CG: an evolving medium.(Editor's Note)(computer graphics )(Editorial)

Many people select summer as their favorite season--a perfect time to kick back and relax. For those of us in the computer graphics and interactive technologies community, summer means SIGGRAPH, where we can meet up with old friends and colleagues, learn about new technologies, and just be amazed by it all.

SIGGRAPH 2008 marks the 35th anniversary of the conference. Over those years, the show--like the technology around which it revolves--has changed significantly. And no doubt, it will change even more in the future.

In the early days, the SIGGRAPH crowds were small in comparison to the 30,000 attendees expected to converge in Los Angeles this month. And decades ago, the papers were written primarily by those in academia. Today, the technical papers still contain techie-sounding names, such as "Folding and Unfolding Surfaces," "Differential Equations," "Faces and Reflectance," and so forth. Indeed, these are not for the CG hobbyist. They are for the hard-core computer graphics artists who can talk the talk, as well as walk the walk. For those wanting a behind-the-scenes look at how a new technique or technology was implemented in a real working environment, the talks are a good choice--for instance, "Bend Me Break Me" offers a look at the creation of the Rope Bridge animation system used in Kung Fu Panda, how Rhythm & Hues made statues come to life in The Mummy 3, and the invention of Digital Domain's CracTastic tool for the fragmentation of solid geometry in that same film. (Of course, for those of you not attending the show, you can read about those particular feats right here in CGIYZ)

Back in the 1970s, very few people could afford the hardware required to run computer graphics. For many outside the government, computer graphics were cool though ...