Computer Graphics on the Web

Join us for a conversation about computer graphics on the web! Our presenters on the night will be David Ma, medical researcher and software developer at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and Xavier Ho, data-driven design engineer at CSIRO.

There will be time for announcements and lightning talks. Give us a shout on the day and we will do them at the start.

The meetup is at 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM start.

Pizza and light beverages will be provided for everyone. Registration numbers will be used for catering purposes.

Animation in Data Visualisations
David Ma

Data Visualisations are great for communicating information. We use different visual channels like X, Y, size, colour, and shapes to represent data and convey meaning.

In traditional data visualisations, movement is not available to us as a useful visual channel. On paper, movement doesn’t work. In video, the user doesn’t have control over the movement. On the web… we can make our data visualisations interactive and really show people what the data is all about.

I will be using circosJS as an example of how animation can aid understanding, and also as an example of how to add animations to your code. circosJS is a d3js implementation of d3js, and I am currently forking it to add animation.

David Ma is a software developer at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, where he helps turn sequencing data into lab reports.

WebGL 2.0 From The Ground Up
Xavier Ho

The next generation of computer graphics on the web, an open standard known as WebGL 2.0, has landed in Firefox, Chrome, and Opera, with other browsers fast approaching. This enables an additional layer of GPU-accelerated content.

Our browsers are already GPU-accelerated; CSS3 Transform is one well-loved example. As designers, developers and creatives, we're empowered by the community that we work with, and the community creates tools to empower our work. So what does WebGL 2.0 mean for the web community?

In this talk, we will discuss the theory of modern design of the graphics rendering pipeline using WebGL as a framework, and go through example code to concretise the theory. Then, we will look at how ThreeJS uses WebGL 2.0, as well as new tools that might change the face of the 3D web for years to come.

Xavier Ho is a data visualisation specialist at CSIRO, where he pursues scientific projects by making then interactive and understandable by non-scientists like himself.

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What do you like to see in the meetup? Email Xavier at contact@xavierho.com and share with us your ideas!

The meetup is sponsored by Common Code and Khronos Group, and co-located with Computer Graphics on the Web meetup.