Siggraph 2024, held in Denver, drew nearly 9,000 attendees. The highlight was a fireside chat by Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and a discussion between Huang and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. Meanwhile, several Siggraph content awards were presented, as were the traditional ACM Siggraph member awards.
Siggraph 2024 is in the books. Despite the initial hesitation of many at the prospect of celebrating Siggraph’s 50th in Denver, or frankly anywhere else outside of LA or the now-accepted Vancouver, aka Hollywood North, the conference was a good one.
There was the usual Siggraph excitement, although the live/virtual event drew less than 9,000 computer graphics/interactivity enthusiasts and professionals. Comparatively, last year’s conference in Los Angeles saw more than 14,000 attendees for the hybrid conference; 2022’s hybrid show had more than 11,700—all significantly lower compared to pre-Covid Siggraph numbers.
Always a significant contributor to Siggraph, Nvidia took on an even bigger role than usual at the conference this year. The company has always been a large contributor of research papers, exhibitor sessions, and more, now taking on more of a partnership role. During the past two years, Nvidia Founder/CEO Jensen Huang has taken the stage at the conference to deliver a special address, and this year, he doubled down on that effort with a fireside chat and then a rare joint discussion with Meta Founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg. There’s little doubt that those events, particularly the latter one, contributed to some of the conference’s attendance numbers.
2024 Siggraph content awards
We already covered this year’s Siggraph Computer Animation Festival’s Electronic Theater award winners, which included “The Art of Weightlessness” for Best in Show, “Patterns” for Jury’s Choice, and “After Grandpa” as Best Student Project. The Audience Choice award, which was presented after the premieres at the conference, went to “LUKI & the Lights,” from Toby Cochran, creator/director. The focus of the animation is LUKI, described as a charming and upbeat robot known for living life to the fullest. When diagnosed with ALS, he must choose how to face life going forward.
This year, Siggraph also honored “best of” contributors from various programs. They include:
Art Gallery
Best in Show—“Rage Against the Archive” from Anshul Roy
Art Papers
Best Art Paper—“Critical Climate Machine: A Visual and Musical Exploration of Climate Misinformation through Machine Learning” from Gaëtan Robillard and Jérôme Nika
Emerging Technologies
Best in Show—“A Live Demo of Single-photon Imaging and Applications” from Sacha Jungerman, Varun Sundar, and Mohit Gupta
Audience Choice—“The Malleable-Self Experience: Transforming Body Image by Integrating Visual and Whole-body Haptic Stimuli” from Tanner Person, Nobuhisa Hanamitsu, Danny Hynds, Sohei Wakisaka, Kota Isobe, Leonard Mochizuki, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, and Kouta Minamizawa
Immersive Pavilion
Best in Show—”MOFA: Multiplayer Onsite Fighting Arena” from Botao Amber Hu, Yuchen Zhang, Sizheng Hao, and Yilan Tao
Real-Time Live!
Best in Show and Audience Choice—“Mesh Mortal Combat: Real-Time Voxelized Soft-Body Destruction” from Tim McGraw
Technical Papers
Best Paper Awards—”From Microfacets to Participating Media: A Unified Theory of Light Transport With Stochastic Geometry” from Dario Seyb, Eugene d’Eon, Benedikt Bitterli, and Wojciech Jarosz
“Walkin’ Robin: Walk on Stars With Robin Boundary Conditions” from Bailey Miller, Rohan Sawhney, Keenan Crane, Ioannis Gkioulekas
“Repulsive Shells” from Josua Sassen, Henrik Schumacher, Martin Rumpf, Keenan Crane
“Lightning-Fast Method of Fundamental Solutions” from Jiong Chen, Florian Schäfer, and Mathieu Desbrun
“Robust Containment Queries Over Collections of Rational Parametric Curves via Generalized Winding Numbers” from Jacob Spainhour, David Gunderman, and Kenneth Weiss
(Technical papers require a Siggraph conference registration sign-in to view the actual presentation.)
VR Theater
Best in Show—”Emperor” from Oriane Hurard with Atlas V
2024 ACM Siggraph member awards
Every year, ACM Siggraph honors members for their significant achievement with awards for research, practice, artistry, and education. This year, those awards were presented to the following:
Significant New Researcher Award recognizing a recent, significant contribution to the field of computer graphics from a researcher new to the field—Adriana Schulz for her contributions to interactive 3D design tools for physical artifacts.
Outstanding Service Award for a career of outstanding service to ACM Siggraph by a volunteer—Adele Newton for her long-term, visionary, and dedicated service to ACM Siggraph.
Practitioner Award recognizing outstanding contributions to the practice and advancement of computer graphics and interactive techniques—F. Sebastian Grassia for technical leadership of, and contribution to, USD.
ACM Siggraph Academy honoring a group of individuals who have made substantial contributions to the field of computer graphics and whose efforts have shaped the disciplines and/or industry, and led the research and/or innovation in computer graphics and interactive techniques.
- Baoquan Chen for contributions to large-scale scene reconstruction, point cloud processing, and shape design for manufacturing.
- Jacquelyn Ford Morie for pioneering contributions to the fusion of art with virtual reality and immersive technologies, and for advancing digital arts within the Siggraph community.
- Dinesh K. Pai for groundbreaking contributions to animation using physics-based and data-driven simulation techniques.
- Ariel Shamir for pioneering work in algorithms for image, video, and geometry processing that are driven by models of human perception.
- Mary C. Whitton for contributions to programmable graphics systems and virtual reality, and for exemplary leadership in the Siggraph community
Computer Graphics Achievement Award for outstanding achievement in computer graphics and interactive techniques—Aaron Hertzmann for his pioneering work in non-photorealistic animation and rendering (NPR), image synthesis, character animation, computational photography, and the interplay between CG and traditional art.
Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award to a recent doctoral candidate who has successfully defended and completed their PhD dissertation in computer graphics and interactive techniques—Zachary Ferguson for his dissertation “Provably Robust and Accurate Methods for Rigid and Deformable Simulation with Contact,” which significantly extends the state of the art in physical simulation by presenting new groundbreaking methods to handle contacts in dynamic simulations of rigid and deformable objects.
Honorable mention: Yu Wang for his dissertation “Geometric Computing beyond the Laplacian” and Fangcheng Zhong for his dissertation “Path from Photorealism to Perceptual Realism.”
Distinguished Artist Award for an artist who has created a substantial and important body of work that significantly advances aesthetic content in the field of digital art—Tamiko Thiel for innovations in virtual and augmented reality art used to explore place, space, the body, and cultural memory.
Distinguished Educator Award recognizing outstanding pedagogical contributions to computer graphics and interactive techniques at any educational level or within the context of any discipline—Mike Bailey for his dedication to and introducing the basics of joy of computer graphics to thousands of students and the Siggraph conference attendees in a decades-long endeavor.
Steven Anson Coons Award for outstanding creative contributions to computer graphics honoring an individual’s lifetime contribution, given in odd-numbered years—(current recipient) Marie-Paule Cani for outstanding contributions to computer graphics in shape modeling, computer animation, and content creation tools.
Editor’s notes:
This year’s VR Theaternot only featured interesting virtual reality storytelling, but the selections were shown in a high-end, seated, panoramic, multi-viewer immersive space—certainly a nice and appreciated touch. Also, the line to get in was not as chaotic as in years past (probably due to the charge this year—well worth it, though).
The exhibitor space was small, as expected. In years past, it always had a number of motion-capture vendors whose spaces featured performers dancing, prancing, fighting, and engaged in all manner of activity. Not this year—Vicon was there and Qualisys. Likewise, the 3D printer folks, once a Siggraph hallmark, were nowhere to be seen. And the HMD companies? Same.
And, if you were looking for a Hollywood studio presence, that was missing from the exhibit hall as well (though not unexpected due to the conference locale). It always brought a bit of glitz and glam to the show floor.
Having the schools bunched in the Campus area was a good idea, in my opinion.
Nvidia had a great space with its Inception Innovation Zone featuring start-ups and partners leveraging Nvidia’s tech.
The Autodesk Vision series and Nvidia Presents discussions were a hit, with standing-room only.
While out of the way, Denver offered a beautiful backdrop. The conference center was large and spacious, and most likely many got in their steps while walking to and fro. The Bluebird Ballroom, the site of Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg’s chat, was a lengthy hike but well worth it. Overall, the conference center was modern, clean, and inviting. The hotels were very close, as were restaurant options. On another note, no doubt some attendees were affected by the Denver altitude, though that was a nice excuse after having “just one more” cocktail.