Siggraph Asia 2009 trip day 5

Woke up at 8am again and left for a talk by SEGA corporation and their training program for new employees. Apparently, it seemed that anyone can get a job with SEGA even if they have no programming skills or modeling and animating skills but they have to be Japanese. The training teaches the very basics of the employees job. So, if you are hired as an game programmer,they will teach basic programming to you.
Also, I learned that there is a new position at SEGA called the technical artist who is in the middle of an artists and a programmer. Similar to a a game designer but a technical artist sometimes does animations and also sometime does programming.
After the talk, I went for lunch at the convenience store again!! Damn, how many times have I eaten there.
SEGA talk was the only talk I planned to go for the day and so, I went to roam around the exhibition hall and the job fair again. This time, I found some new interesting items on display.
Kaidan, A horror game using mixed reality. Developed by university students.

Gears that play the music when rotated.
A really cool umbrella which made sword slashing sounds when swung.


Puyocon, a toy/device which looks like a ball that controls the character in the game by rotating the ball.

I also stumbled upon a presentation a really cute robot that can converse in both Japanese and English. It was a pretty funny presentation as the robot keeps on making fun of the presenter.

After the presentation, I was bored and I decided to got for a talk on DIY hardware. It happened that my teacher was also at the talk. The talk was about electronics and making your own devices. There are a few presenters there, each of them presenting their own product. One of which was the Chiptune marching band, a device/instrument that plays electronic sounds. I kinda regret not going for the workshop the day before as it seemed really cool. A Microsoft presenter was also there to present their toy, the Dragonfly. It's a device which anyone could quickly assemble a device they want by joining up the parts they need like the usb port, mp3 player ,etc. After joining the pieces together, the user have to program it in order to use it. The language was in C# though.
A tetris game console made with the Microsoft's Dragonfly.
After the DIY talk, I went for the talk on Gundams. It's in Japanese and there's translation. But, I fell asleep for the first half. When I woke up, I learned 2 things from the speaker. One was that he hates Final Fantasy or rather he thinks that he will beat FF in sales and popularity one day. The second was that to never give up on what you want to do can continue hoping. He said a Japanese phrase which was "Losing hope is a fatal disease" which I think was pretty true.

After the Gundam talk, we went for Houdini reception which was awesome, at least it did not disappoint me like the Siggraph reception the day before. The food there was delicious.
After which, we roam around the shopping center, World Porters as the others have not been there before.

Looks nice but in the end our supper was at the convenience store.

Siggraph Asia 2009 trip day 4

Woke up at 8am to get ready for the talk at 9am. The view in the morning from the windows is great!
Anyway, the talk Hariz and I went was a talk on successful voice recording for CG. It was a really interesting and funny presentation by 4 people. The 4 of them acted out the possible problems that happen in a recording studio and they talk on ways to solve these problems. Actually, it was more like they were complaining about their situation and their directors. Nevertheless, I still learned something from these 4 funny people.
The things I've learned from them are:
1) If you are a director, give clear instructions.

2) Get a GOOD recording studio to record your sounds/voices. You don't wanna have background noises in your recording do you?

3) When getting/auditioning people for voice recording, do not waste time if they are not the right person for the job.

4) Pay professionals by session and not by hour. They will feel insulted if you pay them by hour or rather you will waste their time since they will anyhow voice act till they get paid the amount they want.

5) Allow freedom of actions when recording voices. The voice actors needs to get the feel.
The presenters are actually voice actors themselves. The bald guy is actually a very very good voice actor. He can act as an french assassin, a small boy, a drunkard and many more!
After the the talk on successful recording, I split up with Hariz and went for the talk on Japanese game development. I actually fell asleep till the end due the the monotonous tone of one of the translator. When I woke up, it was Q and A session so I left and went to have lunch alone at the convenience store again!!! Very unhealthy.
After which, I went for the talk on making and Android game, but again its in Japanese!! Damn, why does talks that I think is important and interesting have to be in Japanese!!
I couldn't understand a single thing and so I left and went to the art gallery. There are many cool stuffs displayed over there.
There a a few memorable cool stuffs displayed. One of them is a laser ball bouncing off black pieces of papers and the user can move the paper anywhere and the laser ball bounces off accordingly to where the piece of paper is.
Another cool thing I saw was the MemoIcon. MemoIcon allows users to control a computer-like table with their daily items like a mug. Users can store pictures and notes and view them. Users can also store music and play them by dragging the music file to the mug. Also, they can turn their mug to adjust the volume of the music played. However, it's a research done by students and it's still buggy. Still, it's damn cool.
And also other stuffs displayed. Most of them are university students research work.
Of course there are some items there which I think is redundant.

After which I went to the exhibition hall and the job fair.
The new mo-cap technology that doesn't need any suit or trackers. It costs about 200million yen if I remember correctly. There are many 3D or stereo vision technologies and also Ar, Mr and Vr.

After which Hariz and I went for the Siggraph reception. The others went for the Pixar's party.

We took a shuttle bus there. It was quite a distance from our hotel.
When we got there, we were soooo disappointed. There weren't any food left and the best thing is that there is no refill or restock. We left 5 minutes after we got there. The only good news is, we get to roam on our own!!

We went quite far. We went to Sakuragi-Cho station, which is 1 station away. Then we went to a shopping centre called World Porters. The shopping centre have mostly fashion stores although there are some souvenir stores. There is also 1 level that is dedicated to food! So you can find lots of food restaurants there including your fast food outlets like MacDonald, KFC and many others. When we got there, most of the food outlets were closed so, we have to settle down for MacDonalds. The MacDonalds there or rather other countries Macdonalds probably have something that Singapore MacDonalds do not which is....MacPork!! It tasted like sausage Mac-Muffin though.