brings together the world’s premier creators of digital visual effects, animation, and interactive experiences.
Engineers, scientists, artists, and filmmakers share ideas, insights, and techniques that bring innovation to real-world production.
Sony Pictures Imageworks
Steven began his career sitting on a snowy chairlift in Lake Tahoe listening intently to another snowboarder explain what they did for work: visual effects for movies. A few weeks later, Steven met that same snowboarder at a small studio in San Francisco, watching an artist create swirling vortexes on a screen. At that moment, Steven knew that his career would fuse his love for creativity with collaboration across artistic, technical, and scientific disciplines.
Early in his career, Steven gained valuable experience working with a variety of applications, including Ligthwave, PRISMS, and Dynamation. He was an early adopter of Maya, and began teaching to students at the Academay of Art University in San Francisco. His first studio-side role in visual effects was with ESC Entertainment.
For nearly two decades, Steven has been at Sony Pictures Imageworks contributing to an incredibly diverse slate of films, ranging from the photorealistic to wildly stylized blockbusters. Today, he manages production technology, focusing on advancements in machine learning, simulation, rendering, and compositing.
DNEG Animation
Megha is currently serving as Head of Pipeline at DNEG Animation, Mumbai. She was previously Supervising Technical Director at DreamWorks Animation. In her almost 15 years in the animation industry, she has served in varied roles over 12 feature films (including Kung Fu Panda 4, How to Train Your Dragon 3, Boss Baby, Bad Guys, Puss In Boots etc.) and a few short films/themed rides. She also served as Department Chair for the Technical Director department for over 2 years.
Megha started her career as a Lighting TA at DreamWorks Dedicated Unit, India in 2011 where she worked for 6 years before moving to the Glendale office in 2017. She served as one of the chapter leads of the DreamWorks TechWomen group and led several outreach efforts with Girls Who Code, Black Girls Code, IIIT Hyderabad, etc. She has been part of panels and talks at Siggraph Birds of a Feather, TechWomen Telemundo/Comcast chapters and Women in Animation group and served as juror for Electronic Theater and Computer Animation Festival at Siggraph. She aspires to expand and share her knowledge about ever evolving latest technologies in the CGI industry, utilize her skills to evolve animation pipeline while mentoring/supporting individuals in their journey.
Walt Disney Animation Studios
Maryann Simmons is a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Walt Disney Animation Studios. She received her B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in Computer Science with a focus in Computer Graphics. After graduation, Maryann was a post-doctoral researcher in Computer Animation at UC Santa Cruz. She has been developing software tools for artists at WDAS since 2004 and is currently the Technical Lead for the studio’s suite of tools that the Look and TAnim/CFX artists use for Character asset and shot work. Maryann and her colleagues were recognized in 2021 with an Academy SciTech Award for the studio’s Hair Simulation System. Maryann’s film credits include all WDAS animated productions from Chicken Little through the latest release, Zootopia 2.
Maryann is active in the Computer Graphics research and production community, consistently serving as a reviewer and committee member for several conferences and organizations. Through a variety of outreach opportunities, Maryann is passionate about bringing exposure to opportunities in Animation, Computer Graphics, and Software Engineering to a wide audience of all ages. In all, Maryann has over 30 years of experience as a researcher and developer in the field of Computer Graphics.
NVIDIA
Andrea Weidlich is a Principal Researcher at NVIDIA in the Real-Time Rendering Research department working on neural appearance models and material simulation in general. Before joining NVIDIA, she worked for Weta Digital for over eight years where she designed the material system attached to Weta’s proprietary physically-based renderer, Manuka. Her work there mainly focused on creating its proprietary layering system as well as its BSDF components and contributed to films such as War for the Planet of the Apes and Avatar: The Way of Water.
Her main research areas are appearance modelling and material prototyping as well as spectral rendering. Andrea holds a Master of Arts in Applied Media from University of Applied Arts, Vienna, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Vienna University of Technology.