My biggest adventure and most exciting memory of the semester and my entire college career was traveling to work for SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 in Tokyo, Japan. I have never traveled outside of North America so this was my first trip abroad. I traveled with fellow CU Denver Class of 2024 DAC graduates Bianca Rawlings & Aelma Azad to work at the conference. We planned a two-week trip to visit Tokyo and have some time to go sightseeing before and after the conference. We stayed in Ginza, a 15-minute walk from the Tokyo International Forum. It was a nice quiet business-residential area close to the bustling hub near Tokyo Station.
SIGGRAPH Asia took place from December 3rd to December 6th at the Tokyo International Forum, with an additional day for Student Volunteer training on December 2nd. Upon arriving at the Forum, I was super happy to be greeted by lots of familiar faces from SIGGRAPH 2024 in Denver.
Official SV photos were taken in the SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 traditional Japanese happi uniforms.
While working at the conference, I got to see amazing panels showcasing the latest innovations in realistic and stylized animation, animation shorts from across the world, and thought-provoking tech creations and art exhibitions.
Ultraman: Rising How ILM brought this Iconic Hero to Screens Large and Small Panel
I loved seeing this panel from Hayden Jones, VFX Supervisor at ILM. I previously met Shannon Tindle, the director of Ultraman: Rising, and see the film this summer as an instructor during the CU Denver LYNX National Arts and Media Camp. During the LYNX Camp panel, I learned about the worldbuilding, story, and character design of the film. Additionally, I got to see a keynote presentation at the PIXAR Renderman Arts and Science Fair at SIGGRAPH 2024 in Denver on the contributions of the Renderman engine team to the stylized surfacing, rendering, and compositing techniques used in Ultraman: Rising. This SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 panel expanded upon my previous knowledge of the film and gave an extremely in-depth look at the art direction that went into the decisions behind the storytelling, character design, stylized surfacing, rendering, compositing, and innovative techniques used to push the animation in an authentically Japanese way reflecting traditional manga inking and modern anime aesthetics. Learning so much about one particular film in such a short period has given me a deep appreciation of all the hard work that goes into all aspects of the film. Hearing perspectives from different teams on various levels of the production was also very enlightening to the collaborative efforts of the film.
The most interesting thing shown at this panel for me was the exact production guides that were shown to the texture artists that outline directions given from the art directors and visual development artists to the texture artists to include tiny details on various pieces of each character or prop, or what not to do when shading a character. There were also specific instructions for how the stylized renders should be handled for Renderman with line weight and smoothing of the textures with a combination of Kuwahara blurring filters to create a manga copic marker colored look and compositing techniques to ensure a crisp final image.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Weta FX Panel (R)Evolutionary Facial Animation Panel
Despite being a 3D Generalist, I don't pretend to know much about specializing in character animation, particularly highly technical character animation, or motion capture VFX. However, this panel by Stuart Adcock and Allison Orr was a special treat to see in person. As someone deeply entrenched in my interest in all things art direction, surfacing, look dev, and lighting & compositing, I don't often go out of my way to learn about other sides of the industry that I don't interact with as much. While the Ultraman: Rising panel was right up my alley explaining the specific direction given to surfacing and compositing artists to create a highly stylized look, I don't know much about motion capture.
This presentation gave a highly detailed look at the history of motion capture, and the current cutting-edge technology being developed. I was particularly interested in the explanations given on how Weta is using traditional facial motion capture, full frame reference shots of all the actors, newly developed muscle systems to retarget animation onto very un-human-like creatures with "plausible anatomical systems", "deep blend shapes" to stress muscles in different ways for the same pose, and their own library of training data to create predictable and repeatable muscle actions which can be used to aid animators in making quick transitions between poses.
It really surprised me just how detailed every single rig was that was shown during the presentation and the great amount of work that went into translating the tiniest subtleties of the actors into the final creature animation. The fact that the entire movie was basically produced twice, once in live-action and once digitally, was really cool. The dedication to getting every shot just right was very apparent in the presentation.
Japan Travels
In addition to learning and connecting with animation students and professionals from around the globe, I had an amazing time exploring Tokyo and seeing sights, and eating incredible food. I was surprised by how easy it was to navigate and understand everything for sightseeing, food, travel, and shopping in the Tokyo area. I would love to return to Japan someday to see more of the culture of the countryside beyond Tokyo.
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