SIGGRAPH Asia 2015 in Japan presents the balance and harmony
between disruptive innovation and new technologies
The most creative and eminent computer graphics and interactive techniques pioneers came together in Japan for theeighth edition of Asia’s biggest gathering of digital innovations, which focused on a combination of revolutionary andevolutionary ideas, concepts and technologies

KOBE, Japan, 11 November 2015 – The Kobe Convention Center was bustling with activity thisweek as it played host to Asia’s premier graphics, animation, art and technology event. Held from 2to 5 November 2015, the 8th ACM SIGGRAPH Asia Conference and Exhibition brought together
over 7,000 computer graphics professionals, technologists, researchers, enthusiasts and tradevisitors hailing from 61 countries and regions across the globe.
SIGGRAPH Asia once again proved itself to be one of the leading platforms for computer graphics
and interactive techniques, featuring distinguished pioneers including E. Wes Bethel, Lawrence
Berkeley; Kwan Liu Ma, University of California, Davis; Scott Ross, VFX Pioneer and ex
CEO/Founder of Digital Domain; Steven Feiner, Columbia University; Takeo Kanade, Carnegie
Mellon University and Tomoyuki Nishita, The University of Tokyo.
More than 500 speakers delivered over 150 presentations, panel discussions and talks, generating
robust discussions and deep insights on current and future developments in the fields of computer
graphics and interactive techniques.
SIGGRAPH Asia 2015 also featured the latest hardware, software, technologies and inventions fromaround the world, attracting top names and organizations from both within and outside of Asia,
including Amazon Web Services, Digital Hollywood Japan, Forum 8, Google, Intel Corporation,Isotropix, Khronos Group, Multi-plAtform Game Innovation Centre (MAGIC) - Nanyang
Technological University Singapore, Pixar Animation Studios, Polygon Magic and Tokyo
Designer Gakuin College, to name a few.
“The team at SIGGRAPH Asia, including our sponsors, supporters, presenters, contributors,exhibitors, reviewers, juries and volunteers came together to put up a fantastic show this year. I am
confident that visitors enjoyed the rich number of affiliated programs we organized this year, alongwith more than 150 presentations that took place across all four days. SIGGRAPH Asia is truly thegathering for the most creative and distinguished computer graphics and interactive techniques
professionals. It gives me great honor to be a part of this year’s edition in Japan,” said Yoshifumi
Kitamura, Conference Chair, SIGGRAPH Asia 2015.
Highlights from SIGGRAPH Asia 2015 include:
Technical Papers Fast Forward gave attendees an entertaining and illuminating summary of thisyear’s submissions in an exciting two-hour session. Authors of the papers wowed the crowd with
their concepts and results, enticing the audience to attend their complete paper presentations at theTechnical Papers sessions. A paper, Real-Time Expression Transfer for Facial Reenactment,
presented by representatives/students/researchers from Max Planck Institut für Informatik, Stanford
University and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, showcased a method for the real-time transfer

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of facial expressions from an actor in a source video to an actor in a target video, which enables thead-hoc control of the facial expressions of the target actor.
The Computer Animation Festival continued to impress the audience with a showcase of stunningworks spanning the disciplines of visual effects, animation, research and development, games andeducation. A series of panels and talks were organized in line with the Computer Animation
Festival’s aim to bring in the most talented and elite computer graphics experts to go through theprocesses and techniques used to create the compelling content featured in blockbuster films fromthe past year as well as upcoming releases.
Audiences were treated to a behind-the-scenes look at animated features such as Big Hero 6, Inside
Out and upcoming releases Sanjay’s Super Team and The Good Dinosaur. VFX Pioneer Scott Ross
also presented a session on VFX… The History and Business of the Industry. The Electronic
Theater featured a two-hour showcase of the best animations, visual effects and scientificvisualizations produced over the last year. Some of the must-see works presented included scenes
from fantasy adventure film The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies, action role-playing game The Witcher
3: Wild Hunt, as well as CAF award winners Afternoon
Class, Chase Me and Natural Attraction.
The keynote presentations were delivered on the opening
and closing days of the conference. Ronnie del Carmen,
co-director of the animated feature, Inside Out, from Pixar
Animation, captivated the audience with his journey toPixar and his learnings from developing the story of InsideOut. Sharing anecdotes from his life, including hisinspirations, his previous work on renowned films such as Up, Finding Nemo and the animated TVseries, Batman: The Animated Series, del Carmen highlighted the importance of storytelling inanimation and collecting inspirations from everyday life events.
The second keynote speaker, Satoshi Tadokoro, research professor at Tohoku University andproject manager at the Japan Cabinet Office ImPACT Project, shared with the audience hisexperiences in the use of robotics systems for disaster response and recovery, and showcasedsome of his work with state-of-the-art disaster robotics and its applications. Some of the examples
he touched upon included the robot “Quince”, known for its aid in restarting a cooling system in theThe Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, and “Kenaf”, which is able to map out areas that may
be inaccessible to humans and also point out obstacles in such areas. In his Keynote, Doctor
Tadokoro emphasized the challenges faced by researchers and scientists in successful
implementation of disaster robotics in mainstream scenarios, and he also shared the field’s goals
including reduction of global disaster morality by 2030.
The Emerging Technologies and Art Gallery programs introduced visitors to intriguing
installations aimed at showcasing the lighter side of technology applications and human-computerinteraction.
Emerging Technologies showcased the latest interactive and graphics technologies in the 3D,
virtual reality and projection mapping industries. This year’s Emerging Technologies Program was aPage 2 of 6

true cross-section of science, technology, and art. Audiences were fascinated by 30 hands-on
demonstrations that expand the limits of current display technologies, exciting new hardware thatenable sophisticated and nuanced user input, innovative interaction techniques that enable more
complex interaction with application data and functionality, as well as excellent examples of haptics
developed to support multi-/cross-modality scenarios.
The program also announced the top two demonstrations based on audience and committee vote –the Best Demo Award as voted by Audience went to Ketsuro-Graffiti: A Canvas With Computer
Generated Water Condensation by Yuki Tsujimoto, Yuichi Itoh and Takao Onoye from the Graduate
School Of Information Science And Technology, Osaka University, while the Best Demo Award as
voted by Committee went to FVisiOn: Interactive Glasses-Free Tabletop 3D Images Floated By
Conical Screen And Modular Projector Arrays by Shunsuke Yoshida from the National Institute ofInformation and Communications Technology (NICT), Japan.

Ketsuro-Graffiti is a novel canvas
that shows images with computer
generated water condensation andenables users to touch them freely.
Users can write or apply graffiti with
their fingers on a pattern of water
generatedcondensation.
The
proposed system basically consists ofpeltier devices, an array of heat
conductive actuators, and a display
surface.

The “fVisiOn” project provides
virtual3D
media
naturally
alongside real media without theneed for special glasses. Its
design concept floats full-color
3D images of a 360°-view onto
an empty, floating tabletop
surface. Many people cannaturally share the experienceand enjoy the dancing 5-cm-tall
3D characters on the table.

18 amazing curated pieces of art that integrated craft techniques and contemporary digital design
were highlighted in the Art Gallery. Themed Life on Earth?, the program this year invited visitors toexperience and interact with art works and installations that utilize digital technology including visualand sound works, augmented-reality installations, as well as performances. Notable installations(from left to right) included At Home With Others, Conglomerate Distortions, S>HE<R and To Afar
The Water Flows.

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The Exhibition floor offered conference attendees a glimpse of innovative future tech that could
soon see uses in the commercial and consumer space. Visitors were blown away by the wide rangeof newly-developed systems, as well as novel applications of existing technology. Exhibitors thisyear included Live2D, a program that allows artists to easily capture and import 2D illustrations into
3D animations as well as an area for the Kobe City Government’s very own displays, where visitors
were treated to talks about the development of Kobe as a leader in the field of IT.
The Symposium on Education hosted various sessions, including education research, panel talks
and hands-on workshops. Artists from Pixar Animation Studios’ Inside Out hosted a Student Focus
Session, Pixar’s Abstract Thought – educational journeys from Inside Out artists, wherein theyshared with audiences, a bulk of whom were students, their educational backgrounds and journey toPixar. The future challenges of human resource development efforts in the digital content field within
Asia was a key discussion point in the panel session, Tomorrow’s digital content leaders in Asia,
which was moderated by Shuzo John Shiota, CEO, Polygon Pictures and Computer Animation
Festival Chair, along with Miho Aoki, the Symposium ofEducation Chair.
Showcasing some of the leading research and development in
mobile gaming, graphics, interaction techniques and AugmentedReality, the Symposium on Mobile Graphics and Interactive
Applications offered visitors the opportunity to a first-hand lookat some of the exciting developments in mobile technology.
Audiences were thrilled by JoggAR, a novel framework to
manage wearable visual, audio and sensing technology thatenables a game-like persistent Augmented Reality (AR)environment suitable for enhancing jogging and other exertion-based experiences.
At a special talk presented at the Symposium on Visualization in High Performance Computing
program, Dr. Hirofumi Seo, CEO & President, Sciement, Inc., shared with attendees the intricacies
of data-specific visualization, using insights from his project, the UT-Heart. The Symposium alsoorganized a contest inviting participants to showcase live demonstrations of open data visualization.
The Best Demo was awarded to Kiri Nakata and Tsuyoshi Tatsukawa, who showcased avisualization of cell divisions of embryos as a binary tree that could also serve to detect similar
processes from two different sets of data.
The ninth annual conference, SIGGRAPH Asia 2016, will be held in Macao at The Venetian Macao
from 5 to 8 December 2016.

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Looking forward to next year’s edition of SIGGRAPH Asia, Hongbo Fu, Conference Chair for
SIGGRAPH Asia 2016, had the following to say: “SIGGRAPH is definitely the most prestigious
forum in the field of computer graphics. Since the first introduction of SIGGRAPH into Asia in 2008,
SIGGRAPH Asia has continued the great success of SIGGRAPH in North America, and has quickly
become another platform for publishing top-notch graphics research. It not only exposes local
people or industries in Asia to many cutting-edge technologies, but it also provides a more direct
platform for Asian graphics researchers to exchange new ideas with international researchers.
At SIGGRAPH Asia 2016, we will have Computer Animation Festival, Courses, Emerging
Technologies, Posters, and Technical Papers. All of them have been successfully inherited fromSIGGRAPH North America. After several years’ of development, SIGGRAPH Asia has also
developed its own outstanding and reputable programs. We are pleased to continue offering
Technical Briefs, Symposium on Education, Symposium on Mobile Graphics and Interactive
Applications, Symposium on Visualization and Workshops at SIGGRAPH Asia 2016. The theme ofSIGGRAPH Asia 2016 is “Key to the Future”, since we strongly believe it is always important to keep
rethinking the future of computer graphics by exploring new directions.”###Media Contacts
Jamie Huang
SIGGRAPH Asia c/o Koelnmesse+65 6500 6730 / +65 9232 9738
jamie.huang@siggraph.org

Lara D’Souza / Keri Lee
Text100 for SIGGRAPH Asia 2015
+65 9622 7065 / +65 9337 2628
siggraph@text100.com.sg

Find us on:
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram with the official event hashtag, #SIGGRAPHAsia---About SIGGRAPH Asia 2015
The 8th ACM SIGGRAPH Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive
Techniques in Asia took place in Kobe, Japan at the Kobe Convention Center from 2 – 5 November
2015. The annual event held in Asia attracted the most respected technical and creative people fromall over the world who are excited by research, science, art, animation, gaming, interactivity,education and emerging technologies.
The 4-day SIGGRAPH Asia 2015 conference included a diverse range of juried programs this year,including an Art Gallery, Computer Animation Festival, Courses, Emerging Technologies, Posters,
Technical Briefs, Technical Papers, Symposium on Mobile Graphics and Interactive Applications,Workshops, and two new Symposiums – Symposium on Education and Symposium on Visualizationin High Performance Computing. In addition, the 3-day exhibition held from 3 – 5 November 2015
offered a business platform for industry players to market their innovative products and services toPage 5 of 6the computer graphics and interactive techniques professionals and enthusiasts from Asia andbeyond.
About ACM SIGGRAPH
The Association of Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics andInteractive Techniques (ACM SIGGRAPH) sponsors SIGGRAPH Asia. Founded in 1947, ACM is an
educational and scientific society uniting the world’s computing educators, researchers, andprofessionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field’s challenges. ACM
strengthens the profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest
standards, and recognition of technical excellence. The ACM SIGGRAPH deals with all aspects ofgraphical user/computer communication and manipulation: hardware, languages, data structure,methodology, and applications.

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