Conference

GraphQuon 2025 — University of Toronto

Nov 15, 2025 3 min read

Listen to the audio story

Where to Wear? A talk in Toronto · 1:55 · AI-written script, synthetic voices

Transcript

Ava: Look at the tiles in a school bathroom. Some spots are worn smooth, others look brand new. Every surface has a biography written by frictional contact.

Andrew: That's a nice line. Is that from a real talk?

Ava: It's the subtitle on the opening slide of Where to Wear, which Antoine presented with Sheldon Andrews from ÉTS at GraphQuon 2025. That's the Quebec and Ontario pre-SIGGRAPH workshop, held at the University of Toronto on November 15th and 16th.

Andrew: So what's the actual question?

Ava: How contact over time leaves a readable history on a surface, and how you turn that into feedback for graphics and engineering. Time, contact and energy dissipation change how a surface looks and behaves. Think tool scratches, gaming materials, robot grippers.

Andrew: Easy to say, hard to simulate, I'd guess.

Ava: Exactly how the page puts it. The deck starts from the mechanics, with Archard wear and energy-based wear laws. Then it moves to a graphics pipeline: a contact mask, orthographic volumes, tangential velocity and traction, and finally integrating all that into textures.

Andrew: And how would you check it's right?

Ava: The talk floats a few validation ideas, like capturing real surfaces with GelSight and interpolating from a materials atlas.

Andrew: What did Antoine take away from presenting?

Ava: Reviewers asked how the wear would be validated on real garments, not only in simulation. So his lesson is to name the evaluation gap early. A talk also surfaces those questions before the work becomes a paper.

Andrew: Had he been to GraphQuon before?

Ava: He'd helped with the 2024 site at ÉTS, so it felt like the same community on the other side of the drive. He says the hallway conversations mattered as much as the podium.

Andrew: Where do I find the slides?

Ava: The full write-up has the pipeline diagram, a download for the deck, and some photos from Toronto.

Table of contents

GraphQuon 2025 name badge — Antoine Boucher, École de technologie supérieure, Toronto skyline

GraphQuon is the annual Quebec–Ontario pre-SIGGRAPH workshop. The 2025 edition ran 15–16 November 2025 at the University of Toronto (series page^[1]). I presented there with Sheldon Andrews (ÉTS): Where to Wear? — how frictional contact leaves a readable history on surfaces, and how we can turn that into graphics and engineering feedback.

1. What I presented

Talk title: Where to Wear? (subtitle on the opening slide: Every surface has a biography written by frictional contact).

The story is simple to state and hard to simulate: time, contact, and energy dissipation change how a surface looks and behaves—from bathroom tile wear patterns at an engineering school to scratches on tools, gaming materials, and robotics grippers. The deck walks from motivation through mechanics (Archard wear, energy-based wear laws), a graphics-oriented pipeline (contact mask, orthographic volumes, tangential velocity and traction, texture integration), and validation ideas (GelSight capture, materials atlas interpolation).

Opening slide — Where to Wear? Antoine Boucher and Sheldon Andrews, ÉTS

1.1. Pipeline (one glance)

Wear pipeline (Mermaid source):

Wear simulation pipeline — contact, velocity, traction, texture integration, atlas

Pipeline slide from the deck — inputs from contact through texture wear

Example slide from the deck

1.2. Why it fit GraphQuon

GraphQuon is where Quebec and Ontario graphics labs share work before SIGGRAPH season—short talks, posters, and honest feedback from people who build simulators and renderers. After helping with the GraphQuon 2024 site at ÉTS, presenting in Toronto in 2025 felt like the same community on the other side of the drive.

The research line connects to my ÉTS work on 3D fabrication and validation of frictional surfaces (project description^[2]).

2. Slides and downloads

Format	File	Notes
PowerPoint	graphquon-final.pptx	Original editable deck (~116 MB). Download below.

PowerPoint (.pptx) — full talk with embedded assets:

3. What I learned presenting

Name the evaluation gap early — reviewers asked how we would validate wear on real garments, not only in simulation.
Slides ≠ paper — the talk format helped surface evaluation questions before the work became a manuscript.
Community continuity — same faces as Montréal 2024, new venue; hallway conversations mattered as much as the podium.

4. Toronto, November 2025

A few photos from the trip—badge, campus-adjacent architecture, and the usual downtown walks between sessions.

The CN Tower night shot is the “I made it to Toronto” postcard; I use it when I need to remember the trip was also logistics (flights, posters, HDMI), not only research.

The OCAD Sharp Centre photo is the design-school landmark — a good reminder that GraphQuon sits between engineering graphics and industrial design culture.

Yonge–Dundas was the rainy-night walk between sessions; loud screens, wet pavement, zero regret bringing waterproof shoes.

Downtown Toronto at night — CN Tower and Bell Media building