Issue 3

Permanent URI for this collection

https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/91

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 41

Active Storytelling
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Glassner, Andrew
Adaptive Acquisition of Lumigraphs from Synthetic Scenes
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Schirmacher, Hartmut; Heidrich, Wolfgang; Seidel, Hans-Peter
Light fields and Lumigraphs are capable of rendering scenes of arbitrary geometrical or illumination complexity in real time. They are thus interesting ways of interacting with both recorded real-world and high-quality synthetic scenes.Unfortunately, both light fields and Lumigraph rely on a dense sampling of the illumination to provide a good rendering quality. This induces high costs both in terms of storage requirements and computational resources for the image acquisition. Techniques for acquiring adaptive light field and Lumigraph representations are thus mandatory for practical applications.In this paper we present a method for the adaptive acquisition of images for Lumigraphs from synthetic scenes. Using image warping to predict the potential improvement in image quality when adding a certain view, we decide which new views of the scene should be rendered and added to the light field. This a-priori error estimator accounts for both visibility problems and illumination effects such as specular highlights.
An Adaptive Method for Area Light Sources and Daylight in Ray Tracing
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Zaninetti, Jacques; Boy, Pierre; Peroche, Bernard
This paper proposes an adaptive method for taking both (diffuse or not) planar area light sources and daylight into account in a ray tracing environment which separates the calculation of direct and indirect illumination. In a given point, direct illumination due to a light source or to natural light is represented by a vector, the direction and magnitude of which being computed through an adaptive area approach, which is driven by the solid angle according to which a part of the source is seen from the current point. In the case of unoccluded diffuse polygonal sources, an analytical formula is used which gives an exact value for this vector.
Capturing and Re-Using Rendition Styles for Non-Photorealistic Rendering
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Hamel, J.; Strothotte, T.
Rendering high-quality non-photorealistic images of a given geometric model is often associated with a considerable amount of effort on the part of a user to fine-tune the rendition. In this paper we introduce a method and tools for re-using the user's effort invested in one model for the rendering of other models.Our method uses templates to describe rendition styles. The paper gives a number of examples of the successful transfer of styles from one model to another.
Compact Metallic Reflectance Models
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Neumann, Laszlo; Neumannn, Attila; Szirmay-Kalos, Laszlo
The paper presents simple, physically plausible, but not physically based reflectance models for metals and other specular materials. So far there has been no metallic BRDF model that is easy to compute, suitable for fast importance sampling and is physically plausible. This gap is filled by appropriate modifications of the Phong, Blinn and the Ward models. The Phong and the Blinn models are known not to have metallic characteristics. On the other hand, this paper also shows that the Cook-Torrance and the Ward models are not physically plausible, because of their behavior at grazing angles. We also compare the previous and the newly proposed models. Finally, the generated images demonstrate how the metallic impression can be provided by the new models.
Comprehensive Halftoning of 3D Scenes
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Veryovka, O.; Buchanan, J.
The display of images on binary output hardware requires a halftoning step. Conventional halftoning algorithms approximate image values independently from the image content and often introduce artificial texture that obscures fine details. The objective of this research is to adapt a halftoning technique to 3D scene information and thus to enhance the display of computer generated 3D scenes. Our approach is based on the control of halftoning texture by the combination of ordered dithering and error diffusion techniques. We extend our previous work and enable a user to specify the shape, scale, direction, and contrast of the halftoning texture using an external buffer. We control texture shape by constructing a dither matrix from an arbitrary image or a procedural texture. Texture direction and scale are adapted to the external information by the mapping function. Texture contrast and the accuracy of tone reproduction are varied across the image using the error diffusion process. We halftone images of 3D scenes by using the geometry, position, and illumination information to control the halftoning texture. Thus, the texture provides visual cues and can be used to enhance the viewer's comprehension of the display.
Computer-Generated Graphite Pencil Rendering of 3D Polygonal Models
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Sousa, Mario Costa; Buchanan, John W.
Researchers in non-photorealistic rendering have investigated the display of three-dimensional worlds using various display models. In particular, recent work has focused on the modeling of traditional artistic media and styles such as pen-and-ink illustration and watercolor painting. By providing 3D rendering systems that use these alternative display models users can generate traditional illustration renderings of their three-dimensional worlds. In this paper we present our graphite pencil 3D renderer. We have broken the problem of simulating pencil drawing down into four fundamental parts: (1) simulating the drawing materials (graphite pencil and drawing paper, blenders and kneaded eraser), (2) modeling the drawing primitives (individual pencil strokes and mark-making to create tones and textures), (3) simulating the basic rendering techniques used by artists and illustrators familiar with pencil rendering, and (4) modeling the control of the drawing composition. Each part builds upon the others and is essential to developing the framework for higher-level rendering methods and tools. In this paper we present parts 2, 3, and 4 of our research. We present non-photorealistic graphite pencil rendering methods for outlining and shading. We also present the control of drawing steps from preparatory sketches to finished rendering results. We demonstrate the capabilities of our approach with a variety of images generated from 3D models.
Creating Architectural Models from Images
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Liebowitz, David; Criminisi, Antonio; Zisserman, Andrew
We present methods for creating 3D graphical models of scenes from a limited numbers of images, i.e. one or two, in situations where no scene co-ordinate measurements are available. The methods employ constraints available from geometric relationships that are common in architectural scenes - such as parallelism and orthogonality - together with constraints available from the camera. In particular, by using the circular points of a plane simple, linear algorithms are given for computing plane rectification, plane orientation and camera calibration from a single image. Examples of image based 3D modelling are given for both single images and image pairs.
Data Intermixing and Multi-volume Rendering
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Cai, Wenli; Sakas, Georgios
The main difference between multi-volume rendering and mono-volume rendering is data intermixing. In this paper, we present three levels of data intermixing and their rendering pipelines in direct multi-volume rendering, which discriminate image level intensity intermixing, accumulation level opacity intermixing, and illumination model level parameter intermixing. In the context of radiotherapy treatment planning, different data intermixing methods are applied to three volumes, including CT volume, Dose volume, and Segmentation volume, to compare the features of different data intermixing methods.
The Digital Michelangelo Project
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Levoy, Marc A.
An Efficient 2? D rendering and Compositing System
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Froumentin, M.; Willis, P.
We describe a method for doing image compositing using either 2D geometric shapes or raster images as input primitives. The resolution of the final image is virtually unlimited but, as no frame buffer is used, performance is much less dependant on resolution than with standard painting programs, allowing rendering very large images in reasonable time. Many standard features found in compositing programs have been implemented, like hierarchical data structures for input primitives, lighting control for each layer and filter operations (for antialiasing or defocus).
An Efficient and Flexible Perception Pipeline for Autonomous Agents
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Bordeux, Christophe; Boulic, Ronan; Thalmann, Daniel
Agents in virtual environments require a combination of perception and action to behave in an autonomous way. We extend a software architecture for the management of actions blending, called AGENTlib, with a perception mechanism. The perception system provides a uniform interface to various techniques in the field of virtual perception, including synthetic vision, database access and perception persistency. We describe the framework we designed to efficiently filter valuable information from the scene and we address concerns about computation redundancy and data propagation through multiple filtering modules.
Efficient and Handy Texture Mapping on 3D Surfaces
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Matsushita, Kenji; Kaneko, Toyohisa
There has been a rapid technical progress in three-dimensional (3D) computer graphics. But gathering surface and texture data is yet a laborious task. This paper addresses the problem of mapping photographic images on the surface of a 3D object whose geometric data are already known. We propose an efficient and handy method for acquiring textures and mapping them precisely on the surface, employing a digital camera alone. We describe an algorithm for selecting a minimal number of camera positions that can cover the entire surface of a given object and also an algorithm to determine camera's position and direction for each photograph taken so as to paste it to the corresponding surfaces precisely. We obtained a matching accuracy within a pixel on a surface through three experimental examples, by which the practicability of our method is demonstrated.
Fast Lines: a Span by Span Method
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Boyer, V.; Bourdin, J.J.
Straight line's scan conversion and drawing is a major field in computer graphics. Algorithm's time computation is very important. Nowadays, most of research papers suggest improvements of the DDA method that was first presented by J. Bresenham. But other approaches exist as well like combinatory analysis and linguistic methods. Both of them use multiple string copies that slow down the efficiency of the algorithms. This paper proposes a new algorithm based on a careful analysis of the line segments' properties some of them previously unused. Our algorithm is proved significantly faster than previously published ones.
Fast Polyhedral Cell Sorting for Interactive Rendering of Unstructured Grids
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Comba, Joao; Klosowsk, James T.; Max, Nelson; Mitchell, Joseph S. B.; Silva, Claudio T.; Williams, Peter L.
Direct volume rendering based on projective methods works by projecting, in visibility order, the polyhedral cells of a mesh onto the image plane, and incrementally compositing the cell's color and opacity into the final image. Crucial to this method is the computation of a visibility ordering of the cells. If the mesh is "well-behaved" (acyclic and convex), then the MPVO method of Williams provides a very fast sorting algorithm; however, this method only computes an approximate ordering in general datasets, resulting in visual artifacts when rendered. A recent method of Silva et al. removed the assumption that the mesh is convex, by means of a sweep algorithm used in conjunction with the MPVO method; their algorithm is substantially faster than previous exact methods for general meshes.In this paper we propose a new technique, which we call BSP-XMPVO, which is based on a fast and simple way of using binary space partitions on the boundary elements of the mesh to augment the ordering produced by MPVO. Our results are shown to be orders of magnitude better than previous exact methods of sorting cells.
A Free Form Feature Taxonomy
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Fontana, M.; Giannini, F.; Meirana, M.
In this paper the notion of free form feature for aesthetic design is presented. The design of industrial products constituted by free form surfaces is done by using CAD systems representing curves and surfaces by means of NURBS functions, which are usually defined by low level entities that are not intuitive and require some knowledge of the mathematical language. Similarly to the feature-based approach adopted by CAD systems for classical mechanical design, a set of high level modelling entities which provides commonly performed shape modifications has been identified. Particularly, the paper suggests a classification of the so-called detail features for an aesthetic and/or functional characterization of predefined free form surfaces. Feature types are formally described by means of an analytical definition of the surface modification through deformation and elimination laws. A topological classification is then given according to the application domain of such laws. A further sub-classification of morphological types is then suggested according to geometric properties of weak convexity and concavity for the resulting modified shape, leading to a taxonomy of simple free form features meaningful for aesthetic design.
Generalized View-Dependent Simplification
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) El-Sana, Jihad; Varshney, Amitabh
We propose a technique for performing view-dependent geometry and topology simplifications for level-of-detail-based renderings of large models. The algorithm proceeds by preprocessing the input dataset into a binary tree, the view-dependence tree of general vertex-pair collapses. A subset of the Delaunay edges is used to limit the number of vertex pairs considered for topology simplification. Dependencies to avoid mesh foldovers in manifold regions of the input object are stored in the view-dependence tree in an implicit fashion. We have observed that this not only reduces the space requirements by a factor of two, it also highly localizes the memory accesses at run time. The view-dependence tree is used at run time to generate the triangles for display. We also propose a cubic-spline-based distance metric that can be used to unify the geometry and topology simplifications by considering the vertex positions and normals in an integrated manner.
The Hybrid World of Virtual Environments
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Smith, Shamus; Duke, David; Massink, Mieke
Much of the work concerned with virtual environments has addressed the development of new rendering technologies or interaction techniques. As the technology matures and becomes adopted in a wider range of applications, there is, however, a need to better understand how this technology can be accommodated in software engineering practice. A particular challenge presented by virtual environments is the complexity of the interaction that is supported, and sometimes necessary, for a particular task. Methods such as finite-state automata which are used to represent and design dialogue components for more conventional interfaces, e.g. using direct manipulation within a desktop model, do not seem to capture adequately the style of interaction that is afforded by richer input devices and graphical models. In this paper, we suggest that virtual environments are, fundamentally, what are known as hybrid systems. Building on this insight, we demonstrate how techniques developed for modelling hybrid systems can be used to represent and understand virtual interaction in a way that can be used in the specification and design phases of software development, and which have the potential to support prototyping and analysis of virtual interfaces.
Image Morphing with Feature Preserving Texture
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Tal, Ayellet; Elber, Gershon
Image metamorphosis as an animation tool has mostly been employed in the context of the entire image. This work explores the use of isolated and focused image based metamorphosis between two-dimensional objects, while capturing the features, colors, and textures of the objects. This pinpointed approach allows one to independently overlay several such dynamic shapes, without any bleeding of one shape into another. Hence, shape blending and metamorphosis of two-dimensional objects can be exploited as animated sequences of clip arts.
Improved Laplacian Smoothing of Noisy Surface Meshes
(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1999) Vollmer, J.; Mencl, R.; Muller, H.
This paper presents a technique for smoothing polygonal surface meshes that avoids the well-known problem of deformation and shrinkage caused by many smoothing methods, like e.g. the Laplacian algorithm. The basic idea is to push the vertices of the smoothed mesh back towards their previous locations. This technique can be also used in order to smooth unstructured point sets, by reconstructing a surface mesh to which the smoothing technique is applied. The key observation is that a surface mesh which is not necessarily topologically correct, but which can efficiently be reconstructed, is sufficient for that purpose.

Browse

Browsing Issue 3 by Title

Results Per Page

Sort Options