Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!udel!princeton!gauss!markv
From: markv@gauss.Princeton.EDU (Mark VandeWettering)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Brief SIGGRAPH Synopsis
Message-ID: <1861@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 13 Aug 90 16:29:06 GMT
Sender: news@idunno.Princeton.EDU
Reply-To: markv@gauss.Princeton.EDU (Mark VandeWettering)
Organization: Princeton University
Lines: 43


Well, here is MY brief view of what went on at SIGGRAPH.  

I thought by and large the paper sessions were EXCELLENT.  Among my favorites
was a new method of doing ray/Bezier patch intersections (very nice!), 
Gavin Miller had a nice paper about simulating water effects, and Paul Haeberli
had a very good paper about creating paintings from bitmaps.  Several of the 
dynamics papers where good as well, notably Baraff gets my award for "cute
demonstration of the all too mathematical theory in my paper".  :-)  I also
liked Witkin's work on affine deformable bodies. 

I attended the raytracing BOF, and finally got to meet several people whom
I have chatted with via email over the years.  We are going to have to arrange
for food and drink next year guys! :-)

Andrew Glassner's new book Graphics Gems was selling like hotcakes.  I got my
copy.  Its going to be a classic.  Several of the snippets are worth the price
of the book, and there are a lot of snippets :-)

One disappointment:  IEEE publishes a book on image warping by Wolberg.  It
seems like a nice book, softcover, some nice pictures.  I had it on my buy 
list, but found out its selling price is 75 bucks, discounted to 60 for 
conference attendees.  For a softcover book, with < 300 pages, one has to
really wonder whether it is worth it.  I chose to pass, with great reluctance.
I hope that computer publishers don't continue to increase the cost of books
like this.

On the same note, I must commend the new Foley et. al. and Graphics Gems
for precisely the opposite problem.  Both books are nice, thick, hardcover
books that are reasonably priced.

The film and video show was okay, but notably lacking of the really killer 
animation we have come to expect in previous years.  The one great exception
was "The Grinning Evil Death" done at the MIT Media Lab.  An excellent 
technical and dramatic achievement, if a bit violent.  (Not that I am 
complaining, but others probably will).  Unfortunately, they chose not to
show it in its entirety during the Film & Video Show (time constraints?).  I
saw the rest during one of the talks, it really is quite an achievement.

Anyway, that's what I saw, other than hotels, marguritas, and lots of 
video.

Mark