[comp.graphics] SIGGRAPH papers

ksbooth@watcgl.UUCP (02/26/87)

William J. Joel requested information on a paper in SIGGRAPH '80 by
Loren Carpenter.  The abstract only appears in the proceedings for that
year.  The actual paper appeared later in CACM 25:6 (June, 1982) pp.
371-384.  The SIGGRAPH '83 conference proceedings have a COMPLETE
ten-year cumulative index for the SIGGRAPH conference papers.  Forward
references are given for all papers that did not appear in the original
proceedings.  Because SIGGRAPH '82 was the last conference for which
papers did not appear in the proceedings, the cumulative index is an
exhaustive list.

The reason that some papers did not appear is related to ACM's rules on
publication in ACM journals of papers that have appeared in "widely
disseminated conference proceedings".  In the past this was interpreted
to mean that papers appearing in the SIGGRAPH proceedings could not be
published in JACM, CACM or TOG.  In 1976-1982 the "best" papers were
culled from the conference for CACM (TOG in 1982) and did not appear in
the conference proceedings (although they were distributed in a
separately bound supplement only to those who attended the
conference).  In 1983 (when I was co-chair of the conference) we
refused to permit publication of conference papers unless the paper
also appeared in the proceedings.  A compromise was reached whereby the
proceedings "reprinted" the papers as they appeared in a simultaneously
published issued of TOG.  That same year the SIGGRAPH executive
committee passed a resolution that all future SIGGRAPH conferences
would be required publish all presented papers in the proceedings.
This effectively ended the practice of any papers from SIGGRAPH
appearing in ACM journals.

Recently the ACM Pubs Board has informed us that the policy that caused
all of this had been changed a number of years ago and that there is no
a priori reason that a SIGGRAPH conference paper not be accepted by an
ACM journal.  When all of this is sorted out it may be the case that
some papers from the SIGGRAPPH conference will later appear (often
revised somewhat) as ACM journal articles.

The one real casualty in all of this was a paper by Jim Clark "A Fast
Scan-Line Algorithm for Rendering Parametric Surfaces" that appeared
only as an abstract in the SIGGRAPH '79 proceedings.  It had been
selected to appear in CACM as one of "the best papers" from the
conference.  For reasons that have never been clear to me, the paper
died in the refereeing system of CACM and was never published.  The
version distributed to conference attendees has subsequently appeared
in SIGGRAPH course notes, but never in a form that is generally
available.

The SIGGRAPH executive committee adopted the policy of requiring all
conference papers to appear in the published proceedings precisely to
eliminate the problem of people not being able to locate some of the
best material presented at the conference.

Papers that originally appeared at SIGGRAPH conferences but were only
published as journal articles include the following "classics" that are
almost never cited in their original form.  In some cases the later
versions were the result of merging two or more papers, thus the
originals (distributed only to conference attendees) often contained
more detail than the final versions which appeared later.

1976

"Interactive Skeleton Techniques for Enhancing Motion Dynamics in
Keyframe Animation" by Burtnyk and Wein (appeared in CACM 19:10)

"A Parametric Algorithm for Drawing Pictures of Solid Objects Composed
of Quadric Surfaces" by Levin (appeared in CACM 19:10)

"Texture and Reflection in Computer Generated Images" by Blinn and
Newell (appeared in CACM 19:10)

"Hierarchical Geometric Models for Visible Surface Algorithms" by Clark
(aappeared in CACM 19:10)

1977

"Optimal Surface Reconstruction from Planar Contours" by Fuchs, Kedem
and Uselton (appeared in CACM 20:10)

1978

"A Scanline Algorithm for Computer Display of Curved Surfaces" by
Whitted (appeared in CACM 23:1)

"A Scanline Algorithm for Displaying Parametrically Defined Surfaces"
by Blinn (appeared in CACM 23:1)

[Note:  The above two papers were merged, along with a third paper by
Lane and Carpenter to form the final CACM version.]

1979

"An Improved Illumination Model for Shaded Display" by Whitted
(appeared in CACM 23:6)

"A Fast Scan-Line Algorithm for Rendering Parametric Surfaces" by Jim
Clark (never appeared)

1980

"Stochastic Modeling in Computer Graphics" by Fournier and Fussel
(appeared in CACM 25:6)

"Computer Rendering of Fractal Curves and Surfaces" by Carpenter
(appeared in CACM 25:6)

[Note:  The above two papers were merged to form the final CACM
version.]

1982

"Anti-Aliasing Through the Use of Coordinate Transformations" by
Turkowski (appeared in TOG 1:3)

"A Generalization of Algebraic Surface Drawing" by Blinn (appeared in
TOG 1:3)

"A Language for Bitmap Manipulation" by Guibas and Stolfi (appeared in
TOG 1:3)