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Publications

Papers & talks.

We engage with the global research community through collaborations with universities around the world, publications in academic journals, and participation in top-tier conferences. Explore our publications below!

Talk The Versatile Rigging of Splat in Strange World SIGGRAPH 2023

Cameron Black, Christoffer Pedersen

Talk Swoop: Animating Characters Along a Path SIGGRAPH 2023

Andy Lin, Hannah Swan, Justin Walker, Cathy Lam, Ricky Arietta

Talk Splat: Developing a "Strange" Shader SIGGRAPH 2023

Kendall Litaker, Brent Burley, Dan Lipson, Mason Khoo

Talk Honing USD: Lessons Learned and Workflow Enhancements at Walt Disney Animation Studios SIGGRAPH 2023

Emily Vo, George "Ricky" Rieckenberg, Ernest Petti

Talk Diving Deeper into Volume Style Transfer SIGGRAPH 2023

Mike Navarro

Talk Creating the Art-Directed Groom for Legend in Disney’s Strange World SIGGRAPH 2023

Courtney Chun, Jose Velasquez, Haixiang Liu

Talk Creating Curve-Based Garments with Custom Weave Patterns SIGGRAPH 2023

Dan Lipson, Jose Velasquez

Talk Creating Creature Chaos: The Methods that Brought Crowds to the Forefront on Disney’s Strange World SIGGRAPH 2023

Nathan Devlin, Yasser Hamed, Alberto Luceño Ros, Jeff Sullivan, D’Lun Wong

Talk Visualizing the Production Process of Encanto  with the Command Center SIGGRAPH 2022

Justin Tennant, Mitch Counsell, Far Jangtrakool, Salina Ortega, Rajesh Sharma, Tad Miller, Scott Kersavage

Talk Practical Multiple-Scattering Sheen Using Linearly Transformed Cosines SIGGRAPH 2022

Tizian Zeltner, Brent Burley, Matt Jen-Yuan Chiang

Talk Modeling Animated Jumbo Floral Display on Disney’s Encanto SIGGRAPH 2022

Andrew Finley, Jesse Erickson, Peter De Mund, Ying Liu

Talk Making Encanto with USD SIGGRAPH 2022

Tad Miller, Harmony M Li, Neelima Karanam, Nadim Sinno, Todd Scopio

Talk Gravity Preloading for Maintaining Hair Shape Using the Simulator as a Closed-Box Function SIGGRAPH 2022

Haixiang Liu

Talk Fracture-Aware Tessellation of Subdivision Surfaces SIGGRAPH 2022

Brent Burley, Francisco Rodriguez

Talk Encanto  - Let’s Talk About Bruno’s Visions SIGGRAPH 2022

Corey Butler, Brent Burley, Wei-Feng Wayne Huang, Karl Li, Benjamin Huang

Talk Embroidery and Cloth Fiber Workflows on Disney’s Encanto SIGGRAPH 2022

Jose Velasquez, Alexander Alvarado, Ying Liu, Maryann Simmons

Talk Wrapped Clothing on Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon SIGGRAPH 2021

Avneet Kaur, Johann Francois Coetzee

Talk Weaving The Druun’s Webbing SIGGRAPH 2021

Talk Unbiased Emission and Scattering Importance Sampling For Heterogeneous Volumes SIGGRAPH 2021

Wei-Feng Wayne Huang, Peter Kutz*, Yining Karl Li, Matt Jen-Yuan Chiang

Talk The Atmosphere of Raya and the Last Dragon SIGGRAPH 2021

Marc Bryant, Ryan DeYoung, Wei-Feng Wayne Huang, Joe Longson, Noel Villegas

Talk Stylizing Volumes with Neural Networks SIGGRAPH 2021

Mike Navarro, Jacob Rice

Talk Populating the World of Kumandra: Animation at Scale for Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon SIGGRAPH 2021

Alberto Luceño Ros, Kristin Chow, Jack Geckler, Norman Moses Joseph, Nicolas Ngheim

Talk Mathematical Tricks for Scalable and Appealing Crowds in Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Raya and the Last Dragon SIGGRAPH 2021

Nicolas Nghiem

Talk Creating Diversity and Variety in the People of Kumandra for Disney’s Raya and The Last Dragon SIGGRAPH 2021

Avneet Kaur, Erik Eulen, Johann Francois Coetzee

Talk Cooking Southeast Asia-Inspired Soup in Animated Film SIGGRAPH 2021

Cong Wang, Dale Mayeda, Jacob Rice, Thom Wickes, Benjamin Huang

Paper Discretization-Error-Accurate Mixed-Precision Multigrid Solvers SIAM J. SCI. COMPUT.

Rasmus Tamstorf, Joseph Benzaken, Stephen F. McCormick

Paper Algebraic Error Analysis for Mixed-Precision Multigrid Solvers SIAM J. SCI. COMPUT.

Stephen F. McCormick, Joseph Benzaken, Rasmus Tamstorf

Talk The Look and Lighting of "Show Yourself" from Frozen 2 SIGGRAPH 2020

Amol Sathe, Lance Summers, Matt Chiang, James Newland

Talk The Collaboration between Art & Technology: Making Disney Animation's Myth: a Frozen Tale SIGGRAPH 2020

Jose Luis Gomez Diaz, Jeff Gipson, Michael R.W. Anderson, Edward Robbins, Brittney Lee, Nick Russell

Talk Myth: a Frozen Tale  Stylized Effects for Real-Time VR SIGGRAPH 2020

Ian Coony, Dan Lund, Michael R.W. Andersen

Talk Making Beautiful Embroidery for Frozen 2 SIGGRAPH 2020

Ying Liu, Jared Wright, Alexander Alvarado

Talk How Short Circuit Experiments: Experimental Filmmaking at Walt Disney Animation Studios SIGGRAPH 2020

Jennifer Newfield, Josh Staub

Talk Frozen 2 : Effects Vegetation Pipeline SIGGRAPH 2020

Norman Joseph, Benjamin Fiske, Vijoy Gaddipati, Marie Tollec, Tad Miller

Talk Frozen 2 : Creating the Water Horse SIGGRAPH 2020

David Hutchins, Cameron Black, Marc Bryant, Richard Lehmann, Svetla Radivoeva

Talk Deconstructing Destruction: Making & Breaking Frozen 2 's Dam SIGGRAPH 2020

Marie Tollec, Charles Cunningham-Scott, Sean Jenkins, Lance Summers

Talk Creating the Wind Spirit SIGGRAPH 2020

Cameron Black, Benjamin Fiske, Trent Correy

Paper The Challenges of Releasing the Moana Island Scene EGSR 2019

Rasmus Tamstorf, Heather Pritchett

Talk Taming the Shadow Terminator SIGGRAPH 2019

Matt Jen-Yuan Chiang, Yining Karl Li, Brent Burley

Paper Subdivision-Based Nonlinear Multiscale Cloth Simulation SIAM J. SCI. COMPUT. 2019

Alena Kopaničáková, Rolf Krause, Rasmus Tamstorf

Talk Optimizing Rig Manipulation with GPU and Parallel Evaluation SIGGRAPH 2019

Andy Lin, John Kahwaty, Walter Yoder, Gene S. Lee, David Suroviec

Talk Optimizing Large Scale Crowds in Ralph Breaks the Internet SIGGRAPH 2019

Josh Richards, Le Joyce Tong, Moe El-Ali,Tuan Nguyen

Talk Machine-Learning Denoising in Feature Film Production SIGGRAPH 2019

Henrik D. Dahlberg (Industrial Light & Magic), David M. Adler (Walt Disney Animation Studios), Jeremy Newlin (Pixar Animation Studios)

Talk Creating Ralphzilla: Moshpit, Skeleton Library, and Automation Framework SIGGRAPH 2019

Dong Joo Byun, Alberto Luceno Ros, Alexander Moaveni, Marc Bryant, Joyce Le Tong, Moe El-Ali

Talk 2D Animation in VR Clouds: The Making of Disney’s a kite’s tale SIGGRAPH 2019

Bruce Wright, Michael Anderson, Angela McBride, Henrik Falt, Daniel Peixe, Tony DeRosa

Paper A Material Point Method for Thin Shells with Frictional Contact SIGGRAPH 2018

Qi Guo, Xuchen Han, Chuyuan Fu, Theodore Gast, Rasmus Tamstorf, Joseph Teran

Paper The Design and Evolution of Disney’s Hyperion Renderer ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) 2018

Brent Burley, David Adler, Matt Jen-Yuan Chiang, Hank Driskill, Ralf Habel, Patrick Kelly, Peter Kutz, Yining Karl Li, Daniel Teece

Paper Denoising with Kernel Prediction and Asymmetric Loss Functions SIGGRAPH 2018

Thijs Vogels, Fabrice Rousselle, Brian McWilliams, Gerhard Rothlin, Alex Harvill, David Adler, Mark Meyer, Jan Novak

Talk SimpleBullet: Collaborating on a Modular Destruction Toolkit SIGGRAPH 2018

Marie Tollec

Talk Hierarchical Workflow for Art-Directed Hair Animation SIGGRAPH 2018

Avneet Kaur, Maryann Simmons

Paper Denoising Deep Monte Carlo Renderings EG Computer Graphics Forum 2018

Delio Vicini, David Adler, Jan Novak, Fabrice Rousselle, Brent Burley

Talk The Role of Hand-Drawn Animation in Disney's Moana SIGGRAPH 2017

Kimberly Keech, Brett Achorn, Brian Whitted and Rachel Bibb

Talk The Ocean and Water Pipeline of Disney's Moana : The Line Where the Sky Meets the Sea SIGGRAPH 2017

Ralf Habel, Patrick Kelly, Peter Kutz, Sara Drakeley, Jonathan Garcia, Sean Palmer

Talk The Art and Technology of Simulating Hair in Disney's Moana SIGGRAPH 2017

Marc Thyng, Christopher Evart, Toby Jones, Alex McAdams

Talk Moana : Performing Water SIGGRAPH 2017

Ben Frost, Alexey Stomakhin, Hiroaki Narita

Talk Moana : Geometry Based Disco Ball Lighting for Tamatoa’s Lair SIGGRAPH 2017

DJ Byun, Shant Ergenian, Gregory Culp

Talk Moana : Foundation of a Lava Monster SIGGRAPH 2017

Marc Bryant, Ian Coony, Jonathan Garcia

Talk Moana : Crashing Waves SIGGRAPH 2017

Alexey Stomakhin, DJ Byun

Talk Handling Scene Constraints for Pose-Based Caching SIGGRAPH 2017

Gene Lee, Christian Eisenacher, Andy Lin & Noel Villegas

Talk Building Moana ’s Kakamora Barge: You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat SIGGRAPH 2017

Brett Achorn, Sean Palmer, Larry Wu

Paper Fluxed Animated Boundary Method SIGGRAPH 2017

Alexey Stomakhin, Andrew Selle

Paper Spectral and Decomposition Tracking for Rendering Heterogeneous Volumes SIGGRAPH 2017

Peter Kutz, Ralf Habel, Yining Karl Li, Jan Novák

Paper All’s Well That Ends Well: Guaranteed Resolution of Simultaneous Rigid Body Impact SIGGRAPH 2017

Etienne Vouga, Breannan Smith, Danny M. Kaufman, Rasmus Tamstorf, Eitan Grinspun

Paper Modeling and Data-Driven Parameter Estimation for Woven Fabrics Symposium on Computer Animation

David Clyde, Joseph Teran, Rasmus Tamstorf

Paper Efficient Elasticity for Character Flesh Simulation on Octrees Tech Report 2017

Andy Milne, Mark A. McLaughlin, Haixiang Liu, Alexey Stomakhin, Rasmus Tamstorf

Talk Practical and Controllable Subsurface Scattering for Production Path Tracing SIGGRAPH 2016

Matt Jen-Yuan Chiang, Peter Kutz, Brent Burley

Talk Zootopia Crowd Pipeline SIGGRAPH 2016

Alberto Luceno Ros, Le Tong, Josh Richards, Tuan Nguyen, Moe El-Ali, Norman Joseph

Paper Subdivision Next-Event Estimation for Path-Traced Subsurface Scattering EGSR 2016

David Koerner, Jan Novák, Peter Kutz, Ralf Habel, and Wojciech Jarosz

Talk From Armadillo to Zebra: Creating the Diverse Characters and the World of Zootopia SIGGRAPH 2016

Ernest Petti, Sean Palmer, Nick Burkard, Hans Keim, Brian Leach, Michelle Robinson

Talk Flesh, Flab, and Fascia Simulation on Zootopia SIGGRAPH 2016

Andy Milne, Mark McLaughlin, Rasmus Tamstorf, Alexey Stomakhin, Nicolas Burkhard, Mitch Counsell, Jesus Canal, David Komorowski, Evan Goldberg

Talk Delicious Looking Ice Cream Effects with Non-Simulation Approaches SIGGRAPH 2016

Dong Joo Byun, James Mansfield, Cesar Veazquez

Talk Coda: The Cultural Effects of Queueing at Disney Animation SIGGRAPH 2016

Marc Jordan, Kevin Constantine

Talk Artist-Friendly Level-of-Detail in a Fur-Filled World SIGGRAPH 2016

Kendall Litaker, Sean Palmer

Talk Art-Directable Procedural Vegetation in Disney's Zootopia SIGGRAPH 2016

Hans Keim, Maryann Simmons, Daniel Teece, Jared Reisweber, Sara Drekely

David Koerner, Jan Novak, Peter Kutz, Ralf Habel, Wojciech Jarosz

Paper A Practical and Controllable Hair and Fur Model for Production Path Tracing Eurographics 2016

Matt Jen-Yuan Chiang, Benedikt Bitterli, Chuck Tappan, Brent Burley

Paper Smoothed Aggregation Multigrid for Cloth Simulation ACM Transactions on Graphics, 34,6, 2015; SIGGRAPH Asia 2015

Rasmus Tamstorf, Toby Jones, Stephen F. McCormick

Paper Sackcloth or Silk? The Impact of Appearance vs Dynamics on the Perception of Animated Cloth Symposium on Applied Perception 2015

Carlos Aliaga, Carol O'Sullivan, Diego Gutierrez, Rasmus Tamstorf

Paper The Affine Particle-In-Cell Method ACM SIGGRAPH 2015

Chenfanfu Jiang, Craig Schroeder, Andrew Selle, Joseph Teran, Alexey Stomakhin

Talk Interactive Script Based Dynamics in Big Hero 6 SIGGRAPH 2015

Dong Joo Byun, Zubin Wadia, Michael Kaschalk

Talk Crowd Character Complexity on Big Hero 6 SIGGRAPH 2015

Yasser Hamed, John Kahwaty, Andy Lin, Evan Goldberg, Lawrence Chai

Talk Big Hero 6 : Into the Portal SIGGRAPH 2015

David Hutchins, Olun Riley, Jesse Erickson, Alexey Stomakhin, Ralf Habel, Michael Kaschalk

Talk A Practical and Controllable Hair and Fur Model for Production Path Tracing SIGGRAPH 2015

Talk Achieving Real-Time Playback with Production Rigs SIGGRAPH 2015

Andy Lin, Gene S. Lee, Joe Longson, Jay Steele, Evan Goldberg, Rastko Stefanovic

Paper Scalable Asynchronous Contact Mechanics Using Charm++ IEEE IPDPS 2015

Xiang Ni, Laxmikant Kale, Rasmus Tamstorf

Paper Adaptive Nonlinearity for Collisions in Complex Rod Assemblies ACM SIGGRAPH 2014, 33(4), pp. 123:1-123:12

Danny Kaufman, Rasmus Tamstorf, Breannan Smith, Jean-Marie Aubry, Eitan Grinspun

Paper Augmented MPM for Phase-Change and Varied Materials ACM SIGGRAPH 2014, 33(4), pp. 138:1-138:11

Alexey Stomakhin, Craig Schroeder, C. Jiang, Lawrence Chai, Joseph Teran, Andrew Selle

Talk Simulating Wind Effects on Cloth and Hair in Disney's Frozen Siggraph 2014

Keith Wilson, Aleka McAdams, Hubert Leo, and Maryann Simmons

Talk Modeling Tools at Disney Animation Symposium on Digital Production Digi Pro 2014

Dmitriy Pinskiy, Jose L. Gomez Diaz

Paper Ink-and-Ray: Bas-Relief Meshes for Adding Global Illumination Effects to Hand-Drawn Characters ACM Transactions on Graphics, 33,2, 2014 (SIGGRAPH 2014)

Daniel Sykora, Ladislav Kavan, Martin Cadik, Ondrej Jamriska, Alec Jacobson, Brian Whited, Maryann Simmons, Olga Sorkine-Hornung

Talk Disney's Hair Pipeline: Crafting Hair Styles From Design to Motion Eurographics Industrial Presentation 2014

Maryann Simmons, Brian Whited

Paper A Material Point Method For Snow Simulation Siggraph 2013

Alexey Stomakhin, Craig Schroeder, Lawrence Chai, Joseph Teran, Andrew Selle

Paper Modeling and Estimation of Internal Friction in Cloth Siggraph 2013

Eder Miguel, Rasmus Tamstorf, Derek Bradley, Sara C. Schvartzman, Bernhard Thomaszewski, Bernd Bickel, Wojciech Matusik, Steve Marschner, Miguel A. Otaduy

Talk Pixels to Parks: New Animation Techniques for Fantasyland SIGGRAPH 2013

Gene Lee, Aaron Adams, Evan Goldberg, Justin Walker

Paper Enhanced Dual Quaternion Skinning for Production Use SIGGRAPH 2013

Gene Lee, Andy Lin, Matt Schiller, Scott Peters, Mark McLaughlin, Frank Hanner

Paper Discrete Bending Forces and Their Jacobians GMOD 2013

Rasmus Tamstorf, Eitan Grinspun

Talk A Deformer-Based Approach to Facial Rigging SIGGRAPH 2013

John Kahwaty, Gene Lee, Greg Smith, Andy Lin, Matthew Schiller

Paper Stereo Compositing Accelerated by Quadtree Structures in Piecewise Linear and Curvilinear Spaces Symposium on Digital Production Digi Pro 2013

Dmitriy Pinskiy, Joseph Longson, Peter Kristof, Evan Goldberg, Robert Neuman

Paper Sorted Deferred Shading for Production Path Tracing EGSR 2013

Christian Eisenacher, Gregory Nichols, Andrew Selle, Brent Burley

Paper Speculative Parallel Asynchronous Contact Mechanics Siggraph Asia 2012

Samantha Ainsley, Etienne Vouga, Eitan Grinspun, Rasmus Tamstorf

Paper Smart Scribbles for Sketch Segmentation Computer Graphics Forum. 31:8, 2012

Gioacchino Noris, Daniel Sykora, Brian Whited, Alexander Hornung, Maryann Simmons, Stelian Coros, Ariel Shamir, Robert Sumner, Markus Gross

Paper Reflections on Simultaneous Impact Siggraph 2012

Breannan Smith, Danny M. Kaufman, Etienne Vouga, Rasmus Tamstorf, Eitan Grinspun

Talk Physically-Based Shading at Disney SIGGRAPH 2012

Brent Burley

Talk dRig: An Artist-Friendly, Object-Oriented Approach to Rig Building Siggraph 2012

Greg Smith, Mark McLaughlin, Andy Lin, Evan Goldberg, Frank Hanner

Talk Computer-Assisted Animation of Line and Paint in Disney's Paperman SIGGRAPH 2012

Brian Whited, Eric Daniels, Michael Kaschalk, Patrick Osborne, Kyle Odermatt

Paper Topology-Driven Vectorization of Clean Line Drawings ACM Transactions on Graphics 2012

Gioacchino Noris, Alexander Hornung, Robert W. Sumner, Maryann Simmons, Markus Gross

Paper Asynchronous Contact Mechanics Communications of the ACM Paper 2012

David Harmon, Etienne Vouga, Breannan Smith, Rasmus Tamstorf, Eitan Grinspun

Paper TexToons: Practical Texture Mapping for Hand-Drawn Cartoon Animations Symposium on Non-photorealistic Animation and Rendering 2011

Daniel Sykora, Mirela Ben-Chen, Martin Cadk, Brian Whited, Maryann Simmons

Paper Temporal Noise Control for Sketchy Animation Symposium on Non-photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR'11), 2011

Gioacchino Noris, Daniel Sykora, Stelian Coros, Brian Whited, Maryann Simmons, Alexander Hornung, Markus Gross, Robert Sumner

Paper Perceptually-Based Compensation of Light Pollution in Display Systems APGV 2011

Jeroen van Baar, Steven Poulakos, Wojciech Jarosz, Derek Nowrouzezahrai, Rasmus Tamstorf, Markus Gross

Paper Ball-morph: Definition, Implementation and Comparative Evaluation IEEE TVCG, June 2011, 17:6, pp 757-769, © 2011 IEEE Paper

G. Noris, D. Sýkora, S. Coros, B. Whited, M. Simmons, A. Hornung, M. Gross, R. W. Sumner

Paper A Programmable System for Artistic Volumetric Lighting Siggraph 2011

Derek Nowrouzezahrai, Jared Johnson, Andrew Selle, Dylan Lacewell, Michael Kaschalk, Wojciech Jarosz

Talk Tangled Choreographing Destruction: Art Directing a Dam Break Siggraph 2011

Brett Boggs, Lawrence Chai, Michael Kaschalk, Andrew Selle

Talk Gaussian Quadrature for Photon Beams in Tangled Siggraph 2011

Jared M. Johnson, Dylan Lacewell, Andrew Selle, Wojciech Jarosz

Paper Efficient Elasticity for Character Skinning with Contact and Collisions Siggraph 2011

Aleka McAdams, Yongning Zhu, Andrew Selle, Mark Empey, Rasmus Tamstorf, Joseph Teran, Eftychios Sifakis

Talk Directing Hair Motion on Tangled Siggraph 2011

Maryann Simmons, Kelly Ward, Hidetaka Yosumi, Hubert Leo, Xinmin Zhao

Paper Collision-Driven Volumetric Deformation on the GPU Eurographics 2011

G. Aldrich, D. Pinskiy, B. Hamann

Talk Point-Based Hair Global Illumination Siggraph Asia 2010

Ramón Montoya-Vozmediano

Talk Automated Target Selection for DrivenShape Siggraph Asia 2010

Gene S. Lee

Talk A Hybrid Approach to Facial Rigging Siggraph Asia 2010

David Komorowski, Vinod Melapudi, Darren Mortillaro, Gene S. Lee

Paper BetweenIT: An Interactive Tool for Tight Inbetweening Computer Graphics Forum, 2010

Brian Whited, Gioacchino Noris, Maryann Simmons, Robert W. Sumner, Markus Gross, Jarek Rossignac

Talk Simulating Rapunzel’s Hair in Disney’s Tangled Siggraph 2010

Kelly Ward, Maryann Simmons, Andy Milne, Hidetaka Yosumi, Xinmin Zhao

Talk Set’m and Forget’m: A Motion Graphics Pipeline for Effects Siggraph 2010

Ian J. Coony, Brian Silva, Bruce Wright, Andrew Kinney

Talk Example-Based Texture Synthesis on Disney’s Tangled Siggraph 2010

Christian Eisenacher, Chuck Tappan, Brent Burley, Daniel Teece, Arthur Shek

Talk Christmas in July: The Effects Snow Process Siggraph 2010

Ian J. Coony - David Hutchins - Kevin Lee - Mike Harris - Tim Molinder - Kee Suong

Talk Art-Directing Disney’s Tangled Procedural Trees Siggraph 2010

Arthur Shek, Dylan Lacewell, Andrew Selle, Daniel Teece, Tom Thompson

Paper An Artist Friendly Hair Shading System Siggraph 2010

Iman Sadeghi, Heather Pritchett, Henrik Wann Jensen, Rasmus Tamstorf

Paper Sliding Deformation: Shape Preserving Per-Vertex Displacement Eurographics 2010

Dmitriy Pinskiy

Paper CASE STUDY - Beauty and the Beast 3D Benefits of 3D Viewing for 2D to 3D Conversion SPIE Electronic Imaging 2010/Stereoscopic Displays and Applications XXI Paper

Tara Handy Turner

Paper Synthetic Turbulence Using Artificial Boundary Layers Siggraph Asia 2009

Tobias Pfaff, Nils Thuerey, Andrew Selle, Markus Gross

Talk Practical Experiences with Pose Space Deformation Siggraph Asia 2009

Gene S. Lee, Frank Hanner

Talk Evaluation of the Radial Basis Function Space Siggraph Asia 2009

Talk Rhino-Palooza: Procedural Animation and Mesh Smoothing Siggraph 2009

Evan Goldberg, Dmitriy Pinskiy

Talk Realistic Eye Motion Using Procedural Geometric Methods Siggraph 2009

Dmitriy Pinskiy, Erick Miller

Talk Medial Axis Techniques for Stereoscopic Extraction Siggraph 2009

Evan Goldberg

Talk Interactive Lighting of Effects Using Point Clouds in Bolt Siggraph 2009

Dale Mayeda

Talk iBind: Smooth Indirect Binding Using Segmented Thin-Layers Siggraph 2009

Chung-An Lin, Erick Miller, Gene S. Lee

Talk Geometric Fracture Modeling in BOLT Siggraph 2009

Jeffrey Hellrung, Andrew Selle, Arthur Shek, Eftychios Sifakis, Joseph Teran

Paper Detail Preserving Continuum Simulation of Straight Hair  Siggraph 2009

Aleka McAdams, Andrew Selle, Kelly Ward, Eftychios Sifakis, Joseph Teran

Talk Composite Based Refraction for Fur and Other Complex Objects Siggraph 2009

Lewis Siegel, Sean Jenkins

Paper Asynchronous Contact Mechanics Siggraph 2009 and CMAME Journal Paper

David Harmon, Etienne Vouga, Brennan Smith, Rasmus Tamstorf, Eitan Grinspun

Talk Applying Painterly Concepts in a CG Film - BOLT Siggraph 2009

Adolph Lusinsky, Paul Felix, Ernie Petti, Sean Jenkins, Adrienne Othon, Patrick Dalton, Hank Driskill, John Murrah

Paper Implicit Contact Handling for Deformable Objects Eurographics 2009 Paper

Miguel A. Otaduy, Rasmus Tamstorf, Denis Steinemann, Markus Gross

Paper Dent Removal: Geodesic Curve-Based Mesh Fairing Eurographics 2009

Paper Robust Treatment of Simultaneous Collisions Siggraph 2008

David Harmon, Etienne Vouga, Rasmus Tamstorf, Eitan Grinspun

Paper Approximate Topological Matching of Quadrilateral Meshes The Visual Computer 2009 and Shape Modeling International 2008 Paper

David Eppstein, Michael T. Goodrich, Ethan Kim, Rasmus Tamstorf

Paper The Hybrid Theatre Stereoscopic Displays and Applications 2008

Paper Raytracing Prefiltered Occlusion for Aggregate Geometry IEEE Symposium on Interactive Raytracing 2008

Dylan Lacewell, Brent Burley, Solomon Boulos

Paper Motorcycle Graphs: Canonical Quad Mesh Partitioning Symposium on Geometry Processing 2008

Paper Ptex: Per-Face Texture Mapping for Production Rendering Eurographics Symposium on Rendering 2008

Brent Burley, Dylan Lacewell

Paper Fast Collision Detection for Deformable Models Using Representative-Triangles i3D 2008

Sean Curtis, Rasmus Tamstorf, Dinesh Manocha

Paper Exact Evaluation of Catmull-Clark Subdivision Surfaces Near B-Spline Boundaries Journal of Graphics Tools 2007 Paper

Dylan Lacewell, Brent Burley

Paper Interactive Collision Detection Between Deformable Models using Chromatic Decomposition Siggraph 2005

Naga K. Govindaraju, David Knott, Nitin Jain, Ilknur Kabul, Rasmus Tamstorf, Russell Gayle, Ming C. Lin, Dinesh Manocha

Paper Texture Mapping for Cel Animation Siggraph 1998

Wagner Toledo Correa, Robert J. Jensen, Craig E. Thayer, Adam Finkelstein

Paper Multiperspective Panoramas for Cel Animation Siggraph 1997

Daniel N. Wood, Adam Finkelstein, John F. Hughes, Craig E. Thayer, David H. Salesin

Paper Painterly Rendering for Animation Siggraph 1996

Barbara J. Meier

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Disney Setting and Changing Gender Stereotypes

• December 2023
• Thesis for: MA Mass Communications
• This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.

• Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIMB)

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Disney Research Releases Latest Round of Inventions

Disney Research, The Walt Disney Company’s research and science arm, has been inventing and innovating technologies behind the scenes for nearly a decade. With offices in Zurich, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, the team has filed hundreds of patents and contributed to powering Disney experiences—whether they be films, attractions, merchandise or anything in between.

For Jon Snoddy, studio executive, Walt Disney Imagineering Advanced Development and Disney Research, and team, it’s all about maintaining a creative and technologically innovative rhythm for the entire Company.

“This is an amazing company to be developing technology in because the markets we are in are so diverse,” Snoddy said. “We do everything in the form of entertainment.”

This summer, Disney Research released its latest set of papers before SIGGRAPH, the world’s largest and most influential annual event in computer graphics and interactive techniques. In the mix were several projects that, according to Snoddy, will push the state of the art forward, including a single camera that can capture high-quality facial performance. This device will be a key component of visual effects for movies and computer games, as it is able to unobtrusively capture facial expressions with the robustness of traditional multi-view methods.

Another technology Snoddy highlights is software that adds a new level of control to industrial knitting machines. This invention will allow for the creation of personalized products like never before, such as custom dolls and other items. Knitting machines are almost always used to manufacture many of the same objects, but now, they can create a variety of custom 3-D shapes.

Disney Research also revealed details pertaining to a design tool that transforms objects into intricate works of arts; an animation technique that produces more realistic characters; a method that helps animators capture subtle details of eyes with a single facial scan; and a technique that consistently replicates a 3-D printed object’s feel, no matter what material or printer is used.

Alongside its world-class scientific researchers, the Disney Research team pushes technological boundaries with its engineers, animators, artists and writers.

“We have a unique situation with our research group because we have the ability to surround our researchers with people who are just as good at the content side of what they do as our researchers are with the science,” Snoddy said. “By combining art and science together, we can make leaps that would be impossible if either group tried to do things by itself.”

What’s on the horizon for Disney Research? Snoddy says a major area of focus for Disney Research is interactive storytelling.

“It’s an emerging art form,” he added. “We continue to author new ways for people to experience our characters. That’s something we’re doing a lot of work in, and its showing great promise.”

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Disney, Culture and Society (DisNet) was founded in April 2022 to create an international space where people could come together to discuss and collaborate on Disney research. 

Disney studies has come to the fore in recent years, and is interdisciplinary in its nature. However, scholars working on Disney are so spread out across disciplines and continents, so we need a 'home', where we can find one another, explore each other's work and collaborate on future research.

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Ieee spectrum, follow ieee spectrum, support ieee spectrum, enjoy more free content and benefits by creating an account, saving articles to read later requires an ieee spectrum account, the institute content is only available for members, downloading full pdf issues is exclusive for ieee members, downloading this e-book is exclusive for ieee members, access to spectrum 's digital edition is exclusive for ieee members, following topics is a feature exclusive for ieee members, adding your response to an article requires an ieee spectrum account, create an account to access more content and features on ieee spectrum , including the ability to save articles to read later, download spectrum collections, and participate in conversations with readers and editors. for more exclusive content and features, consider joining ieee ., join the world’s largest professional organization devoted to engineering and applied sciences and get access to all of spectrum’s articles, archives, pdf downloads, and other benefits. learn more about ieee →, join the world’s largest professional organization devoted to engineering and applied sciences and get access to this e-book plus all of ieee spectrum’s articles, archives, pdf downloads, and other benefits. learn more about ieee →, access thousands of articles — completely free, create an account and get exclusive content and features: save articles, download collections, and talk to tech insiders — all free for full access and benefits, join ieee as a paying member., how disney packed big emotion into a little robot, melding animation and reinforcement learning for free-ranging emotive performances.

Evan Ackerman is IEEE Spectrum’s robotics editor.

Disney's robotic character uses a new programming pipeline to bring emotional movements into the real world.

On Wednesday, at the 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) , in Detroit, a Disney Research team presented a brand new robotic character during their evening keynote address. The adorable robot packs an enormous amount of expression into its child-size body, from its highly expressive head and two wiggly antennae to its stubby little legs. But what sets this robot apart from other small bipeds is how it walks—it’s full of personality, emoting as it moves in a way that makes it seem uniquely alive.

Programming robots to move in emotive ways is something that Disney is an expert in, going as far back as 1971, with its animatronic Hall of Presidents in Disney World. As robots have gotten more advanced and more mobile, though, it’s become challenging for robot designers and robot animators to develop emotive behaviors that both take advantage of and are compatible with robotic hardware under real-world constraints. Disney Research has spent the last year developing a new system that leverages reinforcement learning to turn an animator’s vision into expressive motions that are robust enough to work almost anywhere, whether that’s a stage at IROS or a Disney theme park or a forest in Switzerland.

This particular robot was developed by a team led by Moritz Bächer from Disney Research in Zurich . It’s mostly 3D printed, using modular hardware and actuators that made it quick to design and iterate on, going from concept to what you see in the above video in less than a year. It has a four-degree-of-freedom head (able to look up, down, around, and tilt), as well as five-degree-of-freedom legs with hip joints that allow it to walk while balancing dynamically.

“Most roboticists are focused on getting their bipedal robots to reliably walk,” says Disney research scientist Morgan Pope , who helped present the robot on stage. “At Disney, that might not be enough—our robots may have to strut, prance, sneak, trot, or meander to convey the emotion that we need them to.” Disney has animators who are experts in making characters convey all of those emotions (and more) through movement, as well as roboticists who are experts in building mechanical systems. “What we try to bring to these kinds of robots is born from our history of character animation,” explains Michael Hopkins , a principle R&D engineer at Disney. “We have an amazing animator, Jared Bishop , embedded in our team, and together, we’re able to leverage his knowledge and our technical expertise to create the best performance we can.”

To create an effective robotic character requires the animators and the roboticists to combine their talents, a process that can be time consuming and involves a lot of trial and error to make sure that the robot can convey the animators’ artistic intent without falling over. “In general, animation tools don’t have physics built into them,” explains Bächer. “So that makes it hard for artists to design animations that will work in the real world.”

“It’s not just about walking,” adds Pope. “Walking is one of the inputs to the reinforcement-learning system, but the other important input is how it walks.”

To bridge this gap, Disney Research has developed a reinforcement learning-based pipeline that relies on simulation to combine and balance the vision of an animator with robust robotic motions. For the animator, the pipeline essentially takes care of implementing the constraints of the physical world, letting the animator develop highly expressive motions while relying on the system to make those motions real—or get as close as is physically possible for the robot. Disney’s pipeline can train a robot on a new behavior on a single PC, running what amounts to years of training in just a few hours. According to Bächer, this has reduced the time that it takes for Disney to develop a new robotic character from years to just months.

A big advantage of reinforcement learning in this context is that the resulting motions can be highly robust. Disney’s system is able to train motions over and over while making slight changes to things like motor performance, mass distribution, and friction between the robot and the ground. The system ensures that whatever the robot encounters in the real world, it will know not just how to handle itself, but how to handle itself while still emoting , which is critical to the robot maintaining its character. “This is a challenge for traditional techniques,” says Ruben Grandia , an associate research scientist at Disney Research. “Normally, you have to hand-program this transition point. But if you put everything together in one simulation and perturb it while it tries to move and animate, it can determine that point for itself, which has resulted in recovery strategies that we see from this robot that we’d have no idea how to program.”

Social robots have existed for decades, and even robots not explicitly designed for social interaction usually have some human-robot interaction features if they’re likely to spend time around people. But human-robot interaction can sometimes be an afterthought for robots that are designed primarily with functionality in mind. With its robots, Disney has shown just how much a robot is able to communicate through character without sacrificing functionality, and this can be useful in robotics more broadly.

“In situations where humans and robots are close to each other, conveying emotion and intent can be an important feature,” explains Georg Wiedebach , senior R&D imagineer at Disney. “So I think this can also be valuable in other applications where robots are working next to people.”

While it’s easy to focus on this specific robot (look how cute it is!), the researchers emphasize that what’s important here is not the robot, it’s the process. “The idea is that this is a platform that’s hardware agnostic,” says Bächer. “So if we wanted to add more legs, or add arms, or make an entirely new character with a completely different morphology, we can rapidly teach it new behaviors. The off-the-shelf actuators, the 3D-printed components, our adaptable reinforcement-learning framework—these can all be applied to robots that are widely different in how they look and move. This robot is a promising first step on that journey.”

The next steps on Disney’s journey involve using this technique to develop more physical robotic characters, and pushing the limits of what’s possible with faster and more dynamic motions. “We want to see what happens when we get to those limits,” says Disney research scientist Espen Knoop , “and learn what we can do at those limits.”

As far as this robot goes, the character doesn’t have an official name, and Disney isn’t ready to comment on where we might see it. But based on how it looks and sounds, we have some guesses. And this one little robot is only the beginning—now that they’re so much easier to create, we’re hoping to see many more of these expressive robotic characters from Disney.

• Beautiful Fluid Actuators from Disney Research Make Soft, Safe Robot Arms ›
• Once More, With Feeling: Exploring Relatable Robotics at Disney ›
• Robots and the Humans Who Make Them - IEEE Spectrum ›
• Imagineer Morgan Pope Uses Electromagnetism to Spark Emotions - IEEE Spectrum ›
• Disney’s Newest Robot Demonstrates Collaborative Cuteness - IEEE Spectrum ›
• Disney's Robots Use Rockets to Stick the Landing - IEEE Spectrum ›
• Robot Videos: RoboCup Practice, Mars Rover, and More - IEEE Spectrum ›
• IROS 2023: Home ›
• Robotics | Disney Research Studios ›

Evan Ackerman is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum . Since 2007, he has written over 6,000 articles on robotics and technology. He has a degree in Martian geology and is excellent at playing bagpipes.

unbelievable！this is so interesting ！

Whether I'm "hoping to see many more of these expressive robotic characters from Disney" depends on the values and morays for which they are used to teach our children - something Disney has turned to the Dark Side on lately. Let's not allow our enthusiasm for a technology to cloud our view of its purveyors.

I am counting this to be named as Wall-E. :)

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