Rob Cook on SIGGRAPH Asia

Tue 4th Nov 2008, by | Siggraphasia2008

The Second Featured Speaker at SIGGRAPH Asia is PIXAR's Rob Cook.

Cook was the co-architect and primary author of Pixar's RenderMan software, which creates photo-realistic computer images. In 2001, he received an Oscar for his contributions, the first Academy Award ever given for software. In the last 10 years, every film nominated for a Visual Effects Academy Award has used RenderMan. During an interview last week, Cook told CGSociety that in his SIGG Asia speech, he will be focusing on the interplay of art and technology when PIXAR creates its movies. "I'll be emphasizing things about that process that might be applicable to stuff other than making movies," he said. Rob certainly won't be among strangers in Singapore either.  "The other featured speaker, Don Greenberg, was my professor in graduate school at Cornell University. I also know a number of the authors of the technical papers."

At Cornell, Cook worked on simulating realistic surfaces, taking CG images past the basic plastic coated look. In 1981, he developed the first programmable shader while at Lucasfilm/PIXAR, now an essential part of GPUs and game engines. He blended complex effects in CG creatives, with realistic lights and camera blur, known as the Monte Carlo effect. In 1987, he received the ACM SIGGRAPH Achievement Award in recognition of these contributions.

"I'm glad to see that the SIGGRAPH Asia papers program has that same high quality. I hope there are a lot of attendees from throughout Asia and that the conference becomes a major event with cutting-edge technology from the region," he says. "For a number of years, the SIGGRAPH community has become increasingly international. The three conferences SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH Asia, and Eurographics will span the year and the globe."

Related links:
SIGGRAPH Asia 2008
Advanced Program [direct download]