Since my original post about the SIGGRAPH 2010 courses, some of the courses now have updated speaker lists (including mine – regardless of what Eric may think, I’m not about to risk Hyper-Cerebral Electrosis by speaking for three hours straight). I’ll give the notable updates here:

Stylized Rendering in Games

Covered games will include:

• Borderlands (presented by Gearbox cofounder and chief creative officer Brian Martel as well as VP of product development Aaron Thibault)

• Brink (presented by lead programmer Dean Calver)

• The 2008 Prince of Persia (presented by lead 3D programmer Jean-François St-Amour)

• Battlefield Heroes (presented by graphics engineer Henrik Halén)

• Mirror’s Edge (also presented by Henrik Halén).

• Monday Night Combat (presented by art director Chandana Ekanayake) – thanks to Morgan for the update!

Physically Based Shading Models in Film and Game Production

• I’ll be presenting the theoretical background, as well as technical, production, and creative lessons from the adoption of physically-based shaders at the Activision studios.

• Also on the game side, Yoshiharu Gotanda (president, R&D manager, and co-founder of tri-Ace) will talk about some of the fascinating work he has been doing with physically based shaders.

On the film production side:

• Adam Martinez is a computer graphics supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks whose film work includes the Matrix series and Superman Returns; his talk will focus on the use of physically based shaders in Alice in Wonderland.  Imageworks uses a ray-tracing renderer, unlike the micropolygon rasterization renderers used by most of the film industry; I look forward to hearing how this affects shading and lighting.

• Ben Snow is a visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic who has done VFX work on numerous films (many of them as CG or VFX supervisor) including Star Trek: Generations, Twister, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, The Mummy, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, King Kong, and Iron Man. Ben has pioneered the use of physically based shaders in Terminator Salvation and Iron Man 2, which I hope to learn more about from his talk.

Color Enhancement and Rendering in Film and Game Production

The game side of the course has two speakers in common with the “physically-based shading” course:

• Yoshiharu Gotanda will talk about his work on film and camera emulation at tri-Ace, which is every bit as interesting as his physical shading work.

• I’ll discuss my experiences introducing filmic color grading techniques at the Activision studios.

And one additional speaker:

• While working at Electronic Arts, Haarm-Pieter Duiker applied his experience from films such as the Matrix series and Fantastic Four to game development, pioneering the filmic tone-mapping technique recently made famous by John Hable. He then moved back into film production, working on Speed Racer and 2012 (for which he won a VES award). Haarm-Pieter also runs his own company which makes tools for film color management.

The theoretical background and film production side will be covered by a roster of speakers which (although I shouldn’t say this since I’m organizing the course) is nothing less than awe-inspiring:

• Dominic Glynn is lead engineer of image mastering at Pixar Animation Studios. He has worked on films including Cars, The Wild, Ratatouille, Up and Toy Story 3. Dominic will talk about how color enhancement and rendering is done at different stages of the Pixar rendering pipeline.

• Joseph Goldstone (Lilliputian Pictures LLC) is a prominent consulting color scientist; his film credits include Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Batman Returns, Apollo 13, The Fifth Element, Titanic, and Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. He has contributed to industry standards committees such as the International Color Consortium (ICC) and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science’s Image Interchange Framework.

• Joshua Pines is vice president of color imaging R&D at Technicolor; between his work at Technicolor, ILM and other production companies he has over 50 films to his credit, including Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Forrest Gump, Twister, Mission: Impossible, Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, The Mummy, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, The Aviator, and many others. Joshua lead the development of ILM’s film scanning system and has a Technical Achievement Award from the Motion Pictures Academy of Arts & Sciences for his work on film archiving.

• Jeremy Selan is the color pipeline lead at Sony Pictures Imageworks. He has worked on films including Spider-Man 2 and 3, Monster House, Surf’s Up, Beowulf, Hancock, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Jeremy has contributed to industry standards committees such as the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI), SMPTE, and the Academy of Motion Picture Art and Science’s Image Interchange Framework. At the course, Jeremy will unveil an exciting new initiative he has been working on at Imageworks.

• The creative aspects of color grading will be covered by Stefan Sonnenfeld, senior vice president at Ascent Media Group as well as president, managing director, and co-founder of Company 3. An industry-leading DI colorist, Stefan has worked on almost one hundred films including Being John Malkovich, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, War of the Worlds, Mission: Impossible III, X-Men: The Last Stand, 300, Dreamgirls, Transformers, Sweeney Todd, Cloverfield, The Hurt Locker, Body of Lies, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Where the Wild Things Are, Alice in Wonderland, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and many others, as well as numerous high-profile television projects.