Keynotes

Hugues Hoppe (Principal Researcher and Research Manager, Microsoft Research)

Looping videos

Tuesday 7th, 11:00 in Room C.1

Abstract: With high-resolution video sensors in mobile devices, it becomes feasible to acquire short bursts of video rather than still frames, with the aim of capturing the "moment". Some recent techniques explore new ways of rendering such short videos. As an example, cinemagraphs selectively freeze and loop video regions to achieve compelling artistic effects. In this talk I present several techniques to create looping videos for general scenes. The approaches range from a user-guided interactive system (cliplets) to a fully automatic optimization process. An important application is to replace static photographs in background images and slideshows with more dynamic versions that better convey the experience of the moment.

About the Speaker: Hugues Hoppe is a principal researcher and manager of the Computer Graphics Group at Microsoft Research. His main interests lie in the multiresolution representation, parameterization, and synthesis of geometry, images, and video. He received the 2004 ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award for pioneering work on surface reconstruction, progressive meshes, geometry texturing, and geometry images. He has published many papers at ACM SIGGRAPH and Transactions on Graphics. Contributions at Microsoft include mesh simplification and optimization in DirectX, texture synthesis technology, motion recognition in Kinect Star Wars, and seamless stitching of the terapixel sky in WorldWide Telescope. He is an ACM Fellow, served as editor-in-chief of ACM TOG, and was papers chair for SIGGRAPH 2011.

Victor González (Next Limit Technologies)

New simulation and visualization models to understand complexity. Art and science entanglement

Thursday 9th, 15:40 in Room C.1

Abstract: Next Limit has a long experience in the development of simulation tools for a wide range of industries, from entertainment to design and engineering. This unique vision of Next Limit in mixing knowledge from different worlds serves as a good reference of the new models that combine scientific accuracy, design features and advanced visualization. Computer power let us calculate and visualize complex phenomena in a way never seen before, and Next Limit’s technologies is a clear example of this new art and science entanglement.

About the Speaker: Victor González is the head of Next Limit Technologies, the Spanish company winner of the Technical Achievement Award (Oscar) in 2008 for the creation of the first fluid Simulator for cinema. He has created the special effects for large Hollywood productions like “The Lord of the Rings”, “300”, “Poseidon”, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. He created Next Limit Technologies, and following the market needs, he created his first project “RealFlow”, a fluid simulator software for the cinematographic market. Currently, Next Limit Technologies has an outstanding international position, with the creation of advanced visualization and simulation software. Currently it commercializes three products: RealFlow, Maxwell Render (visual simulation) and XFlow (engineering processes simulator). Besides the technical Oscar, Victor Gonzáles and his team had received the double IST award (Information Society of Technology – Europe), and, more recently, the “Segundo de Chomón”,technical award by the Spanish Cinema Academy.

Olga Sorkine (Assistant Professor of Computer Science, ETH Zurich)

Interactive Shape Modeling: Progress and Challenges

Friday 10th, 11:00 in Room C.1

Abstract: Irregular triangle meshes are a powerful digital shape representation: they are flexible and can represent virtually any complex shape; they are efficiently rendered by graphics hardware; they are the standard output of 3D acquisition and routinely used as input to simulation software. Yet irregular meshes are difficult to model and edit because they lack a higher-level control mechanism. In this talk, I will survey a series of research results on surface modeling with meshes and show how high-quality shapes can be created and manipulated in a fast and intuitive manner. I will outline the current challenges in intelligent and more user-friendly modeling metaphors and will attempt to suggest possible directions for future work in this area.

About the Speaker: Olga Sorkine is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich, where she leads the Interactive Geometry Lab at the Institute of Visual Computing. Prior to joining ETH she was an Assistant Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University (2008-2011). She earned her BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science and PhD in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University (2000, 2006). Following her studies, she received the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship and spent two years as a postdoc at the Technical University of Berlin. Olga is interested in theoretical foundations and practical algorithms for digital content creation tasks, such as shape representation and editing, artistic modeling techniques, computer animation and digital image manipulation. She also works on fundamental problems in digital geometry processing, including parameterization, filtering and compression of geometric data. Olga received the EUROGRAPHICS Young Researcher Award (2008), the ACM SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award (2011), the ERC Starting Grant (2012) and the ETH Latsis Prize (2012).