On October 21st and 22nd, Toronto ACM SIGGRAPH was proud to host our friend Bill Polson, formerly from Pixar Animation Studios. Bill had a long and prolific career at Pixar, serving in many roles including Supervising TD of Pixar University, Supervising TD of Short Films, Director of Pipeline, and, most recently, Director of Industry Strategy, where he was the originator of Pixar’s OpenSubDiv effort. Bill has also been active in the ACM SIGGRAPH community and is the creator of the popular program “SIGGRAPH Dailies!”
We were thrilled when Bill accepted our invitation to visit Toronto and to bring to our audience a person of such high profile in the industry. Bill’s current interest lies in analysing various animation and VFX production pipelines and understanding the principles and design patterns behind them. Bill is currently working on a book on this subject and we were quite interested in what he’s discovered in his research!
We greeted Bill on the morning of October 21st and quickly took him to see his friends at the offices of our Founding Sponsor, Side Effects Software. Later that evening we treated Bill to some of Toronto’s finest dining in the company of the Toronto leadership team and friends to prepare him for a very busy day to follow.
The next morning, Bill visited the offices of our Platinum Sponsor for our evening event, Autodesk. There, Bill was able to have lunch with members of the Maya team and give a preview of the presentation he would give later than evening. Later in the day Bill visited Southpaw Technology and got a quick tour of Arc Productions before heading to his hotel to prepare for his talk.
Bill presented to a sold out room at the University of Toronto, with around 70 people present. His talk was very entertaining and quite informative, and Bill not only described some of the design patterns he’s uncovered but also the thought process that led to his conclusions. There was a lot of information to cover and many question, so we ended up staying an extra 30 minutes longer than programmed! Bill has generously shared his presentation slides with us for those who would like to review his talk.
After the talk, the crowd proceeded to the Prenup Pub for some food and good cheer. Everyone had a wonderful time and it was truly an exciting evening!
We would like to thank Bill Polson for taking time out of his busy schedule to visit our wonderful city and present to our audiences. We really enjoyed having him here and hope he will visit us soon and often!
Thank you also to the Dynamic Graphics Project, from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, who co-hosted this event with us. Thank you as well to our Platinum Sponsor, Autodesk, and our Founding Sponsor, Side Effects Software. We’d also like to thank Toronto Section of the Visual Effects Society, Toronto Animated Arts Festival International, and The Immersive Technology Alliance, for helping us spread the word about Bill’s visit. Finally, we’d like to thank each and every attendee who came to Bill’s presentation!
Congratulations go out to our door prize winners: Max Julian, Lisa Zhang, and Caroline Cai!