So, yeah, went to SIGGRAPH last month, I’ll shut up about it soon, but there was some stuff.

For instance, there was Keynoter George Lucas saying that SIGGRAPH’s work was done, and that he was going to outsource everything. Kinda reminded me of Arthur Danto, but George would be more like the billionaire Arthur Danto who happens to own all the galleries in New York.

For me, the really valuable thing about SIGGRAPH has always been the courses. Most of them are online as PDF’s, though ACM is always happy to charge you to download them.

For instance, the Witkin/Barr/Baraff tutorial is the best intro to particle systems I know of.

This year, here’s a few that intrigued:

Computational Photography had some interesting things to say about where digital imaging hardware is going.

Line Drawings From 3D Models gives lovely bibliography and introduces non-photorealistic rendering concepts.

Recent Advances in Haptic Rendering — that’s force-feedback to you and me. Someday…

Others I’ll let you google:
There are always programming tutorials:
An Interactive Introduction to OpenGL Programming
GPU Shading and Rendering

There are always five year’s worth of math tutorials:
Visualizing Quaternions
Discrete Differential Geometry: An Applied Introduction
Introduction to Articulated Rigid Body Dynamics
Man, if only I had two brains..

Groovy shit to do with game engines:
Thalmann’s Crowd and Group Animation