When AI and computer graphics ignite the sparks of a “Generative Renaissance”, practitioners in the global digital creativity sector gathered in Hong Kong—the 18th ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 concluded successfully at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from December 15 to 18! As a world-leading international conference in computer graphics and interactive techniques, this year’s event was themed “Generative Renaissance”. It attracted over 7,000 participants from more than 50 countries and regions, 400+ guest speakers, and 80+ top-tier enterprises including Tencent, Huawei, Adobe and Pixar. All participants brought cutting-edge technologies and creative works, vividly demonstrating the development potential of the digital future.
As a pivotal annual event for digital creativity in Asia, SIGGRAPH Asia 2025’s choice of Hong Kong as its host city not only highlights Hong Kong’s strengths of combining international vision with profound creative heritage, but also successfully built a global bridge for exchange and collaboration.
In his closing speech, Professor Taku Komura, Conference Chair and faculty member of the University of Hong Kong, stated: “This conference has fully demonstrated Hong Kong’s creative vitality and technological strength, providing a platform for global researchers, studios and creators to communicate. It has enabled the theme of ‘Generative Renaissance’ to take root in the innovation exchanges between the East and the West. Thank you to all participants for your contributions—your wisdom and creativity have made this conference a resounding success.”
Highlight Review: Breakthroughs in Digital Creativity
The conference featured dozens of core segments including technical papers, art galleries, emerging technologies, computer animation festival and XR experiences, covering the entire spectrum of innovative achievements from academic research to industrial applications. A number of landmark outcomes and remarkable moments emerged, providing crucial insights for industry development:
1. Gathering of Industry Luminaries, Insights into Cutting-Edge Trends
The keynote session was brimming with highlights, where leaders in global technology and creativity shared forward-looking industry perspectives:
Professor Harry Shum, former Microsoft Global Executive Vice President and current faculty member of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, provided an in-depth analysis of the development prospects of low-altitude economy and intelligent low-altitude integrated systems.
Jamie Shotton, Chief Scientist at Wayve, explored how synthetic data reshapes autonomous driving and embodied intelligence.
Guo Chunchao, Head of Tencent Hunyuan 3D, focused on “3D World Construction and Intelligent Vision” and shared breakthroughs in generative technologies for virtual environment reconstruction.
In addition, the Pixar team shared behind-the-scenes production experience of Elemental. Industry veterans including Scott Ross, Founder of Digital Domain, and Raman Hui, Director of Monster Hunt, also attended to share insights into the creative essentials of animation, VFX and virtual production, charting the course for industry development.
2. Chinese Power, Hardcore Technological Breakthroughs
The achievements of Chinese enterprises and research teams garnered significant attention at the conference, demonstrating robust technological prowess:
Tencent, centering on the theme of “Neural Graphics and Generative AI”, presented 9 selected papers and 3 special sessions. Its self-developed Imaginarium intelligent scene generation system can automatically create art-style-consistent 3D scenes via text prompts, significantly improving the production efficiency of open-world games. The industry’s first AI full-pipeline 3D character animation solution released by its VISVISE team has been applied in nearly 100 projects including PUBG Mobile and Honor of Kings, boosting production efficiency by over 8 times and earning widespread industry recognition.
Shanda AI Tokyo Research Institute, under Chen Tianqiao, made its debut at the conference, launching its digital human technology Mio with excellent interactive performance. Its Interactive Intelligence Score (IIS) reached 76.0, an 8.4-point improvement over the previous state-of-the-art technology, setting a new industry benchmark.
In the academic arena, good news also emerged:
The research Curve-Based Slicer for Multi-Axis DLP 3D Printing by the team from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Manchester won the Best Paper Award. The study proposed a novel differentiable optimization-based slicing computational framework, redefining the slicing process of DLP 3D printing—marking the team’s second win of this honor within three years.
The CamCloneMaster camera-movement-controllable video generation framework, jointly developed by the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Kuaishou Keling team, delivered outstanding performance. It can “clone” camera movements with just a reference video, easily achieving film-level cinematography effects. The relevant dataset has been fully open-sourced, which is expected to propel AIGC video creation into the era of “cinematography freedom”.
Student works from the Digital Theatre Department of the Central Academy of Drama have been selected for SIGGRAPH series conferences for three consecutive times. Among them, Nora: Exploring a Feminist Approach to VR Creation entered the core academic Art Papers track, deeply integrating feminist theory with VR creation and winning high recognition from international reviewers.
Enterprises including Huawei and Adobe also brought the latest achievements in AI rendering and interaction design, fully demonstrating China’s diverse breakthroughs in the field of computer graphics.
3. Immersive Experience, Touching the Future
The Games Program made a strong comeback at SIGGRAPH Asia 2025, gathering game creators, researchers, developers and educators from Asia and around the world with renewed vitality and forward-looking vision. At a time when games continue to influence cultural and technological development, this year’s Games Program focused on innovation, creativity and future trends in game development, emerging as one of the conference’s key highlights.
The Games Program consisted of two core segments:
Start-Ups Gallery: 10 highly promising Asian game start-ups were carefully selected to showcase their in-development games and share their growth journeys and development philosophies.
Educator’s Forum: Educators engaged in in-depth discussions on the evolving role of AI in game development and its impact on teaching and learning, providing new ideas for industry talent cultivation.
Notably, during the exchange session of the Games Program, the Chair of Shanghai SIGGRAPH Chapter specially recommended the Singaporean game work SEDAP. Centered on unique Southeast Asian cultural elements, this work combines creativity and humanistic warmth in gameplay design and visual expression. It not only showcases the local characteristics of Singaporean game creation, but also provides an excellent example for the exchange and integration of Asia’s diverse game cultures, sparking enthusiastic discussions among on-site participants.
4. Immersive Experience, Touching the Future
In the Emerging Technologies and XR track, a series of futuristic interactive installations allowed participants to experience cutting-edge technologies immersively: 360-degree viewable touchable aerial images, flexible transparent 3D pneumatic display films, and mixed reality experiences that connect virtual and real worlds without any devices—these technologies are constantly breaking the boundaries between virtuality and reality. The Computer Animation Festival brought together outstanding animated works from around the world, intuitively demonstrating the transformative impact of generative technologies on animation creation through exquisite character modeling and stunning visual effects.
In addition, the national pavilions of South Korea and Malaysia showcased Asia’s emerging creative forces, enabling participants to gain a one-stop understanding of the diverse characteristics of global digital creativity. Many participants noted that this grand event not only allowed them to learn cutting-edge knowledge, but also to meet industry partners and gain valuable inspiration through exchanges.
For practitioners, researchers and enthusiasts in the digital creativity field, SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 is more than just a conference—it is a core platform for linking global resources, colliding innovative ideas and building industry consensus.
Next Stop: See You in Kuala Lumpur
As this year’s conference concluded successfully, the information of the next edition was officially announced: SIGGRAPH Asia 2026 will be held at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre in Malaysia from December 1 to 4, 2026, with the theme “Weaving the Future”—marking the conference’s first-ever landing in Malaysia.
Although this conference has ended, the exploration of digital creativity never stops. Let us carry the gains and inspirations from this conference, look forward to the reunion in Kuala Lumpur in 2026, and continue to explore future possibilities at the intersection of technology and art!