iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Usain Bolt retains fastest time for unexploded 100m dash

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

The little country that could …

David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Finding videos on my Mac Pre-AI: Type name of file into search, click on video Post-AI: Type name of file into search, no results. Try a few permutations, nothing. Open finder, type filename into search bar, nothing. OPEN DAVINCI RESOLVE, find project with video, click reveal in finder.

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Dog walks through open gate. Branded existential thread to humanity. News at 11.

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Reposted by David Levin

Xiana Carrera @xianacarrera.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

The talk I presented at #SIGGRAPH2026 is now available on YouTube, for anyone who couldn’t attend or would like to revisit it :) youtu.be/OFJYBUArVPc?...

youtu.be

Dual Contouring of Signed Distance Data - SIGGRAPH 2026 [Technical paper presentation]

YouTube video by Xiana Carrera

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Casual observation backed up by no data (yet). Lots of people I work with are using coding agents to write lots of code but so far producing the same amount (or less) of useful output (papers, products, shippable features) Cost of token maxing looks bleak unless you count half working demos.

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

you might wonder why I am posting edited quotes from reviews lately. Well to quote Popeye:

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

“<blocked> cannot be a technical contribution as this modification could be used by previous work to achieve the similar results” Dear reviewers, if a paper proposes a new modification in the present that would also improve algorithms from the past, it is indeed a contribution.

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Pivot to subterranean AI data centers in 3,2 …. You’ve heard of Deep Learnjng but this can be DEEP Learning

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

"For example, incorporating <blank> into <blank> or <blank> is a well-established idea in the <blank> community and should not be presented as a novel contribution..." Dear Reviewers: Be evidence-based.If you write this but provide no citations then maybe <blank> isn't that common.

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Cool to see some nice follow up work on this stuff. When we published this paper a reviewer said it had no useful purpose and now we are getting flamed on Bluesky. Take that R3 :)

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Reposted by David Levin

Craig Reynolds @craigreynolds.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

At SIGGRAPH 2026 I saw this absolute banger of a paper by James and James. Beautiful imagery, matched by beautiful technical work, by a father and son team, which won a best paper award. I've always loved marbleization patterns. dougjam.github.io/mixwell-2026/ www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

We have the same hobby :) Love seeing these kinds of tests. Time for DeepMind to put out another paper claiming VFMs are one shot physics learners 🙄

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Fun poster at #SIGGRAPH2026 with incoming PhD student Yixin Lok. Sadly the paper is there but Yixin isn't due to visa issues.

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

After some encouragement from various people I decided to make a GitHub repo for my ongoing Newton's Cradle benchmark of Google's Veo video model. All videos (spanning about a year) are available here for all your cradling needs: github.com/dilevin/newt...

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

@otmanon.bsky.social 's simkit has been supremely useful for a bunch of simulation tasks, not the least of which is using the many useful reduced-order parameterizations he's developed over the years. github.com/otmanon/simkit

github.com

GitHub - otmanon/simkit: Physics Based Animation Library

Physics Based Animation Library . Contribute to otmanon/simkit development by creating an account on GitHub.

David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Sheldon Andrews (profs.etsmtl.ca/sandrews/) is running for the ACM Executive Committee this year. I've known Sheldon for a long time and I think he will do a great job ! I voted for him, you should too www.acm.org/elections/si...

acm.org

2026 ACM SIGGRAPH Election

Voting page for SIGGRAPH Elections

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

<megaphone> The incredible @rishit-dagli.bsky.social took VoMP, his volumetric material predictor, and made it adaptive! This increases the detail of SimReady assets dramatically <see below>

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Reposted by David Levin

Nicole Feng @nicole--f.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

I recently completed my PhD thesis, where I developed algorithms for making geometric inferences from imperfect data (i.e. incomplete and inaccurate observations/representations of shapes, like broken meshes or point clouds). A thread 🧵:

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

<megaphone> #SCA2026 News Deadline for submitting revisions of provisionally accepted papers has been extended to June 10th due to delays getting reviewer comments out to authors. computeranimation.org

Apr 2: The deadline for awards nominations has been extended to April 17th.

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Something something chickens something something home to roost

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

New paper by the incredible Donglai Xiang (xiangdonglai.github.io) at CVPR 2026 using RKPM inside a data free training framework to compute reduced elastic models. Trains faster, works better than competing Neural Network approaches. Check it out: research.nvidia.com/labs/sil/pro...

xiangdonglai.github.io

Donglai Xiang

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

I've been using github.com/Yixin-Hu/Tet... to mesh some truly crazy shapes and I am again reminded how amazing this software is and how much of my research it enables. Incredible.

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

One more great SCA keynote … Danny Kaufman of Adobe Research will talk about his foundational work in contact simulation and more! computeranimation.org/program.html

Christopher Batty @topher-batty.mastodon.acm.org.ap.brid.gy · 20/05/2026

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Reposted by David Levin

We have a fun new paper to appear at SIGGRAPH 2026, led by Columbia PhD student Xiana Carrera, that extends dual contouring to work nicely with [pure] signed distance samples. It avoids classic DC's additional requirement of providing accurate Hermite / […] [Original post on mastodon.acm.org]

A 3D model of a fan disk, reconstructed from signed distance data using (left) classic dual contouring with finite difference estimates of surface normals/gradients, which shows bumps and unevenness near expected sharp curved features, and (right) our improved method, which produces much cleaner and sharper reconstruction of features.

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

The poster deadline for SCA is coming up on June 1st! Posters are a great way to be apart of SCA and let the animation community know about your new, hot off the presses research. computeranimation.org

David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

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More SCA Keynote news! Moritz Bächer, Lab Director of Disney Research Imagineering in Zurich, will be joining us ! If you've seen Disney's robotic Olaf and BDX Star Wars droids, you've seen Moritz's work in action. computeranimation.org/program.html

David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

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To everyone who submitted to SCA .. thank you ! We ended up with the second most submissions in 13 years !!!! Bad news - we have a hiccup releasing reviews back to you. We are working on it and our plan is to adjust the rebuttal deadline to compensate (once it's sorted). sca.graphics #SCA2026

Apr 2: The deadline for awards nominations has been extended to April 17th.

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Remember it's not too late to get on board with this. I think it's important to stand up for underrepresented people even in minor ways. You can always send your submissions to TOG which has a new EIC and new faster turn around times. #SIGGRAPHAsia 2026

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Reposted by David Levin

Keenan Crane @keenancrane.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

The wonderful Nicole Feng, defending her PhD thesis on generalized distances & winding numbers. So proud of her, and very excited about all the places she will go. nzfeng.github.io (Also that text outline shaded by the surface is some galaxy brain diagramming. 🤯🧠🌌)

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Big SCA 2026 update! The incomparable A.M. Darke (news.ucsc.edu/2024/10/am-d...) will be one of our keynote speakers. Professor Darke is one of the leading voices on diversity in games and we are thrilled she will be joining us in Barcelona. computeranimation.org/program.html More news soon ...

David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

I am continually asked if VFMs "understand" classical mechanics and my benchmark for this is the venerable newton's cradle. Let's take a look at progress over the last year using Google's Veo models -- a 🧵

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Google Deepmind likes to publish one of these "can VFMs do physics" papers every so often. This year the conclusion is "not quite" last time the conclusion was "its promising" Playing at home ? We're at best stuck and at worst going backwards. video-zero-shot.github.io physics-iq.github.io

video-zero-shot.github.io

Video models are zero-shot learners and reasoners

Video models like Veo 3 are on a path to become vision foundation models.

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Today’s the day ! Final paper submission deadline for SCA! Let’s gooooo sca.graphics

David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

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It's looking good for SCA 2026 ! If all the abstracts submitted are converted into full submissions it will be the most submissions to SCA in the last 10 years !!!! Final submission deadline: April 17th sca.graphics

Apr 2: The deadline for awards nominations has been extended to April 17th.

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David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

<megaphone emoji> Today’s the day ! SCA abstracts due by 23:59 UTC April 10th Submit here: srmv2.eg.org/COMFy/Confer... sca.graphics

Apr 2: The deadline for awards nominations has been extended to April 17th.

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Great thread! I also struggled (still struggle) with a lot of this stuff but Rook articulates it much better than I ever could.

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https://computeranimation.org/

And we're back !!!!! Submit those abstracts :) Link: srmv2.eg.org/COMFy/Confer...

srmv2.eg.org

SCA_2026

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And it’s down again 😬 Will post when the issue is fixed (secretly hoping y’all crashed it with the volume of submissions)

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For those submitting to SCA (sca.graphics) — the submission system (SRM) is back up after an outage yesterday. Remember abstract deadline is tomorrrow :) Submit here: srmv2.eg.org/COMFy/Confer...

David Levin @diwlevin.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

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Abstract deadline coming up fast (April 10) Don’t forget to submit !!