[4eyes] Visual Computing Cafe Seminar Friday Jan. 10, 2014

[Pradeep Sen]

UCSB Visual Computing Café Seminar Friday January 10, 2014
12:30pm - 1:30pm, Phelps 1401
            ** Note change of venue! **


TITLE:
Brute Force: The Future of Visual Effects
by Nafees Bin Zafar, DreamWorks Animation


ABSTRACT:

The bleeding edge of visual effects is always about
cheats and tricks. New effects are created for largely
unknown requirements, and under impractical time
constraints. So we use a lot of cheats. Then we get
asked to do it again, and the real trouble starts.
Historically these shortcuts have given way to more
correct, and brute force algorithms.

My talk is going to cover some state of the art techniques
from recent films for creating cloudscapes, and destroying
cities (It's all the rage!). I will discuss how noise
functions are used to create volumes, how we fake global
illumination effects in clouds, and how we model elasticity
with rigid bodies. We'll look at some effects that worked
well, and others that didn't. Finally I'll try to convince
you that the answer to these problems lies in brute force
algorithms.


BIO:

Nafees Bin Zafar is a Principal Engineer at DreamWorks
Animation. He has worked on a long list of blockbuster
films over the last 13 years, such as the Pirates of
the Caribbean, Kung Fu Panda, and Transformers franchises.
Nafees won an Academy Award in 2008 for his work on
pioneering digital fluid effects now used throughout
the visual effects industry.  His expertise ranges
across volumetric modeling and rendering, image processing,
and dynamics simulation systems.  He is an active contributor
to leading academic conferences, and serves on the committee
that confers Academy Awards for technical contributions to
the film industry.


-- 
Pradeep Sen
Associate Professor
UCSB MIRAGE Lab
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9560