General News: RenderMan Speaker Schedule SIGGRAPH 2012

 

PRESENTATIONS & BIOS

LipService & Shave and a Haircut:
Sculpt, Animation, Paint, and Hair with RMS

Joe Alter – Senior Developer, Joe Alter, Inc.

Presentation – In this demonstration, Joe will be showcase a "soup to nuts" high-end pipeline of character rigging, animation, sculpt, paint, rendering, fur and instancing tools for Maya and their use with RenderMan Studio.

Bio – Est 1999, Joe Alter, inc makes a popular set of plugins for character sculpting, animation, paint, hair and instancing.

Golaem Crowd for Maya:
Rendering crowds with RenderMan

Daniel Trusca – Golaem Crowd Lead Developer, Golaem, France

Presentation – Developed and tested under real production conditions, Golaem Crowd for Maya allows to simulate complex and controllable crowds of bipeds and quadrupeds in just few minutes. Based on common Maya objects (particles, fields…), it provides an easy way to deal with a large amount of characters. Discover how to easily create realistic crowds of thousands of unique characters by using a Golaem Crowd to RenderMan workflow. Via a case study, this talk will highlight how to use the Golaem Crowd tools to precisely control your crowd visual diversity (props, shaders…) at render time and render it efficiently with RenderMan. The newest version of Golaem Crowd allows rendering crowds directly within Maya using RenderMan Studio and is compatible with cloud rendering.

Bio – Having graduated the National Institute of Applied Sciences in Rennes, France, with a master in Computer Science and a master of research in Aritifical Intelligence and Computer Graphics, Daniel worked as a 3D software engineer from 2006 to 2009. Between 2009 and 2011 he worked as a R&D software engineer, designing human behaviors in collaboration with Golaem. Since 2011 he is employed by Golaem and contributed to the first versions of Golaem's main product, Golaem Crowd. He quickly became Golaem Crowd Lead Developer and has an important role in developing many Golaem Crowd features, from the asset management to the crowd simulation and rendering..

Introduction to Renderman Shading Language 2.0

Laurent Charbonnel – Shader Writing Supervisor, Blizzard

Presentation – Laurent will talk about how to take advantage of the new features that the latest version of Renderman shading language provides and how this can affect production development. 

Bio – Laurent Charbonnel started as a rendering software engineer for IPR–Render at TDI / Alias–Wavefront. Moved on to do look development and shader writing for movie studios. Started a consulting company for shading and rendering. Currently Laurent is a technical director at Blizzard Entertainment. Credits (partial list): Dinosaur, HollowMan, SharkTale, The Wild, and Surf's Up.

ZBrush: Workflow to RenderMan

Paul Gaboury – 3D Application Engineer, Pixologic 

Presentation – Paul will demo the ZBrush to RenderMan workflow using GoZ that is built into ZBrush. GoZ allows any user to click one button in ZBrush to send all detail over into Maya with RenderMan to be rendered. Paul will also showcase how Decimation Master can be used to render detailed ZBrush sculpts in RenderMan with out using any Displacement or Normal Maps.

Bio – Paul Gaboury is Pixologic's 3D Application Engineer who works with several studios such as Legacy Effects, Disney Animation, Bad Robot, etc on enhancing their digital sculpting pipeline using the leading industry application ZBrush. He is also involved with the development of ZBrush and working with artists around the world offering support. As part of the Pixologic team Paul will travel to various studios and schools giving demos on ZBrush to highlight the various new tools in ZBrush. Paul graduated with a BFA from the University of Bowling Green and was an extension student at Gnomon School of Visual Effects.

Trilobites &Tentacles: VFX for Prometheus

Martin Hill – VFX Supervisor, Weta Digital

Presentation – This talk will focus on creating the VFX for Prometheus, and the many challenges that Weta overcame to deliver stunning CGI for this sci-fi movie.

Bio – Martin Hill has been involved in many productions at Weta Digital, having worked on King Kong, The Water Horse, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Adventures of Tintin, Prometheus, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and is currently working on The Hobbit.

RenderMan On Demand: Cloud Rendering with GreenButton

Scott Houston – CEO, GreenButton Anna Tisch – Software Developer, GreenButton

Presentation – Demonstrating how the cloud can be merged into your studio pipeline to get faster turnaround on your rendering. RenderMan On Demand can put thousands of cores at your immediate disposal, so you can spend less time and money worrying about your renders and more time creating! Also showcasing some of the cool tools designed to make working with the cloud as simple as possible.

Bios: Scott Houston has over 25 years' experience in the IT industry and previously was CIO for Weta Digital during The Lord of the Rings, Scott was the New Zealand Regional Manager for Silicon Graphics and the Southern Regional Channel Manager for Compaq in New Zealand.
Anna Tisch is a software developer at GreenButton working to make the world safe for Cloud rendering. Anna is a graduate from Massey University

KATANA: Much More Than Just a Lighting Tool

Andy Lomas – Katana Product Manager, The Foundry

Presentation – A look at how KATANA and RenderMan Pro-Server are designed to work together, giving an incredibly powerful toolset for computer graphics pipelines.

Bio – With credits including Avatar, The Tale of Despreaux, Over The Hedge, Matrix: Reloaded & Revolutions and Walking with Dinosaurs, Andy has a background of over 18 years in working on VFX, CG Feature and TV productions before joining The Foundry in 2010. At The Foundry he has been leading the work to take KATANA from an in-house tool developed by Sony Pictures Imageworks to a commercially released product adopted by many studios including ILM, Digital Domain, Laika, and MPC.

Exploration in Physically Plausible Shading

Christos Obretenov – Co-founder/Developer, LollipopShaders.com & Instructor at FXPHD

Presentation – Christos will begin by examining a rendering scene with professionally captured unclipped HDRI maps and a traditional shaders & lights setup in PRMan, and see where it leads to artifacts and inconsistent material settings across different lighting environments. We then render the same scene but in our Physically Plausible Shading environment in PRMan16/17, demonstrate how our previous issues have been resolved, and introduce the physically plausible surface and light shaders. We talk about a full Physically Plausible system including energy conservation, physical properties in materials, lights with area for solid angle sampling, importance sampling, ray-tracing, as well as plausible fur and volumes.

Bio – Christos Obretenov has contributed to animated feature films and visual effects as a Senior Technical Director for the past 10 years, where he has written shaders for photo-real and stylized looks, and contributed to look development and lighting technical direction. Some films worked on include Disney's The Wild, Superman Returns, SpiderMan-3, Beowulf, Christmas Carol, and Mars Needs Moms. He is educated at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada with Bachelor of Science in Computing Science, where he specialized in 3d graphics. Currently he is Co-founder and developer of LollipopShaders.com, providing unique shading software and support for international clients, as well as an instructor at FXPHD.

RenderMan Studio Off-The-Shelf in a Small Shop

Armando Ricalde "Doc" – Chief Technology Officer, Cluster Studio Jorge Cherem – CG/VFX Artist, Cluster Studio

Presentation – RenderMan Studio is not meant only for the big blockbuster shows and large studios with an army of programmers, come and learn some tips and tricks from Cluster Studio on how a small shop can benefit from using it off-the-shelf. We will show the structure of Cluster Studio's 3D department and some behind the scenes of real projects to cover cool features of PRMan such as displacement, fur, AOVs, point clouds and brick maps to speed up ambient occlusion, sss, image based lighting and GI.

Bios: Armando Ricalde "Doc" entered the fascinating world of 3D CGI back in 1995 while studying physics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico where he also worked at the Astronomy Institute doing award winning 3D animations and illustrations to support education and science divulgation. Currently he is the CTO of Cluster Studio but also serves as Pipeline Architect and VFX supervisor. Prior to co-founding Cluster Studio back in 2004, Doc worked at Ollin Studio (where he learned RenderMan) and as a freelance 3D artist doing architectural visualization and TV ads. With more than 10 years of professional experience and offering a blend of technical and artistic strengths, Doc always comes up with original problem-solving solutions and also provides the vision and leadership in the development, integration and operation of technology. Jorge Cherem has a degree in Visual Comunication with a M.A. degree in visual effects and started his career as a communications specialist in internal communication department for several companies where his duty was analyzing and creating visual messages for employees. Later he started to do freelance 3D projects for different companies where he developed expertise in different rendering engines. He is currently working at Cluster Studio as a 3d/vfx artist and is responsible for rendering, compositing and look development for multiple TV commercials and feature film projects. Jorge has worked for many international clients such as Sony, Lenovo, Danone, Unilever, Nestle etc.

RenderMan 2012 – A Brave New World: 
An overview of Pixar's latest rendering technology 

Dylan Sisson – Technical Marketing Specialist, Pixar Animation Studios

Presentation – See the latest advancements in Pixar’s RenderMan Products. Dylan will showcase the new lighting and shading tools in RenderMan Studio 4.0, including a new physically plausible shader library, progressive re-rendering, and a host of cutting-edge features. Find out what’s new in RenderMan Pro Server 17, and find out what the Cloud has to offer with a live demonstration of Pixar’s new rendering service, RenderMan On Demand. Along with a major repackaging, RenderMan Studio delivers some major new features and performance for 2012.

Bio –Since his arrival at Pixar in 1999, Dylan Sisson has been engaged in the development of the RenderMan Products. He is also the creator of RenderMan's mascot, the walking teapot. Prior to Pixar, Dylan began his career writing and illustrating comic books. From there it was a short step into 2D animation, which led into working in all aspects of 3D production for games and commercials. An active artist, Dylan's digital artwork and animated shorts have been shown at industry events such as SIGGRAPH.

Digital Puppets in a Stop Motion World

Eric Wachtman – Shading and Lighting Supervisor, Laika

Presentation – This talk will focus on the challenges and techniques used to merge digital puppets and practical puppets on Laika's stop motion film "ParaNorman."

Bio – Eric has been working professionally in film and television since 1995. He joined Laika in 2006. Prior to joining Laika Eric spent eight years as an Art Director and Director of CG for Cartoon Network.

Creating the Hulk and a digital New York for Marvel's The Avengers

Jeff White – Visual Effects Supervisor, ILM

Presentation – Jeff will discuss the challenges ILM had to overcome in creating a lifelike Hulk and a completely digital New York City for him to smash in the 2012 blockbuster film The Avengers.

Bio – Jeff White joined Industrial Light & Magic in 2002 as a creature technical director. He is a graduate of Ithaca College’s Cinema and Photography program and has a Masters of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Prior to graduate school, White worked as technical director for Laika Studios in Portland, Oregon.

Since arriving at ILM, he has worked as a Creature Technical Director on a variety of films including: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Lemony Snicket: A Series of Unfortunate Events, War of the Worlds, and Star Wars: Episode III “Revenge of the Sith”. Responsibilities on the shows included rigging and enveloping a wide variety of creatures running flesh, cloth and hair and muscle simulations. White served as Digital Production Supervisor on Transformers, and Associate Visual Effects Supervisor on the two subsequent Transformers films.

His most recent credit was as the ILM Visual Effects Supervisor on Joss Whedon’s blockbuster film The Avengers.

Foreign Language Demo (Japanese) 
Deep Composting II : Render Deeper

Ichiro Tanaka – President, Indyzone David Lin – Technical Staff, Indyzone

Presentation – Ichiro Tanaka and David Lin will take a look at integrating RenderMan's deep image renders with deep volumetric elements created with Houdini by using Nuke's deep compositing features, as well as some practical strategies when dealing with large deep image datasets.