I've been pretty busy over the last few months, so I haven't had a chance to really comb through the SIGGRAPH program. There are several good overviews at the Real-Time Rendering Blog.

My plan feels full, but there is still time left for posters and the expo. I think I'm doing it right. There are a couple courses and some of the Avatar talks that look interesting on Sunday, but, seriously? Sunday? FAIL.

Monday

• Lighting & Material Design (9:00AM - 10:30AM)

  There are several presentations about PantaRay in conjunction with all the sessions (at least a dozen!) about Avatar. PantaRay: Fast Ray-Traced Occlusion Caching in this session looks good.

• Split Second Screen Space (2:00PM - 3:30PM)

  All four papers in this session sound interesting. I'm especially interested in Screen Space Classification for Efficient Deferred Shading and Split-Second Motion Blur. Unfortunately, I don't see a preprints for either one online.

Tuesday

• Importance Sampling for Production Rendering (course) (9:00AM - 10:30AM)

  I've been wanting to include some coverage of this topic in VGP352 for the last couple years. I already talk about GPU-Based Importance Sampling from GPU Gems 3, but I'd like to have a bit broader coverage.

• GPU Rendering (2:00PM - 3:30PM)

  Reducing Shading on GPUs Using Quad-Fragment Merging and Real-Time Lens Blur Effects and Focus Control look to be the highlights in this session for me.

  As usual at SIGGRAPH, there are big periods of nothing for me, and big periods where there are 37 things I want to see. Also at 2:00 is An Introduction to 3D Spatial Interaction With Videogame Motion Controllers. Since this session runs until 5:00PM, I might just drop in late.

Wednesday

• Textures (10:45AM - 12:15AM)

  I like the looks of all the papers in this session. By-Example Synthesis of Architectural Textures

and Synthesizing Structured Image Hybrids are probably the most interesting to me. However, Vector Solid Textures and Mesh Colors also look good.
• APIs for Rendering (2:00PM - 3:30PM)

  I posted about Open Shading Language a few months ago. I'd like to hear more about what they've done... especially since I've been off in compilerland this whole year.

• Perception, Presence & Animation (2:00PM - 3:30PM)

  I might try to drop in for Using Blur to Affect Perceived Distance and Size.

• OpenGL BoF (5:15PM)

  Duh.

Thursday

• Large Steps Toward Open Source (panel) (9:00AM - 10:30AM)

  I feel obligated to attend this panel.

• Games & Real Time (10:45AM - 12:15AM)

  Both Practical Morphological Anti-Aliasing on the GPU and Curvature-Dependent Reflectance Function for Rendering Translucent Materials are high on my list. I think the later paper had a poster last year. Whether it was them or not, there was an cool posted about a similar technique.

  I may need to bail to go to The Making of "TRON: LEGACY".

• Global Illumination Across Industries (2:00PM - 5:15PM)

  GI has always been fascinating to me, and I'm so happy to live in a time where real-time GI is just about within reach.