David Haumann, formerly with Pixar will present: A Mathematical Path to the Academy Awards

Parental influences and the race to the moon fostered my early interests in physics, filmmaking, and computers, which led to a career in computer graphics and animation. This talk will provide a sampling of how vectors and linear algebra are used to represent and transform virtual geometry. Adding physical properties allows this to be realistically animated using computer simulations; a common practice in today’s Hollywood productions, but an early example was the Pixar short “Geri’s Game”.