Organised by Bristol Vision Institute (BVI) and in collaboration with GW4 (University of Bristol, Cardiff University, Bath University and Exeter University) this annual event brought together vision researchers from a wide range of disciplines, encompassing all areas of Vision Science and Engineering, including Biology, Psychology, Engineering, Computer Science, Medicine, Physics, Mathematics and the Creative Arts.

With a common interest in vision including Computer Vision, Biological Vision, Perception with Industrial, Clinical/Medical and Creative Arts applications. The colloquium provides a fantastic opportunity for postgraduate students, postdoctoral research associates and others at an equivalent early career stage, to present their work.

At this year’s event, held on 23 June, attendees were treated to a day of discovery, with interesting and diverse current research, effectively communicated in a supportive environment. There were excellent presentations on a broad range of vision-related topics, with presenters from the Universities of Bristol, Cardiff, and Bath.

Prof Dave Bull, Director of the BVI, explains “Excellent talks, excellent posters, excellent venue and an engaged audience. This is the 8th time we have run this event and it gets better every year. The work presented always impresses me and is testament to the quality and diversity of vision science and engineering research in the region.”

Jonathan Starck, Head of Research at The Foundry, gave a fascinating keynote talk on Computer vision in movie post-production.

Abstract

Over the past decade, visual effects work (VFX) has become commonplace across all film work. This talk will look at the impact of computer vision techniques in movie production and in particular post-production. In post-production teams of artists build complex visual effects both in 2D by editing and compositing video elements, and in 3D to seamlessly integrate digital elements to augment or manipulate video footage. The talk will cover the technical challenges in compositing for film visual effects, where computer vision supports artist workflows and also new challenges for artists in creating and working with 360 video content for immersive live-action VR experiences.

Biography

Jon Starck is Head of Research at Foundry (www.foundry.com), a global developer of computer graphics, visual effects and 3D modelling software for the design, visualization and entertainment industries. He received a MEng in Engineering from the University of Cambridge in 1996, a PhD in Computer Vision from University of Surrey in 2003 and has published over 40 papers in image and video analysis. Jon directs research in Visual Computing at The Foundry, developing cutting edge techniques that extract meaningful data from images to accelerate artist workflows in correcting, modifying and building shots for high-end visual effects. These technologies have been developed into industry standard tools for image and video manipulation (NukeX), stereoscopic 3D correction (Ocula) and live action VR (CaraVR) for movie post-production.