SIGGRAPH 2023 Conference Commemorates 50 Years of Innovations With Growth in Contributed Works and In-person Attendees

SIGGRAPH 2023, the premier conference and exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques, marks its 50th year of breakthroughs and innovation. The conference provided a platform for innovators to share their exceptional contributions in digital art, technology, computer science, and other related content. An international audience of more than 14,275 attendees from 78 countries enjoyed the conference and its Mobile and Virtual Access component.

“One of SIGGRAPH’s most powerful strengths is that it’s a gathering of a wide variety of people in the computer graphics and interactive techniques community,” said Erik Brunvand, SIGGRAPH 2023 Conference Chair. “We’ve been a driving force for the expansion and growth in computer graphics for the last 50 years. SIGGRAPH is successful because it’s a place to appreciate and make connections across a variety of disciplines. From film and visual effects to academia and art to hardware and software, SIGGRAPH is a place for everyone. We have a unique community that has continued to grow over the last 50 years. And, as we celebrate 50 years, pioneers and the next generation of pioneers have a place to make their marks in the industry.”

Highlights from the conference included:

SIGGRAPH 2023 Keynote Speakers: Dr. Darío Gil, IBM Senior Vice President and Director of Research, and Kathryn Kleiman, Founder of the ENIAC Programmers Project, Author, Lawyer, and Professor at American University Washington College of Law.

The History Time Tunnel, sponsored by Autodesk, was an immersive and interactive experience that showcased the history of SIGGRAPH conferences and computer graphics.

The Technical Papers program continues to be the premier venue for showcasing the most cutting-edge research results from computer graphics and interactive techniques.

Papers Fast Forward allowed participants to get a glimpse of all the research papers from the Technical Papers and Art Papers programs.

Installations from previous conferences, playable retro video games, and a display of all Pixar Renderman walking teapots were showcased in the Blasts From the Past exhibit.

The Experience Hall is where the Art Gallery featured a Retrospective of Female Digital Art Pioneers, while Emerging Technologies and the Immersive Pavilion showcased the latest in technological innovations. With Labs, participants got hands-on experiences with new techniques.

Real-Time Live! was livestreamed for the first time on Twitch, along with the in-person experience. The live audience and Twitch viewers were amazed by the latest technologies with interactive visuals in real time.

As storytelling and the growth of virtual reality content expands, the VR Theater presented the latest in immersive narratives.

The Electronic Theater presented animation excellence across 22 featured films.

In Production Sessions, the teams from recent productions highlighted behind-the-scenes creativity, innovation, and collaboration.

Mobile and Virtual Access showed strong engagement, with an average of 100 users per minute logging on to explore SIGGRAPH 2023 content.

The top three most popular sessions interacted with on Mobile and Virtual Access included “Stylized Rendering Techniques,” “Practical Proceduralism in Production,” and “Neural Fields for Visual Computing.”

SIGGRAPH 2023 also celebrated this year’s contributors by honoring some “Best of” from various programs, including:

Art Gallery

Best in Show — “Reinventing the Spindle”

Ebru Kurbak, University of Applied Arts Vienna

Art Papers

Best Art Paper — “Movement Quality Visualization for Wheelchair Dance”

Yurui Xie, Giulia Barbareschi, Ayesha Nabila, Kai Kunze, Masa Inakage, Keio University Graduate School of Media Design

Electronic Theater

Best in Show — “La Diplomatie de L’éclipse”

[qualifier for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences]

César Luton, Ecole MoPA

Jury’s Choice [tie] — “The Voice in the Hollow”

Miguel Ortega, half MT studios

Jury’s Choice [tie] — “Overwatch: Kiriko”

Jeremiah Johnson and Dave Stephens, Blizzard Entertainment

Best Student Project — “Swing to the Moon”

Marie Bordessoule, Elisa Drique, Solenne Moreau, Adriana Bouissié, Vincent Levrero, Nadine de Boer, Chloé Lauzu, ESMA

Audience Choice* — “Boom”

Gabriel Augerai, Romain Augier, Laurie Pereira De Figueiredo, Charles Di Cicco, Yannick Jacquin, Miyu Distribution

Emerging Technologies

Best in Show — “Reprojection-free VR Passthrough”

Grace Kuo, Eric Penner, Seth Moczydlowski, Alex Ching, Douglas Lanman, Nathan Matsuda, Reality Labs Research, Meta

Audience Choice — “Retinal-resolution Varifocal VR”

Yang Zhao, Dave Lindberg, Bruce Cleary, Olivier Mercier, Ryan McClelland, Eric Penner, Yu-Jen Lin, Julia Majors, Douglas Lanman, Reality Labs Research, Meta

Immersive Pavilion

Best in Show — “Actualities: Seamless Live Performance With the Physical and Virtual Audiences in Multiverse”

Ke-Fan Lin, Yu-Chih Chou, Yu-Hsiang Weng, Yvone Tsai Chen, Zin-Yin Lim, Chi-Po Lin, Ping-Hsuan Han, Tse-Yu Pan, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology

Real-Time Live!

Best in Show — “Interactive AI Material Generation and Editing in NVIDIA Omniverse”

Hassan Abu Alhaija, James Lucas, Alexander Zook, Michael Babcock, David Tyner, Rajeev, Rao, Maria Shugrina, NVIDIA

Audience Choice* — “Real-time Stage Modelling and Visual Effects for Live Performances”

Taehyun Rhee, Andrew Chalmers, Faisal Zama, Anna Stangnes, Vic Roberts, Computational Media Innovation Centre, Victoria University of Wellington

Technical Papers

Best Paper Awards

“Split-Lohmann Multifocal Displays”

Yingsi Qin, Wei-Yu Chen, Matthew O’Toole, Aswin C. Sankaranarayanan, Carnegie Mellon University

“Differentiable Stripe Patterns for Inverse Design of Structured Surfaces”

Juan Sebastian Montes Maestre, Yinwei Du, Ronan Hinchet, Stelian Coros, Bernhard Thomaszewski, ETH Zürich

“Globally Consistent Normal Orientation for Point Clouds by Regularizing the Winding-number Field”

Rui Xu, Shandong University; Zhiyang Dou, The University of Hong Kong; Ningna Wang, The University of Texas at Dallas; Shiqing Xin, Shandong University; Shuangmin Chen, Qingdao University of Science and Technology; Mingyan Jiang, Shandong University; Xiaohu Guo, The University of Texas at Dallas; Wenping Wang, Texas A&M University; Changhe Tu, Shandong University

“3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-time Radiance Field Rendering”

Bernhard Kerbl, Inria, Université Côte d’Azur; Georgios Kopanas, Inria, Université Côte d’Azur; Thomas Leimkuehler, Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik; George Drettakis, Inria, Université Côte d’Azur

“DOC: Differentiable Optimal Control for Retargeting Motions Onto Legged Robots”

Ruben Grandia, Disney Research Imagineering; Farbod Farshidian, ETH Zürich; Espen Knoop, Disney Research Imagineering; Christian Schumacher, Disney Research Imagineering; Marco Hutter, ETH Zürich; Moritz Bächer, Disney Research Imagineering

2023 saw the launch of the annual Test-of-Time Awards to papers that have had a significant and lasting impact on computer graphics and interactive techniques over at least a decade.

Test-of-Time Awards

“Functional Maps: A Flexible Represenation of Maps Between Shapes” (2012)

Maks Ovsjanikov, Mirela Ben-Chen, Justin Solomon, Adrian Butscher, Leonidas Guibas

“Eulerian Video Magnification for Revealing Subtle Changes in the World” (2012)

Hao-Yu Wu, Michael Rubinstein, Eugene Shih, John Guttag, Frédo Durand, William Freeman

“HDR-VDP-2: A Calibrated Visual Metric for Visibility and Quality Predictions in All Luminance Conditions” (2011)

Rafal Mantiuk, Kil Joong Kim, Allan G. Rempel, Wolfgang Heidrich

“Optimizing Locomotion Controllers Using Biologically-based Actuators and Objectives” (2012)

Jack M. Wang, Samuel R. Hamner, Scott L. Delp, Vladlen Koltun

VR Theater

Best in Show — “Missing 10 Hours VR”

Fanni Fazakas, RUMEXR, Victoria University of Wellington; Noemi Szakonyi, Mate Vincze, Match-Frame Productions

*Vote tallied on-site via survey poll.

Best in Show awards determined by a jury; Audience Choice awards determined by the live audience.

The innovation and creativity of the computer graphics and interactive techniques industry was on full display at SIGGRAPH 2023. The conference showcased why the legacy of the community has continued for 50 years, and the excitement is building for SIGGRAPH 2024 in Denver, Colorado, from 28 July–1 August 2024.

For more information about the conference and the various programs, visit the SIGGRAPH 2023 website. Select content from the companion Virtual Access component will be available on-demand through 9 September 2023.

About ACM, ACM SIGGRAPH, and SIGGRAPH 2023

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field’s challenges. ACM SIGGRAPH is a special interest group within ACM that serves as an interdisciplinary community for members in research, technology, and applications in computer graphics and interactive techniques. The SIGGRAPH conference is the world’s leading annual interdisciplinary educational experience showcasing the latest in computer graphics and interactive techniques. SIGGRAPH 2023, the 50th annual conference hosted by ACM SIGGRAPH, will take place live 6–10 August at the Los Angeles Convention Center, along with a Virtual Access option.

SOURCE SIGGRAPH