What a great day for a graphics groupie. After taking the day off yesterday, I actually went to the convention floor today, thinking I should act like the whole thing isn't just an excuse to go to parties. While I was there I saw some lovely 3D "printers" (devices that make models of objects, which are first "scanned"). And a handful of so-so 3D display screens—as well as two that were just wonderful.

I can't refer to Mr. Hired Gun as a such anymore, since he's been with the same company for a while. He's now working as a programmer in a company famous mostly for its hardware, and what he does relates more to what he did in the past (while he was doing special effects for movies) than I had realized. He's the Effects Master now.

Mostly I hung out with Scanman, who can be hard on salespeople, because he appears to be very interested in everything. And he is interested in everything, but buys as little as he can get by with (Scanman is a small businessman). The hapless salespeople seem to get their hopes up sometimes, talking to him. Of course, at some of the booths he just explained to me what any given technology does, leaving the salesmen and -women to look helplessly on.

"Did he get it right?" I'd ask sometimes. And they always said "yes."

After looking over the whole floor we went back to Effects Master, and asked him if there were plans for the evening. There were, so we invited ourselves along. We ended up at Ciudad restaurant, where the Punk Poetess eventually caught up with us.

I love these guys. They are smart and nerdy and subtle and funny—but a different kind of funny than my husband and his friends. (In fairness, Attila the Hub can be absolutely any kind of funny he chooses to be.) Naturally, there are a lot of technical issues I can't understand, but people stopped to explain some of the things that were explainable.

We did not sit around all night and regale ourselves with tales of the Old Days, which is a relief, since I have no desire to do that again. It was just a good, civilized meal.

And then we walked back toward the Convention Center, losing Professor Fractal and Effects Master along the way until we got to the cheap lot where I'd parked my car.

Tonight, a few people were walking in L.A.

My swag so far: a DVD for my husband of a small film that was part of the Electronic Theater; a pin that blinks on and off and requires no pin to secure it (it's held in place by a strong magnet); a walking wind-up teapot; a visor; two small models made by the 3D "printer"; a couple of pencils from Mr. Math's company; some "silly putty" from Disney.

Most precious moment: we mention two old friends of ours who ended up going into financial analysis—and both at the same company.

"What is it about these science women going into financial management companies?" mused Professor Fractal.

"Do we know any others?" someone asked.

"I feel like we do. Maybe they aren't scientists."

"But I can't remember any females other than The Chemistry Lady who are doing that type of work," I told him.

"Maybe it's just someone who changed their worldview, so it's more . . . corporate," he suggested.

"You're thinking of me," I told him.

He was clearly mortified, of course. For I was right.

Be safe. Make sure your motion-captures are lifelike.

Posted by: Attila at 01:07 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 Siggraph. I wish I could go to Siggraph.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 18, 2004 06:40 AM (+S1Ft)

2 I wish you could, too! I was hearing a lot of accents that sounded almost Australian to me, but most of the speakers were probably New Zealanders . . . Aha! We'll move Siggraph to New Zealand, and then you'll stand a fighting chance of getting there!

Posted by: Attila Girl at August 18, 2004 12:39 PM (SuJa4)

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The real pity is that I'm not live-blogging Siggraph. The way to do it, of course, is to have my laptop with me, and take periodic breaks thoughout the day to send some entries out. This blogging-that-night business strikes me as very 20th century. OTOH, last year I was staying at a Motel 6 in San Diego, and could not get internet access from there (they actually rig it so that you can't use phone lines to dial in, I found out later). So I wrote it all out, and published it a few days later when I got back to L.A.

Therefore this is at least being published closer to real time. Who knows?--next time I go to an event like this I may have WiFi, and be able to live-blog the action.

Professor Fractal works at a college in Georgia, and they have a party every year. I was at their event last year in San Diego, and it was there that I finally got to see the good professor. This year they had their event at the top of the Hyatt tower in downtown L.A. I drove in just for this.

I forgot to mapquest the Hyatt, but I figured it was on Hill street, not far from the convention center. How bad could it be? I got off the 110 at the west end of downtown, which is closest to the Staples center (our new mega-ampitheater for sports and music) and the convention center. It's also not too far from skid row. As I got off the freeway, just before the high rises began I saw a row of motels there: low-cost alternatives to staying in the pricey hotels that dot the nicer part of downtown. But why would you stay downtown if you didn't have to? I thought. Don't people realize that the real culture in L.A., the action, is not downtown at all? We never come here unless there's some reason.

And then, driving along eighth or whatever, I saw people. Human beings. Walking around downtown Los Angeles on a Tuesday night. Whaaaaaa . . . . ? All became clear, however, when I saw the red ribbons hanging down from their necks and I realized they were Siggraph attendees. Wow. For a moment I thought downtown had developed a night life; I wasn't prepared to have the world come to an end.

The lovely thing about the Hyatt tower is that it's a large circular room with 360 degrees of view. When I got to the top I tried to get my bearings, but it was harder than I had imagined, since a lot of the buildings I see from the freeway aren't as visible when you're among them: the tops with the logos were too high to see, or they blocked the view of each other. But I figured out which was was West, of course: it's away from the tall buildings—the architecture slopes downward toward the water.

And when I was there I got a chance to ask Prof. Fractal's lovely young student what the current technical challenges are in computer graphics. From having seen the Electronic Theater, I got the feeling that fur is still cutting edge, even after Monsters and the Shrek movies. After all, the Pixar short featured two different kinds of fur. Long hair appears to be very tough as well. And the new badass project seems to be cloth.

"Cloth is still really hard," she told me.

"So the current Harry Potter movie is something of an achievement?" I ask, thinking of how the dementors—and their robes—were highlighted in the HP segment of the Electronic Theatre.

"Oh, yes. They did a nice job."

Apparently, the other type of project considered cutting-edge is to create large crowds of people who all appear to move independently of one another (without having to write programs that dictate what each and every tiny little virtual extra is going to do). Think the Lord of the Rings battle sequences, or the crowd scene in Shrek II. Apparently, if done badly, these scenes can look like there are detectable patterns in the behavior of the crowds—and one can see the hidden hand of the programmer. This is bad.

I still have lots of things I want to ask my friends, but it can wait another day. I'm taking the day off to catch up on some things around the house, and I'll be hitting the exhibits tomorrow. I'm not going to see papers presented, since I wouldn't understand the math/CS therein anyway.

And one more word on Professor Fractal: I spent a couple of minutes listening to his students praise him and talk about what a nice guy he is. They knew I'd known him since high school, and I said I couldn't contradict them—but I know his family,and they are all nice.

"Even so," one of his students pointed out, "some people come from nice families and they are still bastards."

"Fair enough," I replied. "So we may be back to genetics, and nurture vs. nature."

Another student related that when he was deciding where to do his graduate work he had several options, and mentioned to those advising him that he'd like to work with Professor Fractal. "You absolutely can't go wrong with him," he was told.

So he's doing good work, sending bright young people out into the world to make interesting patterns and pretty pictures.

And I remembered when he himself was an undergraduate, and wasn't accepted into the math program at UCLA for some arbitrary reason. A mutual friend fretted on what a crime this was: "he's going to have to go into computer science. And he just won't make the kind of contribution in computer science that he might have in math."

The things that strike us as most fucked-up about the world when we're young sometimes seem to be the things that redeem us—or they unfold like a blooming flower as we move into middle-age.

We talked about that, too—the forty-something elephant in the room—once the youngsters had gone away and it was all just us, former students of Santa Monica High: I'm the only one who doesn't show much sign of aging, so perhaps it's easier on me than on the others. I tried to show them that I have two grey hairs, but I got, "oh, please."

"It's like a second adolescence, though, isn't it?" I asked. "Except that this one is bittersweet, because we're closer to death and we know it."

I got the look, then: wow; we'd forgotten how weird you are.

"I'm just waiting for you to look like you're older than twenty," ventured Scanman.

"Thank you," I responded.

And I came home. Washed my face, looked in the mirror, saw all the fine lines around my eyes. Oh, come on, I thought. It's there. You just have to look close.

I'm a lucky girl with lucky friends. No doubt about that.

Posted by: Attila at 02:28 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I eased into the Siggraph thing today; this is the luxury of living in L.A., where it's being held this year.

Drove downtown in the afternoon to get my badge and attend the "Electronic Theater," which is basically a few hours worth of promo reels from the best computer graphics houses in the world—some very artsy stuff mixed in with special effects done for Lord of the Rings, Van Helsing, and the Harry Potter movies.

Last year in San Diego I wandered around with my friend Scanmaster, looking for my other friends, who were elusive. This time I found most of them the first day. As I chatted with Scanmaster's wife, the Punk Poetess, Mr. Mathematics came up and joined us. A few minutes later Professor Fractal emerged from the crowd with some of his students in tow. ("Are these your diciples?" I asked him a little later.)

The Electronic Theater was stunning, though a little long. One highlight came at the beginning, when large inflated oversized silver-matte "beach balls" were released into the audience. We eventually figured out that we were part of an interactive game in which we had to aim the balls toward certain points at the periphery of the theater in order to "win." This required some thought, and cooperation among audience members. But we eventually mastered it, and won a round or two of the game before it was on to the conventional film clips. Despite getting hit on the head once by one of these things (and thereby flashing back to P.E. in grade school), I honestly really got into this game by the time it was over. It was fun: I applauded as loudly as anyone when we won.

I'll be back there tomorrow night for a party, and I'll hit the exhibits on Wednesday and/or Thursday. Art is good, and it's great to be alive.

By the way: God bless capitalism, and—more than that—God bless those visionaries who funded the computer graphics industry back when it wasn't making a dime. We must all realize that places like Pixar were doing cutting-edge films back in the 80s before they ever saw any income from this. Even Disney, much as I love to hate it, put a lot of money into R&D in this field in the 80s. Before Terminator II made it finally look profitable, there were a lot of guys spending a lot of time making shapes rotate on black-background screens, or creating programs that made explosions that resembled plants—and vice versa.

Thank you, Gentlemen, for creating a whole industry and bringing movie special effects to a new level. Thank you, long-term R&D.

Posted by: Attila at 01:38 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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