6 Parisian Startups Exhibiting at Siggraph in L.A.

Innovation
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Thanks to Cap Digital and the Agence Régionale de Développement, 6 Paris-based startups are exhibiting at the Los Angeles Convention Center where Siggraph 12 is taking place until Thursday 9 August. Siggraph stands for “special interest group on graphics and interactive techniques” and the event is the professional equivalent to the Consumer Electronics Show and the E3.

What’s at Siggraph?

The conference and exhibition are expected to draw more than 20,000 professionals from all over the world. They will be showing the industry’s most respected technical and creative programs focusing on research, science, art, animation, music, gaming, interactivity, education, and the web. The event includes a three-day exhibition of products and services from the computer graphics and interactive marketplace.
Siggraph is such a massive event that it even has a dedicated iPad app, the “online scheduler”… Here is a taste of the sort of things you can expect to see:

  • computer vision algorithms, used for everything augmented reality
  • visual effects (VFX) for cinema
  • image stabilisation algorithms (remember the iMovie 09 feature?)
  • animation techniques
  • 3D modeling from images and video-based reconstruction of urban environments
  • gigapixel imaging and super high definition videos
  • 3D on the web
  • panoramic imaging and virtual tours
  • GPU-based image processing

and here’s a preview of the technical papers this year:


Last year, a Cap Digital-labelled startup met around 400 people at their booth. This gave them great publicity and contacts, which translated into actual contracts signed a few months later. Without Cap Digital and the ARD, they wouldn’t have had the chance to exhibit at Siggraph (which costs thousands of euros).

Who’s going?

Our 6 lucky startups will be exhibiting with the likes of Dreamworks, Canon, Intel, but also alongside smaller and as (more?) innovative companies. Hopefully they’ll be making new friends and they’ll learn more about the latest research and technology in their industries. If you’re around and want to pay them a visit, they will be at booth number 745, just opposite nVidia and Pixar. Here’s who they are:

  • Laster technologies creates augmented reality glasses (kind of like Google glasses?), and commercialises them in the defense industry.
  • Ayotle provides computer vision software and technical services based on motion capture for interactive applications to the media and entertainment industry (check out the facetracker).
  • Mercenaries Engineering develops Guerilla Render, a state of the art production rendering software for the animation and the VFX industries.
  • Mikros Images will be showing their latest production, Rising.
  • Neomis Animation is an animation studio founded by two former Disney Feature Animation Studios employees, who also do R&D work on hair animation…
  • Solidanim is a company specialising in 3D animation for visual effects and video games, who also creates novel motion capture devices.

By the way, did you know that France is the 3rd leader in animation and visual effects, behind the US and Japan?

About Cap Digital and ARD

Cap Digital is a non-profit business cluster for digital content and services in Greater Paris. For startups, it is a label that gets them more credibility (look for the Scientipole Initiative combo), more grant money, exposure at events and in the press, contacts with experts and potential partners.
The Agence Régionale de Développement is the economic development agency of the Greater Paris region and wants you to set your business here!
Are you following the #siggraph tag on twitter?