I'll be in Los Angeles in two weeks for Siggraph 2008.
Because of that, I've been coding a bit less and spending more time with Excel and Power Point, preparing for some meetings that I'll have there..
Using MS Office depresses me. I used to pride myself of not understanding what possible use for Office I would have.
Now, I think it's important to make Power Point presentations for all those people that aren't talking with you daily and that can't or won't understand code. One must learn to communicate and perhaps to inject some hype, too (MegaTexture, Geospatial, real-time Ray Tracing ;) ..but when time is scarce, then it's depressing to think that I could be effectively writing code and solving interesting problems rather than picking a nice font or resizing a picture in a corner of a presentation slide.
This reminds me a Dilbert strip that to me is now more real than ever: at an external site there is Wally's head coming out through a hole in table, inside a glass bell. Wally's face looks tired and unshaved. A spectator is looking at it while Dilbert explains: "this is what our 3D product would look like if we didn't have to waste time preparing demos". ...my feeling exactly 8)

Anyhow, I did write some code too. For one thing I'm at a good point with this "geometry processing framework". Basically a 3D engine tailored for geometry manipulation rather than rendering.
I once wrote something that was mixing both geometry processing and rendering, but it was a bit of a pain to maintain.
Personally, I think that it's more difficult and more important to put down those kind of frameworks rather than getting Direct3D/OpenGL to spin an object. Making API calls to a spoon-fed rendering interface is not the same as manipulating, optimizing, organizing data.

On the texture side, I've started writing some Power Point (indeed) and the goal there is to push the system rather than the format. The idea is that a JPEG-like format is being built but it's important to see how the eventual engine behind will handle it best, unpacking at selected texture resolutions on the fly depending on the VRAM and bandwidth budget.

Very important is also the build process. I've been asking artists not to optimize textures. Current assets are good enough to make high quality pre-rendered movies.. one character uses about 1GB of texture memory. However, many times these textures include an alpha channel that is not used and that can safely be removed. Bump maps, which only need one value can also be converted from RGB to grayscale (can't do it for color textures because in DX10 there are red-channel-only textures instead of luminosity textures (bha !)).
Anyway, the idea really is to make things as scalable as possible.. this is exciting because it gives authoring freedom.
One could ask an artist to make a model at a specific resolution or even to make one highres and then manually convert it to lower res with normal maps.. but that's all time wasted doing manual labor. Manual work is what should be avoided.. artists shouldn't worry about simplifying geometry unless they want to.

Time to sleep.. the Melatonin is finally making it's effect 8)
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Let's see if I can update this blog in 4 minutes 8)

Yesterday and today I finally prepared my presentation for my company about Siggraph 2007.

The presentation itself is divided in 3 groups. Every group has a different approach. For my group we decided to do 4 (all members excluding one that is on holiday) quick presentations of 5 minutes each.
Well it's actually 4 minutes as 1 minutes is needed at the very least to change places and load up the PowerPoint slides.

I did my 6 slides in English and then planned to present them in Japanese, but I was definitely being way too optimistic.
So tonight at home I did a few trials and quickly decided to go for English. Not many people will understand me but I'll be a lot like being at Siggraph itself 8)  read more »

今日は東京に帰りました。先日あの同僚はディジカメをなくしました。その次僕もカメラをなくしました（；＿；）
お金はあまり問題ない…問題は最後の日のパーティとかの写真はアップすることはできなかった。
明日から新しいカメラを買うと思う。

Today I came back to Tokyo. Recently a coworker's digital camera disappeared. After that my digital camera disappeared as well（；＿；）
I don't really worry about money but more about the fact that I couldn't upload the pictures of the party on the last day.
Tomorrow I will probably buy a new camera.

最後の日をカメラなくしましたけど、もっと大きいの問題あった：ある同僚は消えた！
その件に細かい探すことできないけど、結構大変なことみたいです。  read more »

今日は早く朝起きて（5時位！）ランドリーをしました。

Today I woke up early (about 5 AM !) and did the laundry.

ランドリーをしながら朝ごはんを食べた。このホテルに朝ごはんは無料んです！…食べ物はすばらしいではないのに（＾＾；）
実はここがホテルじゃなくてモテルです。登録したとき、車のモデルと色を聞いてた 8P

And while doing the laundry I had breakfast. Breakfast in this hotel is free, but the food is far from great （＾＾；）  read more »

2007_08_san_diego_siggraph

Siggraph is cool. I could spot around Jim Blinn and Michael Cohen. Ravi Ramamoorthi got an award this year.. definitely deserved !
After that there was the papers' presentation.. where presenters got wild and tried to push the envelope of bullshit pseudo-funny comedy.. just be serious and present your paper.. if I want to laugh I will watch a movie or something.
But in the American culture, you have to throw in half-assed jokes for those that like them. Sure enough, there usually is some 40 years old guy in the back that goes "ho ho ho".. bha !

Anyhow.. it's all going well. I met a cool Italian programmer yesterday that told me that he spent most of the day checking out the Japanese girls at the event. eheheh not so many really, but I suspect he meant Asian girls as a whole 8)
That reminded me that I can't wait to go back to Tokyo !!

wooooo

I arrived yesterday at about 5PM. Went straight to the hotel, took a shower and then out with some coworkers.
The hotel is actually a motel and it's 5 miles from the convention center. On top of that, because there weren't enough rooms, I ended up in a quite small room with a coworker of mine.. (^^;)
There is a king-size bed + a crappy temporary bed.
The less in all this is that it's important to book very early or it's going to be a pain trying to stay in a decent location for the Siggraph.
Luckily there is a bus that dedicated to move back and forth between my motel and the convention center.

Speaking of organization.. the Wireless connection seems to work great !!!
This is a big step forward compared to GDC 2007 and Perforce conference were the connection was unreliable at best..  read more »

I'm taking off tomorrow for Siggraph 2007 in San Diego. I am not (necessarily) happy.
I used to be quite interested about becoming a great gfx programmer but now not so much anymore. Still, I have it in me and I have a great chance to make a difference and I will.
Not this year, maybe not next year, but definitely (perhaps 8) in two years.

Tonight sucks because I have to leave and I'm always stressed when leaving.
And... and and...

I'm watching this movie !

However, I am NOT watching this lame interpretation ->  read more »