On February 4th, he Toronto ACM SIGGRAPH Chapter was proud to host Jos Stam of Autodesk Research for its first event of 2016. Jos is a world-class researcher who has won many prestigious awards, including two Technical Achievement Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award. Although Jos has published work on many topics including BRDFs and subdivision surfaces, on this evening we gathered to celebrate the publication of his book, The Art of Fluid Animation.
For this sold-out event, a crowd of 75 people gathered at the Autodesk Viz Studio in downtown Toronto. After a few opening remarks from our Chair, Gord Kurtenbach, Senior Director for Autodesk Research and sponsor of this event, came up to the podium to introduce the main speaker.
Jos gave us a very personal talk about his career in computer graphics, much like the writing in his book. He showed never-before seen paintings he created as a young teen which reflected his fascination with the shapes of fluids and cloth. Jos also showed some impressive demos of emergent fluid behavior which his algorithm replicates. To conclude, Jos shared some videos that highlight how his algorithm is used in Autodesk products today.
After the talk and a question period, we raffled three T-shirts, imprinted with the book cover, that Jos generously donated. Congratulations to our winners Dianna Basso, Xavier Snelgrove, and the winner of the Grand Prize (a Jos Stam sized T-shirt), Thuan Ta.
After the event, a smaller crowd joined Jos at betty’s for some informal discussion, networking, and good cheer.
We would like to thank Autodesk Research for their generous sponsorship of this event.
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