DreamWorks Activities in our Intel @ SIGGRAPH Booth

	Ron Henderson manages the FX Tools group at DreamWorks Animation where he is responsible for developing physical simulation and procedural modeling tools. These systems have been used for key visual effects in recent films such as Kung Fu Panda and Monsters vs. Aliens (March 2009). Prior to joining DreamWorks in 2002 he was a Senior Scientist at Caltech with a joint appointment to the Applied Math and Aeronautics departments where he worked on efficient techniques for the direct numerical simulation of fluid turbulence. He received a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1994 in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Ron is presenting "Visual Effects for Animation" at our Intel @ SIGGRAPH theater. In this talk we show examples of visual effects from a variety of DreamWorks Animation feature films, covering examples from hair and feathers to smoke and fire. We will discuss in general terms the kinds of techniques used to achieve particular visual effects. Finally, we will look at a detailed breakdown of the dam breaking scene from "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa" showing how different elements of key frame animation, simulation and rendering are combined in a real production shot.
	Terran Boylan has worked as an FX Animator and Character Technical Director at PDI/Dreamworks since January 2000. So far he has worked on eight theatrical films, including Shrek I-III, Madagascar, Over the Hedge and Bee Movie. His work on the gelatinous character B.O.B. in Monsters Vs. Aliens was featured in Computer Graphics World and CGSociety.org. He is currently working on the 2011 release, Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom. Terran is presenting "B.O.B. Breaking Ordinary Boundaries of Animation in Monsters vs. Aliens" in our Intel SIGGRAPH booth theater. In this talk, we'll present the components of B.O.B.'s character rig as well as our overall design approach. We'll focus on special technical challenges we faced in order to animate and render a high-resolution warped polygonal mesh with a topology that changed every frame.
	Jonathan Gibbs has contributed in various capacities during his twelve year tenure at DreamWorks Animation and PDI/DWA. In his current role, “Jono” is lead effects developer on one of DreamWorks Animation’s upcoming 2010 releases, Mastermind. When asked what his responsibilities are on this superhero action story, he thinks hard and responds "Mastermind City Supervisor". Prior to his current stint leading the development of the elaborate city in MM, he spent several years as the Chief Architect for Global Effects at DWA. In this position, he worked with the Effects Leads in the Effects Department as well as with the engineers in R&D to build a suite of tools and effects animation systems which could be used by all shows in production, and plan for those still in development. Previously, Jonathan was a Lead Effects Animator on films produced at PDI / DreamWorks including Antz, Academy Award-winning Shrek, and Madagascar. On those films he was responsible for a wide variety of effects including hair, crowds, trees and mud. He also wrote most of the shaders used at DreamWorks Animation. A native of St. Louis, Jono has a B.S. in Computer Science from Principia College and holds a Masters degree in Computer Science from UC-Santa Cruz. Jono will be available at our booth everyday for 45 minutes to animate LIVE!
Also presenting in our theater are Andrew Kunz and Dave Walvoord with "Interactive Lighting at DreamWorks Animation". Dreamworks’ in-house, proprietary rendering and lighting software has evolved over 11 years of animated feature film production, but the goal of enabling fast, frame-accurate lighting workflows has been built into the architecture from the start. In this talk we will discuss some of the unique aspects of the architecture that enable interactive reshading and relighting in this system. We demonstrate some of these capabilities in an interactive lighting session with a character from Monsters vs. Aliens. We discuss our ambitious goals to vastly accelerate lighting workflows, and our ongoing strategy to scale rendering across the increasing number of cores available on a single machine as well as the increasing number of machines available in the render farm.