The SIGGRAPH Technical Papers program is the premier international forum for disseminating new scholarly work in computer graphics and interactive techniques. SIGGRAPH 2011, 7 ’11 August 2011 at the Vancouver Convention Centre, will feature 82 Technical Papers, selected from among 432 submissions.

The papers to be presented were chosen by a distinguished committee of 52 experts from academia and industry. This year’s Technical Papers program also includes conference presentations for 33 papers published this year in the journal ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG).

“Each year, the SIGGRAPH Technical Papers program evolves to feature the most cutting-edge advances in technology,” says Hugues Hoppe, SIGGRAPH 2011 Technical Papers Chair from Microsoft Research. “This year is no different as SIGGRAPH 2011 Technical Papers will provide a look into some of the latest achievements in facial animation, stereo and multi-layered displays, procedural modeling, and rendering.”

In addition to core topics of modeling, animation, rendering, imaging, and human-computer interaction, the Technical Papers program encouraged submissions from areas related to computer graphics, including: computer games, design, vision, scientific and information visualization, audio, and robotics.

Featured highlights from the SIGGRAPH 2011 Technical Papers program:

High-Quality Passive Facial Performance Capture Using Anchor Frames
A new technique for high-quality facial performance capture that leverages the repetitive structure of face motions to automatically locate frames with similar expressions, called anchor frames. High-resolution geometry is reconstructed and temporal motion is propagated in parallel using robust image-space matching between the anchor frames.

Authors: Thabo Beeler, ETH Zà¼rich and Disney Research Zà¼rich; Fabian Hahn, Disney Research Zà¼rich; Derek Bradley, Disney Research Zà¼rich; Bernd Bickel, Disney Research Zà¼rich; Paul Beardsley, Disney Research Zà¼rich; Craig Gotsman, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology; Bob Sumner, Disney Research Zà¼rich; Markus Gross, Disney Research Zà¼rich

Practical application as suggested by the Technical Papers Chair: Highly detailed facial capture using multiple cameras without markers.

Bounded Biharmonic Weights for Real-Time Deformation
Deformation by linear blending dominates practical use as the fastest approach for transforming 2D and 3D shapes. This paper develops “bounded biharmonic weights” that produce smooth and intuitive deformations for any combination of points, bones, and cages of arbitrary topology, making control of deformations simple and flexible.

Authors: Alec Jacobson, New York University; Jovan Popović, Adobe Systems Incorporated; Ilya Baran, Disney Research Zà¼rich; Olga Sorkine, New York University

Practical application as suggested by the Technical Papers Chair: An elegant UI framework that unifies cages, skeletons, and point constraints for 2D and 3D deformations.

Tomographic Image Generation for Attenuation-Based Light Field and High-Dynamic-Range Displays
This method optimizes auto-multiscopic displays composed of compact volumes of light-attenuating material. Inexpensively fabricated by stacking transparencies, the attenuators recreate a light field when illuminated by a backlight. Tomographic optimization resolves inconsistencies between views, leading to brighter, higher-resolution 3D displays with extended depth of field and improved dynamic range.

Authors: Gordon Wetzstein, The University of British Columbia; Douglas Lanman, MIT Media Lab; Wolfgang Heidrich, The University of British Columbia; Ramesh Raskar, MIT Media Lab

Practical application as suggested by the Technical Papers Chair: Exploring displays with more than two depth layers.

A Temporally Quantized Diffusion Model for Rendering Translucent Materials
This new model for subsurface scattering remains accurate for high absorption, supports high-frequency illumination, and can handle very thin materials. It is efficient to evaluate and works well in production.

Authors: Eugene d’Eon, Weta Digital Ltd; Geoffrey Irving, Weta Digital Ltd

Practical application as suggested by the Technical Papers Chair: Amazingly realistic human skin.

Physics-Inspired Upsampling for Cloth Simulation in Games
With this method for learning linear upsampling operators in physically based cloth simulation, coarse meshes are enriched with mid-scale details in minimal time and memory budgets, as required in computer games.

Authors: Ladislav Kavan, Disney Interactive Studios; Daniel Gerszewski, University of Utah; Adam Bargteil, University of Utah; Peter-Pike Sloan, Disney Interactive Studios

Practical application as suggested by the Technical Papers Chair: A practical approach to enhancing cloth animation in real-time games.

Computational Stereo Camera System With Programmable Control Loop
This computational stereo camera system closes the control loop to handle traditionally difficult shots. It is completely programmable, so complex shots can easily be scripted and adjusted depending on the scene and artistic preferences.

Authors: Simon Heinzle, Disney Research Zà¼rich; Pierre Greisen, Disney Research Zà¼rich and ETH Zà¼rich; David Gallup, University of North Carolina; Christine Chen, ETH Zà¼rich; Daniel Saner, ETH Zà¼rich; Aljoscha Smolic, Disney Research Zà¼rich; Andreas Peter Burg, ETH Zà¼rich; Wojciech Matusik, Disney Research Zà¼rich; Markus Gross, ETH Zà¼rich and Disney Research Zà¼rich

Practical application as suggested by the Technical Papers Chair: Stereo camera that uses computer vision processing to help automate interaxial and convergence settings.

Real-Time Eulerian Water Simulation Using a Restricted Tall Cell Grid
A new real-time Eulerian fluid simulation that uses a hybrid grid of regular cubic cells on top of a layer of tall cells above an arbitrary terrain. The method includes a novel multigrid method and several fluid solver modifications, and achieves 30fps in real-world scenarios on a modern GPU.

Authors: Nuttapong Chentanez, NVIDIA Corporation; Matthias Muller, NVIDIA Corporation

Practical application as suggested by the Technical Papers Chair: Realistic fluids rendered in real time.

A complete listing of all the papers presented in this year’s program will be available on the SIGGRAPH 2011 web site in late May.