Media Advisory: USC Showcases Breakthrough Technologies for Holographic Projections and Realistic Digital Doubles at Premier Computer Graphics and Animation conferences

Published: July 16, 2013
Category: Press Releases | News

Holographic heads, photo-real video game characters and virtual humans with realistic behaviors among the USC Institute for Creative Technologies-developed technologies to be demonstrated and discussed at SIGGRAPH 2013 and co-located Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA) and Digital Production Symposium (DigiPro)

WHEN/WHERE: July 19-25 in Anaheim, California

SCA — 9:10 -10:40 a.m. Friday, July 19, Sheraton Park Hotel
DigiPro2013 — 11:30 a.m.-12:40 p.m. Saturday, July 20, Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel
SIGGRAPH 2013 — July 21-25, Anaheim Convention Center

WHAT: 

SIGGRAPH presentations include: 

  • Digital Ira, a photo-real digital double that debuted to much acclaim and over a millionYouTube views, was created in collaboration with video game maker Activision. The latest version of this interactive Ira will be one of the highlights at the SIGGRAPH Real-Time Live!session. 5:30-7:30 p.m., Tuesday, July 23
  • http://youtu.be/l6R6N4Vy0nE
  • A holographic version of Ira, along with live scans of real people, will be projected as part of ICT’s 3-D facial display demonstration in the Emerging Technology showcase. This work represents an extension of ICT’s winning 3-D display system, awarded Best Emerging Technology at SIGGRAPH in 2007. Sunday, July 21 — Thursday, July 25
  • ICT researchers will also be at the Technical Papers session to present their breakthroughs creating fully computer-generated glasses and other objects. These research results overcome existing challenges in reproducing objects with reflectance, translucence and transparent qualities. 2:00–3:30 p.m., Wednesday, July 24, 2013
  • ICT’s Mark Bolas will speak about the mutual value of academic and industry partnerships in a SIGGRAPH business symposium talk 5-6 p.m., Sunday, July 21

SCA and DigiPro 2013 presentations:

  • These two talks introduce Cerebella, an automated performance-generation system that realistically animates virtual characters using only an analysis of the spoken and transcribed words. This tool improves upon existing animation systems in that it infers a character’s intent. It also advances the state-of-the-art in pre-visualization.

WHO:

  • Paul Debevec: Director of the ICT Graphics Lab and research professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering (SIGGRAPH)
  • Stacy Marsella: ICT associate director for social simulation and research assistant professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering (SCA and DigiPro)
  • Mark Bolas: Director of the ICT Mixed Reality Lab and associate professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts

CONTACT:
SIGGRAPH: Brian Ban at (773) 454-7423 or media@siggraph.org
USC: Robert Perkins at (213) 740-9226 or perkinsr@usc.edu

MORE: For a complete list of ICT involvement at SIGGRAPH and related conferences see:http://ict.usc.edu/events/

ABOUT ICT:
At the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), leaders in artificial intelligence, graphics, virtual reality and narrative advance low-cost immersive techniques and technologies to solve problems facing service members, students and society. Established in 1999, ICT is a DoD-sponsored University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) working in collaboration with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. UARCs are aligned with prestigious institutions conducting research at the forefront of science and innovation. ICT brings film and game industry artists together with computer and social scientists to study and develop immersive media for military training, health therapies, education and more.