Considering everything I’ve been up to for the last couple of months, you’d think I’d be satisfied. But alas, there was indeed one event I had to skip — SIGGRAPH 2002, in (I believe) San Antonio.

Hmmm? A network/security geek, mourning a missed SIGGRAPH?

Not so surprising. I started out in Graphics, before meandering through Web Design, User Interfaces, Emergency Windows Repair, Unix Admin, Security, Low Level Networking…heh, and whatever comes next. But after attending SIGGRAPH 2001, and seeing the Ferrofluid Masterpiece, Protrude, Flow live, I remembered exactly what attracted me to graphics in general and SIGGRAPH in particular.

Nothing like your brain calling bullshit on your eyes to wake you up in the morning.

Anyway, there was some genuinely incredible stuff at SIGGRAPH this year that, surprisingly enough, I never saw much mention of after the show. (As it turns out, my absolute favorite piece of work — the one I myself have become an avid user of — doesn’t even show up on Google!) This is shocking, to the point that I’m actually going to bother to report on something like four months after the fact just because, well, it’s just that impressive.

The definitive, though incomplete archive of papers can be found here; I’ve decided to write about a few of the things that surprised/impressed me. Note, I’m heavily biased towards those papers that I could actually download the associated videos of, so very cool sounding things (like raytracing with pixel shaders) couldn’t really be checked out. Oh well.

Click here for the review (it used to be attached directly, but it got a bit too long for the front page).