SIGGRAPH 2013: Day 5

Thursday was the last opportunity for attendees to check out Emerging Technologies, the Art Gallery and the Studio. All three venues closed at 1pm. Meanwhile, the Computer Animation Festival went out with a bang with the final showing of this year’s Electronic Theater and two Production Sessions.

Job hunters took time to do some last minute networking at the Job Fair. Around noon, attendees lined up for their last opportunity to collect teapots. Things concluded when the Exhibition Floor closed in its time-honored tradition with the bagpipes playing Amazing Grace.

Here are some of the day’s highlights…

CAF Production Session: Rhythm & Hues Studios Presents: How to Bake a Pi

The panel of this session focused on the technical challenges they faced while making the movie, such as creating photo real animals and digital oceans and skies. They talked about each in length and mentioned some interesting tidbits such as the film was shot in a tank that was custom built and approximately the size of a football field. They also explained how they wanted to raise the bar on Aslan and create a tiger that viewers wouldn’t realize was digital. This was especially important because some scenes were shot with a real tiger and they alternated back and forth.

CAF Production Session: Scare School 101: The Making of Disney-Pixar’s “Monsters University”

The panel kicked things off by saying that the story changed but they had three challenges that were consistent. One was that they had more characters than ever before. To help address this, they created variations of some existing characters, such as Fungus, and ended up creating 422 different monsters. Second, was the fact that they had furry monsters wearing clothes and had some challenges related to the hair and clothing interacting correctly. Finally, the movie would be challenging to light and render so they came up with ways to reduce the number of lights needed.

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