2011 Bellairs Workshop on Computer Animation:

GRAND Challenges, Animation and Geometry

This is the third Bellairs Workshop on Computer Animation. This year, the focus will be on problems in to animation and geometry, with a special emphasis on related research projects in the GRAND NCE.

The workshop will bring together GRAND network investigators and other international experts in the animation and geometry communities. These communities do not typically work together; they usually attend different symposia, and do not often collaborate despite important connections between geometry and animation. This workshop will be a venue where these communities can join to focus on a selection of challenging problems where a cross fertilization of knowledge in modeling and animation can be of benefit. Topics may involve problems related to modeling, parameterization, capture and simulation of human motion and natural phenomena, physically based simulation and control. The goal is to assemble a synergistic mix of researchers to work on GRAND challenges, share ideas, define future research directions, and to develop new or existing collaborations.

The workshop will consist of a variety of activities, including keynote talks to frame the discussion, breakout sessions for participants to discuss topics in small groups, and a session for interactive demos. There will also be plenty of time for informal discussions. Additionally, the Bellairs facilities are relatively primitive (and inexpensive), so there are few distractions such as those typically found in hotels.

Accommodation is very basic (double occupancy only), and with partial board costs approximately 50 USD per day. Reservations must be made through the workshop organizer. Due to space limitations, participation at the workshop is by invitation only.

The workshop will take place at McGill University's Bellairs Research Institute and will be held Saturday 19 to Tuesday 22 February. Participants should plan to arrive Friday 18 as the Saturday session will start at 9:00 am. Departure can be as late as Friday 25th, and participants are strongly encouraged to take advantage of the additional days in order to continue discussions and to work on collaborative projects.

• Sheldon Andrews, McGill University, Canada.
• Marcus Brubaker, University of Toronto, Canada.
• Forrester Cole, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.
• Martin de Lasa, Autodesk, Canada.
• Tyler de Witt, University of Toronto, USA.
• Eugene Fiume, University of Toronto, Canada.
• David Fleet, University of Toronto, Canada.
• Herbert Grasberger, University of Victoria, Canada.
• Cindy Grimm, Washington University St. Louis, USA.
• Eitan Grinspun, Columbia University, USA.
• Wolfgang Heidrich, University of British Columbia, Canada.
• Aaron Hertzmann, University of Toronto, Canada.
• Paul Kry (organizer), McGill University, Canada.
• Christian Lessig , University of Toronto, Canada.
• Steven Longay, University of Calgary, Canada.
• David Mould, Carleton University, Canada.
• Sylvain Paris, Adobe Advanced Technology Labs, Canada.
• Emmanuel Piuze, McGill University, Canada.
• Pierre Poulin, University of Montreal, Canada.
• Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz, University of Calgary, Canada.
• Olivier Remillard, McGill University, Canada.
• Jarek Rossignac, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.
• Javad Sadeghi, University of Calgary, Canada.
• Faramarz Samavati, University of Calgary, Canada.
• Kaleem Siddiqi, McGill University, Canada.
• Karan Singh, University of Toronto, Canada.
• Breannan Smith, Columbia University, USA.
• Rasmus Tamstorf, Walt Disney Animation Studios USA.
• Michiel van de Panne , University of British Columbia, Canada.
• Etienne Vouga, Columbia University, USA.
• Brian Wyvill , University of Victoria, Canada.
• Victor Zordan, University of California Riverside, Canada.

Saturday 19 February

8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Morning Session, chaired by David Fleet
    Paul Kry: Welcome, information, and introductions
    David Fleet: Models for Video-Based Human Motion Analysis 
    Michiel van de Panne: Representations for control, mistakes made and lessons learned
12:00 Lunch / break / informal discussions
15:30 Afternoon Session, Physics-based human animation, chaired by Eugene Fiume
    Marcus Brubaker: Human motion and ground contact from video
    Martin de Lasa: Feature-Based Control 
    Victor Zordan: Momentum as a control representation
18:00 Dinner at Holetown festival

Sunday 20 February

8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Morning Session, chaired by Wolfgang Heidrich
    Aaron Hertzmann: Where Scientists Fear to Tread
    Kaleem Siddiqi: Geometry of streamline flows
    Jarek Rossignac: Steady Affine Motion (SAM), The quest for the most beautiful interpolating motion
12:00 Lunch / break / informal discussions
16:00 Afternoon Session
    Aaron Hertzmann: Panel discussion on evaluation methodology in animation research
    Breakout Session: Discussion on benchmarks in animation 
18:00 Dinner at Bellairs

Monday 21 February

8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Morning Session, chaired by Pierre Poulin
    Brian Wyvill: Six impossible problems before breakfast
    Forrester Cole: Modeling hard cases for line drawing interpretation
    Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz: Current challenges in plant modeling 
    Faramarz Samavati: Sketch-based modeling for subdivision and multiresolution surfaces
12:00 lunch / break / informal discussions
15:30 Afternoon Session, chaired by Michiel van de Panne
    David Mould: Exaptive synthesis
    Cindy Grimm: Quantitative comparison of biological shapes in a biologically meaningful fashion
    Emmanuel Piuze: Hair Modelling with Helicoids
18:00 Dinner at Bellairs
19:30 Evening Session, informal software demos, chaired by Paul Kry
    Steve Longay: TreePad: An Interactive Sketch-Based Tree Modeller for the iPad
    Herbert Grasberger: Implicit modeling demo
    Olivier Remillard: Physics based facial animation
    Victor Zordan: Physics and motion interfaces
    Breannen Smith and Eitan Grinspun: Teaching computer graphics and computer animation

Tuesday 22 February

8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Morning Session, Geometric Mechanics for Computer Graphics, chaired by Eugene Fiume
    Eugene Fiume: General musings on mathematical language
    Eitan Grinspun: Introduction to discrete differential geometry
    Christian Lessig: Principles of geometric mechanics in the continuous setting
    Etienne Vouga: Derivation of variational integration methods
    Tyler de Witt: Fluid simulation using a vorticity representation
    Breannan Smith: Generalized Reflections for Impact Resolution
12:00 Lunch / break / informal discussions
15:30 Afternoon Session, chaired by Cindy
    Rasmus Tamstorf: Making technology accessible
    Wolfgang Heidrich: Deformation Capture
    Sylvain Paris: Geometry of images and videos
    Pierre Poulin: Of Buildings and Blocks
18:00 Dinner
19:30 Evening Session
    Group A: Panel chaired by Michiel van de Panne: Graphics Community and Graphics Mojo
        Thoughts on collaboration vs competition, community in graphics, and the glue (or lack thereof?) holding graphics together.
    Group G: Discussion chaired by Christian and Tyler: Geometric mechanics break out session
        Modern and geometric foundations of light transport simulation, physically based fluid animation.

• 2010 Bellairs Workshop on Computer Animation
• 2009 Bellairs Workshop on Computer Animation