Presentation: "Opening Keynote: The Future of 3D Graphics Technology - from Gollum to Yoghurt"

Time: Monday 09:00 - 09:45 / Location: Store Sal, Musikhuset

3D graphics has evolved dramatically in the last several years. Driven by the demand of ever more realistic and complex graphics in movies such as Avatar and games like Crysis there is a constant hunger in the industry for new algorithms that can produce even more realistic and impressive effects.

In this talk, I will cover recent advances in graphics that has made movies such as Lord of the Rings and Avatar possible - and at the same time improve the flavor of yoghurt. I will show how the latest multi-core graphics algorithms enable a new experience, where it is possible to interact with a "3D photograph" in realtime. This technology, called KeyShot, is currently changing the way industrial designers work and it is making product photography obsolete. Finally, I will show how the next generation realtime graphics technology can run on the "cloud" and change the way we interact with the web.
 
Keywords: Graphics, Realtime, Photorealism, Web 3.0
 
Target Audience: Anyone using or interested in 3D graphics

Henrik Wann Jensen, Creator of Killer 3D technologies for "Lord of the Rings" and "Avatar"

Henrik Wann Jensen

Biography: Henrik Wann Jensen

Computer professors don't often win Oscars, but Henrik Wann Jensen did. He invented Photon Mapping at DTU, the technique that was used to simulate the skin on Gollum in "Lord of the Rings". For his research Henrik Wann Jensen received an Academy Award at the Oscar ceremony. More recently, Henrik has worked on the recent James Cameron film, "Avatar".
 
Henrik Wann's research is focused on realistic image synthesis, global illumination, rendering of natural phenomena, and appearance modeling. His contributions to computer graphics include the photon mapping algorithm for global illumination, and the first technique for efficiently simulating subsurface scattering in translucent materials. He is the author of "Realistic Image Synthesis using Photon Mapping," AK Peters 2001. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Technical University of Denmark in 1996. Now he is an associate professor at the University of California at San Diego, where he is working in the computer graphics lab.
 
Software Passion: Reverse engineering nature and using it for realtime photorealistic graphics technology
 
 
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