Student work screened at premier computer graphics conference

July 29, 2019
UH News

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Work from animation students at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Academy for Creative Media (ACM) and Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) will be showcased in the 8th annual faculty submitted student work exhibit for SIGGRAPH 2019 in Los Angeles. The work will be screened throughout the conference, which runs July 28–August 1.

SIGGRAPH is one of the largest and most prestigious annual conferences for computer graphics and interactive techniques in the world. Ten minutes of student work was submitted, including LAVA‘s Destiny-Class CyberCANOE, 2D and 3D character animation scene assignments and animated short films.

The projects

For the LAVA project, undergraduate and graduate students worked together in the full design, prototyping, physical construction and software development (including application programming interface and demonstrational applications) of the 256 megapixel hybrid-reality environment Destiny-class CyberCANOE.

The 2D and 3D scene assignments consisted of short character performances that focused on a certain action while also exhibiting personality. These actions or assignment prompts included walk cycles, monolog scenes, dialog scenes between multiple characters and body mechanics exercises (such as pushing, pulling or lifting an object). The 2D assignments were from ACM 318 Classical 2D Full Animation course and the 3D character assignments were from ACM 316 3D Character Animation course. There were 3D environment scenes from ACM 215 3D Scene Design, where students modeled, textured, lit and rendered an environment using Maya, the industry standard 3D animation software package.

The animated short films were completed in a semester during ACM 320 and ACM 216, with students working independently from concept to completion.

“SIGGRAPH is one of the most prestigious computer graphics conferences in the world. Having our ACM animation and LAVA students’ work showcased during the event is exciting exposure for them, as countless industry professionals, artists, researchers, and technologists will see their work,” said Brittany Biggs, ACM assistant professor.