Unlike previous years, this year’s SIGGRAPH flew by quickly. The shortened schedule helped, and since I didn’t have to work the booth I was forced to schedule things carefully in order to figure out what I wanted to see.

The trip started earlier than usual. I flew down to LA two Fridays ago (July 25) where I met up with Jeff and his girlfriend Cathy. After the annual In-N-Out feeding ritual that evening, the next day we went to Disneyland where we spent most of the day lining up for rides. On Sunday we met up with Susan, her friend Anne, and Jamie, and spent the day at SeaWorld. The highlight of the day was the dolphin show, although the river rapids ride was fun - if only because we all got soaked. SIGGRAPH proper started in earnest that evening when I tried to check in at the Marriott next to the convention centre and discovered my reservation hadn’t been made.

Monday to Wednesday was a blur of sketches, courses, and paper sessions. Highlights included: a the hair course, especially Steve Worley’s talk about a new illumination model which captures colored secondary highlights; the ILM special session, where animators showed off homebrew animations from their youths; two Lord of the Rings shading sketches by Weta (highlighting PRMan!); the entire paper session on shadows; and the high dynamic range monitor by Sunnybrook technologies.

Somewhere in between I managed to sneak in some time to join the Pixar team in volleyball against PDI. Despite playing for only one and a half games, my legs hurt for days afterwards. I felt old.

As has been the case for the last couple of years, the parties in the evening weren’t great. This year’s annoying twist: the facilities threw the partiers out early - by midnight, or even by eleven in one case, security guards would descend and ask us to leave, even if it was pretty clear we were all willing to continue to pay to consume alcohol.

Wednesday evening was the RenderMan User’s Group meeting. I was required to talk for a minute or two, and Mach’s sketch was marred by machine issues, so I was in minor panic mode for part of the evening. In the end though everything went as well as could be expected.

By Thursday I was bored of the technical side of things and decided to work the booth, and was surprised to find myself enjoying interacting with the exhibition goers. Our booth looked great with very large Finding Nemo images, the shiny walking teapot and poster giveaways this year were hits, and people this year were for the most part surprisingly well behaved about picking up posters in the morning (although we also enacted crowd control measures this year). And the PRMan on the G5 demo was very popular - I’ve never seen people so excited just to watch buckets render. By the afternoon though, the incessant pleas for teapots grew wearisome and we were glad to pack it in.

SIGGRAPH was over a day short, so on Friday Susan and I just tried to relax. We took the ferry over to Coronado and lounged on the beach for a while. Saturday was spent at the zoo with Susan and Anne. It was a bit rushed since I had an early evening flight, but it was definitely a worthwhile experience - although I should mention that the Seattle zoo does compare favourably with San Diego’s.

All in all, a better SIGGRAPH than last year. The venue helped a lot: San Diego has a much better climate than San Antonio, and seems like a much more livable city in general. Being able to spend free time with Susan for a week also helped greatly. As for the organization itself: attendance this year was higher, and I’ve heard it turned a profit, thanks to cost cutting measures (no panels, one apparently very bad reception) as well as last minute exhibition registrations. Since we’re stuck in the hellhole that is LA for the next two years, this SIGGRAPH may have to last us for a while until it returns to San Diego in 2006.