SIGGRAPH Asia 2022 closes in Daegu, South Korea following a resounding, successful four days of trade conference and exhibition. The next conference is announced to take place in Australia.
The 15th edition of SIGGRAPH Asia, ACM SIGGRAPH’s annual conference and trade exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques in Asia, wrapped up at EXCO in Daegu, South Korea on 9 December. Celebrating the theme Colorful World, SIGGRAPH Asia 2022 attracted over 3,000 attendees from 52 countries and regions. Close to 400 speakers delivered talks while 50 exhibiting companies and brands showcased their latest technologies and solutions.
SIGGRAPH Asia 2022 was led by Professor Soon Ki Jung and was supported by a team of Program Chairs across Art Gallery, Business & Innovation Symposium, Computer Animation, Courses, Emerging Technologies, Featured Sessions, Games, Technical Communications, Technical Papers, Real-Time Live! and XR.
Highlights of SIGGRAPH Asia 2022 included highly coveted awards which were handed to students and experts in the fields of Computer Animation, Technical Papers, Extended Reality (XR), and Real-Time Live!
Prestigious Gongs Awarded
- Technical Papers
Technical Papers Chair Jehee Lee and Conference Papers Director Adam Bargteil applauded the submissions received, an impressive 407 submissions, a 50% increase from last year. Rhythmic Gesticulator: Rhythm-Aware Co-Speech Gesture Synthesis with Hierarchical Neural Embeddings authored by Tenglong Ao, Qingzhe Gao Shandong, Yuke Lou, Baoquan Chen, and Libin Liu from Peking University were recognized for their research that acutely improves the harmony between speech and gestures. Neural James-Stein Combiner for Unbiased and Biased Renderings by Jeongmin GuGwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Jose A. Iglesias-Guitian from the University of A CoruñaCITIC - Centre for ICT Research and Bochang MoonGwangju from the Institute of Science and Technology were also recognized. The team of academic researchers showed a combination framework built upon the James-Stein (JS) estimator, which merges a pair of unbiased and biased rendering images, e.g., a path-traced image and its denoised result.
- Computer Animation Festival
Four filmmakers and teams were honored for their exemplary work during the Computer Animation Festival (CAF) which, according to SIGGRAPH Asia CAF Program Chair Dan Sarto, it was the most expansive and compelling program ever. A total of 405 submissions from 19 countries were received. Of these, 33 films, including four highlighted films from Korea, were screened at SIGGRAPH Asia 2022’s Electronic and Animation Theaters.
Best in Show was awarded to Garrano, Directed by David Doutel & Vasco Sá, BAP Animation Studio, produced by David Doutel, Jury’s Special Award was handed to CAT and MOTH (Canada, United Kingdom), Directed by India Barnardo, Stupid Horse Productions, co-produced by Sarah Dacey and Emily Shinyi Hsu and Best Student Project was awarded to PERIOD DRAMA (United States), Directed by Anushka Nair & Lauryn Anthony, Ringling College of Art & Design.
- XR (Extended Reality)
XRAYHEAD by Kento Imai, Haruka Kayano, and Kenri Kodaka from Nagoya City University created a striking illusion of a skull when the top of the head is touched. The ingenious illusion works with an experimental setup where the participant is faced with a specially designed smart skeleton through a half-mirror.
- Emerging Technologies
In the Emerging Technologies program, the mind-bending Extra-Sensory Puck (E.S.P) in Air Hockey using the Projection-Based Illusion was declared the winner. E.S.P. designed is by Kengo Sato, Yoshihiro Watanabe from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Hiroki Terashima from NTT Communication Science Laboratories, and Shin'ya Nishida from Kyoto University. It provides a new experience by introducing optical illusions to air hockey based on our high-speed projector-camera system. A solid puck randomly hit by a player is camouflaged to disappear on the table and causes various physics-defying motions.
- Real-Time Live!
At the end of the Real-Time Live! Session, the audience voted for their favorite team and the award went to Real-Time Technologies for Realistic Digital Humans: Facial Performance and Hair Stimulation, demonstrated by Mark Schoenmagel on Unity Technologies.
The software allows a smoother rendering process which includes the most intricate part of objects - hair and fur. Mark demonstrated in real-time how hair can be constructed on avatars within seconds with Unity’s plugins and how this solution can be used to improve realism for developers’ use.
Inspiring Keynote Speakers
Three distinguished speakers elevated SIGGRAPH Asia further with their revolutionary talks on artificial intelligence, metaverse, immersive technology, and the future of emerging technologies. Award-winning artificial intelligence and technology revolutionary Dr. Luc Julia, Chief Scientific Officer for Renault, Sean Lee, Chief Executive Officer of award-winning d’strict, a Korean digital design and immersive media technology company, and industry heavyweight, DaeWook Kim, CEO of Naver Z Corporation, South Korea's No. 1 search engine were the keynote speakers.
SIGGRAPH Asia Exhibition and Experience Hall
The 3-day SIGGRAPH Asia Exhibition held from 7 to 9 December 2022 impressed visitors giving them a view of innovative future technologies. From experimental solutions to immersive, wearable technology, 50 exhibiting companies and brands from 11 countries and regions participated. These included Adobe, AMD, Amazon Web Services, Autodesk Korea, CLO Virtual Fashion (Marvelous Designer), COPRESENCE AG, DEXTERSTUDIOS, Foundry, Fox Renderfarm, Google Research, Industrial Light & Magic, IO Industries, Leaders Systems, NCSoft, Pixar’s RenderMan, Qualisys, Rotomaker, Ritsumeikan University, Seoul Robotics, SideFX, Vicon Motion Capture, Visol, X, inc., Xencelabs / XP-Pen, to list a few.
The Experience Hall within the exhibition space also housed the Art Gallery, Emerging Technologies, and Extended Reality (XR) immersive programs.
SIGGRAPH Asia 2023
SIGGRAPH Asia 2023, will be held at the International Convention & Exhibition Centre (ICC) in Sydney, Australia. The conference will take place from 12-15 December and the exhibition will be held from 13-15 December. SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 Conference Chair, June Kim announced Connecting Stories as the theme for the 16th edition.
You may learn more about SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 here.