Bio:
NVIDIA founder Jensen Huang has served as president, chief executive officer, and a member of the board of directors. Starting out in PC graphics, NVIDIA helped build the gaming market into the largest entertainment industry in the world today. The company's invention of the GPU made possible real-time programmable shading, which defines modern computer graphics, and later revolutionized parallel computing. He holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from Oregon State University and an M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University in California.

Bio:
Rev Lebaredian is vice president of Omniverse and simulation technology at NVIDIA. For the last five years at NVIDIA, he and his teams have been combining the rendering, physics simulation, and artificial intelligence technologies pioneered by NVIDIA into a single platform for creating and simulating physically accurate virtual worlds — NVIDIA Omniverse. Lebaredian continues to lead the Omniverse product, engineering, and research teams.

Bio:
Sanja Fidler is an associate professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Ontario. She is also the vice president of AI research at NVIDIA. Previously, she was a research assistant professor at TTI-Chicago, a philanthropically endowed academic institute located on the campus of the University of Chicago, Illinois.

Bio:
Simon Yuen is senior director of avatar technology at NVIDIA where he leads the digital human efforts with the goal of developing new character technology and deep learning-based solutions that allow new and more efficient ways of creating high-quality digital characters. Prior to NVIDIA, Yuen spent over 21 years in the visual effects industry, straddling both the art and technology sides of the problem at many studios including Method Studios, Digital Domain, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Dreamworks, Blizzard Entertainment, and others, building teams and technologies that push the envelope of photorealistic digital character creation.

Bio:
Dr. Steven Parker is vice president of professional graphics at NVIDIA Corporation, where he holds responsibility for several ray tracing technologies, including NVIDIA RTX™ drivers and APIs such as NVIDIA OptiX™, the RTX™ rendering systems in NVIDIA Omniverse™, the Material Definition Language, and the NVIDIA IndeX® scientific visualization system. Combining a history of ray tracing, rendering, and high-performance computing, Parker has been focused on bringing physically based rendering systems to interactive applications.

Presented by Hexagon AB: Even Better Than the Real Thing: Worldbuilding With Digital Twins and AI
Featured Speaker: Burkhard Boeckem
Wednesday, 10 August 2022
9–10 am PT

Burkhard Boeckem, chief technology officer at Hexagon AB, will unveil a new category of digital reality technologies that fundamentally change how we think about worldbuilding, design, and production. Burkhard's passion is the democratization of digital realities, which led to Hexagon's development of the Leica BLK line of laser scanners, the launch of HxDR, a powerful visualization and collaboration platform, and recently led to the acquisition of Immersal, an AR technology for spatial mapping and anchoring. Discover the massive potential digital realities hold for worldbuilding, visualization, and immersive storytelling — from VFX to AEC, from metaverse to virtual production — in a world where ideas know no constraints.

Bio:
Burkhard Boeckem is the CTO of Hexagon AB and has worked in the geospatial industry for over 20 years. As CTO, he is responsible for driving innovation and development of Hexagon's autonomous technology vision. Throughout his career, he has focused on R&D, delivering innovation in digital reality, and working with the latest advances in disruptive technologies, such as AI and 5D visualization. Boeckem holds an M.S. in geodesy from the University of Bonn in Germany, and a PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich).

Presented by Unity: Lion: A Glimpse of the Future With Unity Art Tools
Featured Speakers: James Jacobs, Unity Technologies; Sara Hansen, Unity Technologies; Anton Blake, Moving Picture Company/Monster Emporium; Julio Cesar Garcia, Rocket Science VFX
Wednesday, 10 August 2022
2:15–3:15 pm PT

Watch the premiere of Unity's latest demo, Lion. This production features innovations in real-time technology that shows content created with Ziva, Wētā Digital, SyncSketch, SpeedTree, and the Unity Editor artist tools. Lion showcases plans to help artists create boundary-pushing visuals, as well as foundations for richer creator workflows.

Bio:
James Jacobs is a Sci-Tech Academy Award-winning VFX artist with over 25 years of expertise. He has held leadership positions at Weta Digital, Digital Domain, DreamWorks, Mr. X, and Method Studios. In 2015, James cofounded Ziva Dynamics, a company dedicated to solving challenging and high-value character obstacles in media and entertainment. At Unity, he leads the continued development of Ziva tools and finds new ways to bring the realism and quality of film characters into the game/real-time industry.

Bio:
Sara Hansen is a CG generalist with 11 years of VFX industry experience. With more than 25 film and television projects, her experience spans multiple areas in CG including texturing, look development, layout, lighting, hair, simulation, and rendering. Her work led her to Wētā Digital as a groom artist, and she joined Ziva in 2020, where she now collaborates with Unity. She is passionate about creating assets from start to finish, using a mix of her technical and artistic skill sets.

Bio:
Anton Blake has been a professional animator for 13 years, having worked in film, TV, and game industries. After contributing to "The Lion King," he chose to explore teaching and mentorship, starting with a tutorial based on the cubs from the film. The popularity of this tutorial motivated Anton to create entire animation workshops, eventually leading to Monster Emporium. He now works at MPC during the day and runs the Monster Emporium school at night.

Bio:
Julio Cesar Garcia is a VFX pipeline developer who enjoys mixing technology and art. He is currently working at Rocket Science VFX in Toronto. Julio's strong passion for animal behavior led him to apply his knowledge to creature animation and simulation. In 2020, he joined Monster Emporium as pipeline developer and creature TD, where he develops new technologies and improves creature assets.

Presented by AMD: The Collision of Technology and Art
Featured Speakers: James Knight, AMD; Dylan Sisson, Pixar; Leif Pedersen, Pixar; and Francois Chardavoine, Lucasfilm
Thursday, 11 August 2022
9–10am PT

This address with James Knight, Dylan Sisson, Leif Pedersen, and Francois Chardavoine will discuss how technology and art push each other to benefit great storytelling. Using examples of how some of the world's best creatives leverage advanced computing, giving artists more time with their pixels, they will explore how the creative sandbox is bigger and deeper than ever before.

Bio:
Dylan Sisson, marketing manager, Pixar Animation Studios, is an accomplished artist with more than 20 years of experience in feature film visual effects, combining a deep knowledge of computer graphics with a traditional background of painting, illustration, and toy design. Sisson brings a unique artistic style and a record of creative leadership to a diverse portfolio of work.

Bio:
James Knight is the global director of media and entertainment at AMD (Advanced Micro Devices), where he supports video streaming, VFX, virtual production, and post-production computing applications for the largest media brands, studios, and content streaming platforms in the world. Knight's work spans two decades in production, post-production, real-time visual effects, and virtual production.

Bio:
Leif Pedersen has more than 15 years of production experience. He is a RenderMan specialist and CG generalist on Pixar's RenderMan team, where he loves to showcase some of the most artistic and technical aspects of the renderer.