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

[Pradeep Sen]

Hi everyone,

We were just told by CS that the room for this talk has been moved to Phelps 3536.   See you there!

-Pradeep

---
Pradeep Sen
Associate Professor
UCSB MIRAGE Lab
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 91306-9560

> On Jan 8, 2014, at 12:30 PM, Pradeep Sen <psen at ece.ucsb.edu> wrote:
> 
> 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