There are many aspects to a SIGGRAPH convention, but one of my favorites has always been the Computer Animation Festival, and the SIGGRAPH Asia 2014 con coming up next month looks to have a good collection. The gathering takes place in Shenzhen, China, from December 3rd to the 6th, and as always will feature the cutting edge in what is being created in the world of computer graphics.
This time the images are not computer generated creations, but actual photographs of space. This is an astrophotography contest held by Ciel et Espace Photos in France, and I hope they do it every year. This is their very first year, and the competition is called the Photo Nightscape Awards, or PNA for short. They had a Pro and Amature category, as well as Junior categories for several age ranges, and the images are spectacular. You can catch a glimpse in the video below, but you want to go to the Winners Page and see the full resolution versions for yourself. Many thanks to the folks at Universe Today for the heads up on this one.
I wish I had permission to post the winner’s images here, because they created some amazing places. You will have to visit E-On Stoftware’s 3D Environment Competition Winners 2014 to see them, but they are worth your time to check out. They were all created using VUE Infinite, the professional environment creation software suite from E-On. When I say professional, I am not kidding; check out their 2013 customer showcase video below to see just how many times you watched their product in a movie that year. But while their top of the line software is a bit pricy they have a full range of VUE 3D creation products including versions that range from VUE Pioneer priced at FREE up to versions priced to $500 for those of us not trying to create a feature film. And even the free version comes with full support including an active community, also priced at free.
They had an H. P. Lovecraft festival this weekend in Second Life, and there were a lot of creatures to see and become. This one towered over the trees.
Wonder what the technology you are going to be able to buy and use 3 to 5 years from now might look like? Visiting the SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies exhibit each year should give you a pretty good idea, and this year there are a few particularly interesting ones collected on this video out of the 26 on the floor. The annual event ends today, and I wish I could have been there; perhaps next year. The other SIGGRAPH paths I enjoy are the Art Gallery and the Studio, so I am also including their trailers for this year.
InterScreech 2013 was assembled by Julie Meitz and focused on the surreal side of Linguistics. It was created as a presentation to Interspeech 2013, the world’s largest conference on the science and technology of Spoken Language Processing. Some of their disciplines include speech production, phonetics, speech synthesis, and speaker recognition. Julie has created a number of other interesting videos you should take the time to check out after watching this one.
InterScreech 2013 ! from Julie Meitz on Vimeo.