Color is mysterious, emotional, enigmatic. Opinions are strong about what they mean, or do not mean. Theses have been written about the emotional significance of color in film, psychology, and clothing. This course discusses storytelling choices in fine art, illustration, and films (animated and live action), and how color selection supports the story. Topics include color rules, when and how to break them, and the differences between the analog and digital palettes. The course includes plenty of visuals and is appropriate for everyone interested in color.

COURSE SCHEDULE

2 pm
Introduction and Overview: The Hidden Influence of Color
Altieri & Walvoord

2:10 pm
Creating a Design Universe in Film; Story, Emotions, and Art
Altieri

2:30 pm
"Kung Fu Panda 2" Color Overview
Walvoord

2:45 pm
Analysis of Color in Animated Films
Altieri

3 pm
KFP2 Techniques: Color Supporting the Story
Walvoord

3:15 pm
Questions and Answers

Computer-generated volumetric elements such as clouds, fire, and whitewater are becoming commonplace visual effects. This course provides a behind-the-scenes look at the techniques used and how they are implemented. It demonstrates tools and workflows that are not typically covered in production talks but are integral to successful completion of many effects.

The presenters, who have innovated the use of volumetric methods in industry and created some of the most impressive on-screen effects, summarize how specific artistic needs lead to innovations and review the success and evolution of their methods. They also discuss the software-engineering issues they have encountered and their solutions.

COURSE SCHEDULE

2 pm
Introduction
Bin Zafar

2:05 pm
Rhythm & Hues
Tessendorf & Grant

2:35 pm
Clinton

3:05 pm
Weta Digital
Bouthors

3:35 pm
Break

3:55 pm
Double Negative
Harding & Graham

4:25 pm
Sony Pictures Imageworks
Wrenninge

This course is as an introduction to the PhysBAM simulation library developed at Stanford University and used in both academic and industrial settings, including Intel Corporation, Industrial Light & Magic, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Pixar Animation Studios. The course contains information on the release of PhysBAM as well as information on how to obtain the source code, set up the library, and use it to run example smoke and water simulations. It also summarizes a visualization tool and a rendering tool included in the release of the library.

Physically based simulation is a vital part of the special-effects toolkit. Traditionally, special effects are obtained by constructing scale or full-size models, whether the scene calls for a sinking ship or a burning building. Unfortunately, this is very expensive and at times not feasible. Physical simulation is also used for special effects in animated films,
where traditional special effects methods cannot easily be applied. And it is increasingly used in the gaming community as enhanced processing power enables simulations to occur at real-time rates.

In addition to the PhysBAM library, the course explains the underlying techniques that make these simulations possible, in particular level set methods such as fast marching, fast sweeping, and the particle level set method. It also addresses the important aspects of a fluid simulation, including advection, viscosity, and projection.

COURSE SCHEDULE

9 am
The New Intel Center I
Dubey

9:10 am
The New Intel Center II
Hanrahan

9:20 am
The New Intel Center III.
Fedkiw

9:35 am
PhysBAM Tools Library
Lentine

10:15 am
PhysBAM Geometry Library
Schroeder

10:55 am
Level Set Algorithms
Schroeder

11:40 am
Water Simulation
Schroeder

Animating detailed liquid surfaces has always been a challenge for computer graphics researchers and visual effects artists. Over the past few years, researchers in this field have focused on mesh-based surface tracking to synthesize extremely detailed liquid surfaces as efficiently as possible. This course provides a solid understanding of the steps required to create a fluid simulator with a mesh-based liquid surface.

The course begins with an overview of several existing liquid-surface-tracking techniques and the pros and cons of each method. Then it explains how to embed a triangle mesh into a finite-difference-based fluid simulator and describes several methods for allowing the liquid surface to merge together or break apart. The final section showcases the benefits and further applications of a mesh-based liquid surface, highlighting state-of-the-art methods for tracking colors and textures, maintaining liquid volume, preserving small surface features, and simulating realistic surface-tension waves.

COURSE SCHEDULE

2 pm
Introduction and Welcome
Wojtan

2:05 pm
Liquid Surface Tracking Review
Müller-Fischer

2:35 pm
Embedding a Surface Mesh Into an Eulerian Fluid Simulation
Müller-Fischer

3:05 pm
Break

3:20 pm
Maintaining Surface Mesh Quality
Wojtan

3:35 pm
Topology Changes
Wojtan

4:25 pm
Advantages of a Mesh Surface
Brochu

5:10 pm
Conclusion
Wojtan

For more than a decade, supersample anti-aliasing (SSAA) and multisample anti-aliasing (MSAA) have been the gold-standard anti-aliasing solutions in games. However, these techniques are not well suited for deferred shading or fixed environments like the current generation of consoles. In recent years, industry and academia have been exploring alternative approaches, where anti-aliasing is performed as a post-processing step. The original, CPU-based morphological anti-aliasing (MLAA) method gave birth to an explosion of real-time anti-aliasing techniques that rival MSAA.

Most of these techniques share concepts and ideas, so the main goal of this course is to establish a conceptual link between them, identifying novelties and differences. The presenters explain how sub-pixel data can be used to improve quality and performance tradeoffs at post-processing steps, which is a cutting-edge research area today. The course includes an overview of both research and industry filter-based anti-aliasing techniques in games for all modern platforms (AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360), low-level insight to ease adoption of these techniques and give attendees a complete concept-to-implementation roadmap, and deep quality, performance, and ease-of-integration comparisons of each technique.

COURSE SCHEDULE

2 pm
Introduction
Gutierrez & Jimenez

2:05 pm
A Directionally Adaptive Edge Anti-Aliasing Filter
Yang

2:20 pm
Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA)
Reshetov

2:35 pm
Jimenez's MLAA
Jimenez

2:50 pm
Hybrid CPU/GPU MLAA on the Xbox-360
Demoreuille

3:05 pm
Low-Latency MLAA in God of War III
Perthuis

3:20 pm
PlayStation Edge MLAA
Berghoff

3:35 pm
The Saboteur Anti-Aliasing (SPUAA)
Yu

3:50 pm
Break

4 pm
Subpixel Reconstruction Antialiasing (SRAA)
McGuire

4:15 pm
Fast approXimate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA)
Lottes

4:30 pm
Distance-to-Edge Anti-Aliasing (DEAA)
Malan

4:45 pm
Geometry Buffer Antialiasing (GBAA)
Persson

4:55 pm
Directionally Localized Anti-Aliasing (DLAA)
Andreev

5:10 pm
Crysis 2 Anti-Aliasing
Sousa

5:25 pm
Wrap-up and Discussion: Questions and Answers