s a lot going on, the top of my list are

• Sony’s Katana presentation - their compositing system written in Python.
• Pursuit of Awesomeness
• Many Things - crowd related techniques from Wall-E, speed Racer and others
• Bend Me Break Me - Bringing Statues to life from R&B
  And all the rigging ones mentioned before, specially the Blue Sky one, I heard they had an awesome automated system.

I’ll probably go to the Dodgers Game as well (reception) and I want to go to the Clone Wars Preview ( do we need tickets? ) and the Autodesk User Group,

it’s going to be an awesome week.

[wdavidlewis]

Yep. All those are on my list as well.

I’m pretty much quadruple booked the entire conference. And that’s just with sessions, not to mention catching up with old friends and co-workers, seeing the exhibition floor and working the recruiting booth.

It’s going to be a busy week.

BTW, we are looking for Tech Artists and Maya Programmers at Crystal. Stop by the booth if you’re looking. I know for sure I’ll be there on Tuesday 12-2 (and in and out other times) and our Technical Art Director (Joe Stinchcomb) will be there on Wednesday, I think from 11-1.

— David

[Rob_Galanakis]

BTW, just a heads up for anyone not going- Ben should be blogging SIGGRAPH (or else he doesn’t get paid for the week, or something ), so you should be able to check it out: http://bcloward.blogspot.com/

[bcloward]

Thanks for the plug, Rob! I’ll make an extra effort to post all I can if I know you guys are reading.

[mcernusca]

Sorry I didn’t run into you Ben

I did meet a lot of cool people. Bobo was at the Frantic booth for a bit and he was a great sport. It was fun meeting him and hearing about some of his adventures.

Ran into Rob O’Neill while waiting in a line. Nicest guy ever. Some of you guys might know him

Ah can’t believe it is over…

I invited a ton of people to the forums ( including some super awesome guys from Blur ), hopefully they all remember to sign up!

[Rob_Galanakis]

[QUOTE=mcernusca;1008]Ran into Rob O’Neill while waiting in a line. Nicest guy ever. Some of you guys might know him

I invited a ton of people to the forums ( including some super awesome guys from Blur ), hopefully they all remember to sign up![/QUOTE]

Was that a wink at me? Rob is indeed an awesome guy, was one of my professors in college. In addition to teaching/research, he is working on/at http://www.kickstandlabs.com/tools/ , which he cryptically tells me ‘isn’t just for offline deformations soon’, so I’ll be keeping an eye out. I hope to see more people at these forums, thanks for getting the word out!

[mcernusca]

haha yeah that was for you. I had no idea who I was talking to and asked if he was a member, to which he replied “oh yeah, one of my students started that!”. Very cool.