From research breakthroughs to creative showcases, the Division of Arts and Machine Creativity (AMC) made profound connections with global leaders in graphics and interactive techniques at this year's SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 held at the Hong Kong Exhibition and Convention Center from 15–18 Dec, 2025. This premier international conference brought together top minds from academia and industry, offering a platform for AMC faculty and students to share cutting-edge research, deliver expert insights, and engage in meaningful collaborations that highlight our commitment to innovation and global impact.
Highlight of faculty involvement
Prof. Hongbo FU, Acting Head and Professor at AMC, served in the Technical Papers Program as Assistant Chair and in the Conference Organization Committee, in addition to presenting 2 papers in the Technical Papers Program:
- From Rigging to Waving: 3D-Guided Diffusion for Natural Animation of Hand-Drawn Characters
Jie Zhou, Linzi Qu, Miu-Ling Lam, Hongbo Fu
Introduces a hybrid animation system for hand-drawn characters, combining 3D skeletal rigging with domain-adapted video diffusion. Key innovations include Secondary Dynamics Injection for realistic motion and Hair Layering Modeling for natural long-hair animation. Experiments show superior geometric consistency and dynamic detail compared to state-of-the-art methods. - Single-Image 3D Human Reconstruction with 3D-Aware Diffusion Priors and Facial Enhancement
Jie Yang, Bo-tao Zhang, Feng-lin Liu, Hongbo Fu, Yu-kun Lai, Lin GaoIntroduces HumanLift, a method for reconstructing photorealistic 3D humans from a single image. It combines 3D-aware video diffusion transformers with SMPL-X priors for multi-view consistency and integrates facial enhancement via generative priors and 3D Gaussian optimization. Experiments show superior realism, geometric fidelity, and facial detail compared to existing approaches.
Prof. Wenhan LUO, Associate Professor at AMC, delivered a talk titled "Free lunch from Visual Generative Models" at the AsiaGraphics Workshop.
Prof. Anyi RAO, Assistant Professor at AMC, chaired the Technical Paper session "Compositional and Layout-Guided Image Synthesis", in addition to delivering the course "Generative Models for Visual Content Editing and Creation".
Meeting Everyone: AMC's Outreach Booth at SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 Exhibition
To showcase division achievements and reach out to more audience from the general public to industry experts, AMC organized an Outreach Booth at SIGGRAPH Asia 2025's Exhibition Hall and attracted significant attention, with over 400 souvenir sets delivered and many a new connection made with local and overseas participants of the SIGGRAPH Asia conference. Featured promotion include students' work such as AI-generated Films and Visuals, latest events like the 2nd HKUST AI Film Festival and 2nd Cross-Campus Exhibition, and much more.
HKUST x AsiaGraphics Night
AMC has the honor to extend invitation to guests from SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 and AsiaGraphics for a fruitful day of exchange at the HKUST x AsiaGraphics Night on 17 Dec 2025.
Over 50 guests attended our lab visit to the Von Neumann Institute (VNI) and HongKong Generative AI Research & Development Center (HKGAI), witnessing forefront research work being conducted at HKUST. The exhibition tour to our 2nd Cross-Campus Exhibition that follows showcased an array of Human-machine Interactive Exhibits and advanced AI Videographic work by students from HKUST Clearwater Bay and Guangzhou Campus alike.
The evening dinner, with over 100 attending guests, buzzed with lively exchanges on latest technology topics and industry news, all shared in a warm atmosphere while enjoying a delightful meal, marking a perfect finish for the evening.
AMC’s impactful presence at SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 underscores its role as a global leader in Arts and Machine Creativity. Through pioneering research, expert contributions, and diverse outreach, the division continues to push boundaries in graphics and AI-driven creativity. The division looks forward to building on these achievements and fostering deeper international collaborations among industrial and academic partners alike.
