EG2024
Permanent URI for this community
Browse
Browsing EG2024 by Issue Date
Now showing 1 - 20 of 59
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Gaming to Learn: A Pilot Case Study on Students Acceptance of Playing Video Games as a Learning Method(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Nisiotis, Louis; Sousa Santos, Beatriz; Anderson, EikeThis paper presents a case study on playing video games as a method to support the delivery of a game development University module, describing the teaching methodology and presenting details on a 'gaming' for learning approach to support the module's learning objectives. It presents the formulation of a theoretical framework to evaluate students acceptance of playing video games as a learning method, and the results of a pilot study using a modified Technology Acceptance Model. The results revealed that gaming as a learning activity was positively perceived by students, finding this method engaging and relevant to their learning curriculum, playful, enjoyable, useful, easy to use, with positive attitudes and behavioural intentions to use. This pilot case study serves as a practical example of implementing video games to support learning, preparing the methodology for further research to understand students acceptance, and the effect on learning outcomes and knowledge acquisition.Item Distributed Surface Reconstruction(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Marin, Diana; Komon, Patrick; Ohrhallinger, Stefan; Wimmer, Michael; Liu, Lingjie; Averkiou, MelinosRecent advancements in scanning technologies and their rise in availability have shifted the focus from reconstructing surfaces from point clouds of small areas to large, e.g., city-wide scenes, containing massive amounts of data. We adapt a surface reconstruction method to work in a distributed fashion on a high-performance cluster, reconstructing datasets with millions of vertices in seconds. We exploit the locality of the connectivity required by the reconstruction algorithm to efficiently divide-andconquer the problem of creating triangulations from very large unstructured point clouds.Item Real-time Seamless Object Space Shading(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Li, Tianyu; Guo, Xiaoxin; Hu, Ruizhen; Charalambous, PanayiotisObject space shading remains a challenging problem in real-time rendering due to runtime overhead and object parameterization limitations. While the recently developed algorithm by Baker et al. [BJ22] enables high-performance real-time object space shading, it still suffers from seam artifacts. In this paper, we introduce an innovative object space shading system leveraging a virtualized per-halfedge texturing schema to obviate excessive shading and preclude texture seam artifacts. Moreover, we implement ReSTIR GI on our system (see Figure 1), removing the necessity of temporally reprojecting shading samples and improving the convergence of areas of disocclusion. Our system yields superior results in terms of both efficiency and visual fidelity.Item StarDEM: Efficient Discrete Element Method for Star-shaped Particles(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Schreck, Camille; Lefebvre, Sylvain; Jourdan, David; Martínez, Jonàs; Hu, Ruizhen; Charalambous, PanayiotisGranular materials composed of particles with complex shapes are challenging to simulate due to the high number of collisions between the particles. In this context, star shapes are promising: they cover a wide range of geometries from convex to concave and have interesting geometric properties. We propose an efficient method to simulate a large number of identical star-shaped particles. Our method relies on an effective approximation of the contacts between particles that can handle complex shapes, including highly non-convex ones. We demonstrate our method by implementing it in a 2D simulation using the Discrete Element Method, both on the CPU and GPU.Item Modern Dance Retargeting using Ribbons as Lines of Action(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Vialle, Manon; Ronfard, Rémi; Skouras, Melina; Hu, Ruizhen; Charalambous, PanayiotisWe present a method for retargetting dancing characters represented as articulated skeletons with possibly different morphologies and topologies. Our approach relies on the use of flexible ribbons that can bend and twist as an intermediate representation, and that can be seen as animated lines of action. These ribbons allow us to abstract away the specific morphology of the bodies and to well transmit the fluidity of modern dance movement from one character to another.Item Bridging the Distance in Education: Design and Implementation of a Synchronous, Browser-Based VR Remote Teaching Tool(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Pehlic, Abdulmelik; Augsdörfer, Ursula; Sousa Santos, Beatriz; Anderson, EikeThe rapid shift to remote education has presented numerous challenges for educators and students alike. Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a promising solution, offering immersive and interactive learning experiences. We design and implement a synchronous, browser-based VR teaching tool. The tool is compatible with budget VR equipment and enables meaningful engagement between teachers and students in a virtual setting, as well as active participation and interaction across a range of platforms, thus solving a range of disadvantages of current approaches.Item From Few to Full: High-Resolution 3D Object Reconstruction from Sparse Views and Unknown Poses(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Yao, Grekou; Mavromatis, Sebastien; Mari, Jean-Luc; Liu, Lingjie; Averkiou, MelinosRecent progress in 3D reconstruction has been driven by generative models, moving from traditional multi-view dependence to single-image diffusion model based techniques. However, these innovative approaches often face challenges with sparse view scenarios, requiring known poses or template shapes, often failing in high-resolution reconstructions. Addressing these issues, we introduce the ''F2F'' (Few to Full) framework, designed for crafting high-resolution 3D models from few views and unknown camera poses, creating fully realistic 3D objects without external constraints. F2F employs a hybrid approach, optimizing both implicit and explicit representations through a unique pipeline involving a pretrained diffusion model for pose estimation, a deformable tetrahedra grid for feature volume construction, and an MLP (neural network) for surface optimization. Our method sets a new standard by ensuring surface geometry, topology, and semantic consistency through differentiable rendering, aiming for a comprehensive solution in 3D reconstruction from sparse views.Item A Generative Approach to Light Placement for Street Lighting(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Evangelou, Iordanis; Vitsas, Nick; Papaioannou, Georgios; Gkaravelis, Anastasios; Hu, Ruizhen; Charalambous, PanayiotisThe design of plausible and effective street lighting configurations for arbitrary urban sites should attain predetermined illuminance levels and adhere to specific layout intentions and functional requirements. This task can be time consuming, even for automated solutions, since there exists an one-to-many mapping between illumination goals and lighting options. In this work, we propose a generative approach for this task, based on an adversarial optimisation scheme. Our proposed method effectively overcomes these task-specific limitations by providing a range of viable solutions that adhere to the input constraints and can be generated within an interactive design life cycle.Item Efficient and Accurate Multi-Instance Point Cloud Registration with Iterative Main Cluster Detection(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Yu, Zhiyuan; Zheng, Qin; Zhu, Chenyang; Xu, Kai; Hu, Ruizhen; Charalambous, PanayiotisMulti-instance point cloud registration is the problem of recovering the poses of all instances of a model point cloud in a scene point cloud. A traditional solution first extracts correspondences and then clusters the correspondences into different instances. We propose an efficient and robust method which clusters the correspondences in an iterative manner. In each iteration, our method first computes the spatial compatibility matrix between the correspondences, and detects its main cluster. The main cluster indicates a potential occurrence of an instance, and we estimate the pose of this instance with the correspondences in the main cluster. Afterwards, the correspondences are removed to further register new instances in the following iterations. With this simplistic design, our method can adaptively determine the number of instances, achieving significant improvements on both efficiency and accuracy.Item Utilizing Motion Matching with Deep Reinforcement Learning for Target Location Tasks(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Lee, Jeongmin; Kwon, Taesoo; Shin, Hyunju; Lee, Yoonsang; Hu, Ruizhen; Charalambous, PanayiotisWe present an approach using deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to directly generate motion matching queries for longterm tasks, particularly targeting the reaching of specific locations. By integrating motion matching and DRL, our method demonstrates the rapid learning of policies for target location tasks within minutes on a standard desktop, employing a simple reward design. Additionally, we propose a unique hit reward and obstacle curriculum scheme to enhance policy learning in environments with moving obstacles.Item SPnet: Estimating Garment Sewing Patterns from a Single Image of a Posed User(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Lim, Seungchan; Kim, Sumin; Lee, Sung-Hee; Hu, Ruizhen; Charalambous, PanayiotisThis paper presents a novel method for reconstructing 3D garment models from a single image of a posed user. Previous studies that have primarily focused on accurately reconstructing garment geometries to match the input garment image may often result in unnatural-looking garments when deformed for new poses. To overcome this limitation, our work takes a different approach by inferring the fundamental shape of the garment through sewing patterns from a single image, rather than directly reconstructing 3D garments. Our method consists of two stages. Firstly, given a single image of a posed user, it predicts the garment image worn on a T-pose, representing the baseline form of the garment. Then, it estimates the sewing pattern parameters based on the T-pose garment image. By simulating the stitching and draping of the sewing pattern using physics simulation, we can generate 3D garments that can adaptively deform to arbitrary poses. The effectiveness of our method is validated through ablation studies on the major components and a comparison with other methods.Item An Overview of Teaching a Virtual and Augmented Reality Course at Postgraduate Level for Ten Years(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Marques, Bernardo; Santos, Beatriz Sousa; Dias, Paulo; Sousa Santos, Beatriz; Anderson, EikeIn recent years, a multitude of affordable sensors, interaction devices, and displays have entered the market, facilitating the adoption of Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) in various areas of application. However, the development of such applications demands a solid grasp of the field and specific technical proficiency often missing from existing Computer Science and Engineering education programs. This work describes a post-graduate-level course being taught for the last ten years to several Master's Degree programs, aiming to introduce students to the fundamental principles, methods, and tools of VR/AR. The course's main objective is to equip students with the necessary knowledge to comprehend, create, implement, and assess applications using these technologies. This paper provides insights into the course structure, the key topics covered, assessment, as well as the devices, and infrastructure utilized. It also includes a brief overview of various sample practical projects, along the years. Among other reflections, we argue that teaching this course is challenging due to the fast evolution of the field making updating paramount. This maybe alleviated by motivating students to a research oriented approach, encouraging them to bring their own projects and challenges (e.g. related to their Master dissertations). Finally, future perspectives are outlined.Item Skeleton-Aware Skin Weight Transfer for Helper Joint Rigs(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Cao, Ziyuan; Mukai, Tomohiko; Hu, Ruizhen; Charalambous, PanayiotisWe propose a method to transfer skin weights and helper joints from a reference model to other targets. Our approach uses two types of spatial proximity to find the correspondence between the target vertex and reference mesh regions. The proposed method first generates a guide weight map to establish a relationship between the skin vertices and skeletal joints using a standard skinning technique. The correspondence between the reference and target skins is established using vertex-to-bone projection and bone-to-skin ray-casting using the guide weights. This method enables fully automated and smooth transfer of skin weight between human-like characters bound to helper joint rigs.Item An Inverse Procedural Modeling Pipeline for Stylized Brush Stroke Rendering(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Li, Hao; Guan, Zhongyue; Wang, Zeyu; Hu, Ruizhen; Charalambous, PanayiotisStylized brush strokes are crucial for digital artists to create drawings that express a desired artistic style. To obtain the ideal brush, artists need to spend much time manually tuning parameters and creating customized brushes, which hinders the completion, redrawing, or modification of digital drawings. This paper proposes an inverse procedural modeling pipeline for predicting brush parameters and rendering stylized strokes given a single sample drawing. Our pipeline involves patch segmentation as a preprocessing step, parameter prediction based on deep learning, and brush generation using a procedural rendering engine. Our method enhances the overall experience of digital drawing recreation by empowering artists with more intuitive control and consistent brush effects.Item Approaches to Nurturing Undergraduate Research in the Creative Industries - a UK Multi-Institutional Exploration(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Anderson, Eike Falk; McLoughlin, Leigh; Gingrich, Oliver; Kanellos, Emmanouil; Adzhiev, Valery; Sousa Santos, Beatriz; Anderson, EikeUndergraduate students aspiring to pursue careers in the creative industries, such as animation, video games, and computer art, require the ability to adapt and contribute to emerging and disruptive technologies. The cultivation of research skills fosters this adaptability and innovation, which is why research skills are considered important by employers. Promoting undergraduate research in computer graphics and related techniques is therefore necessary to ensure that students graduate not only with the vocational but also with the advanced research skills desired by the creative industries. This paper describes pedagogical approaches to nurturing undergraduate research across teaching, learning and through extracurricular activities - pioneered at three UK Higher Education Institutions. Providing observations, we are sharing educational strategies - reflecting on pedagogic experiences of supporting undergraduate research projects, many of which are practice-based. With this paper, we aim to contribute to a wider discussion around challenges and opportunities of student-led research.Item VirtualVoxelCrowd: Rendering One Billion Characters at Real-Time(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Yang, Jinyuan; Campbell, Abraham G.; Liu, Lingjie; Averkiou, MelinosIn this paper, we introduce VirtualVoxelCrowd, which aims to address the challenges of data scale and overdraw in massive crowd rendering applications. The approach leverages multiple levels of detail and multi-pass culling to reduce rendering workload and overdraw. VirtualVoxelCrowd supports rendering of up to one billion characters, achieving unprecedented scale on standard graphics hardware while rendering subpixel-level voxels to prevent the level of detail transition artifacts. This method offers significant improvements in handling massive animated crowd visualization, establishing a new possibility for dynamic, large-scale scene rendering.Item Topological Data Structure for Computer Graphics(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Fábián, Gábor; Liu, Lingjie; Averkiou, MelinosThis research is motivated by the following well-known contradiction. In computer-aided design or modeling tasks, we generally represent surfaces using edge-based data structures as winged edge [Bau75], half-edge [MP78] [CP98], or quad-edge [GS85]. In contrast, real-time computer graphics represents surfaces with face-vertex meshes, since for surface rendering, there is no need for the explicit representation of edges. In this research we introduce a novel data structure for representation of triangle meshes. Our representation is based on the concept of face-vertex meshes with adjacencies, but we use some extra information and new ideas that greatly simplify the implementation of algorithms.Item Design and development of VR games for Cultural Heritage using Immersive Storytelling(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Rizvic, Selma; Mijatovic, Bojan; Mania, Katerina; Artusi, AlessandroIn this tutorial we introduce the whole process of creating, designing and developing a serious VR game for cultural heritage using the concept of immersive storytelling. The use of serious games in education is allowing us to offer a different approach to learning. However, designing an application with gameplay parts as well as educational components in specific area such as cultural heritage can be challenging and different to many other methodologies in the creation of similar applications. The goal of the tutorial is to show different aspects of serious game creation and usage of our immersive storytelling methodology called hyper storytelling to help with the educational elements of the game. We will go through the creation of a story for the game; the creation of scenarios for the educational gameplay part; the filming of actors on green screen and filming of 360 videos; compositing of VR videos with actors and ambisonic sound; the creation of photogrammetry items; combining educational parts with gameplay and creating connection between them; application development and finalization of the product. At the end, we will showcase our example of the game.Item A Highly Adaptable and Flexible Rendering Engine by Minimum API Bindings(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Kim, Taejoon; Hu, Ruizhen; Charalambous, PanayiotisThis paper presents a method for embedding a rendering engine into different development environments with minimal API bindings. The method separates the engine interfaces into two levels: System APIs and User APIs. System APIs are the lowlevel functions that enable communication between the engine and the user environment, while User APIs are the high-level functions that provide rendering and beyond rendering functionalities to the user. By minimizing the number of System APIs, the method simplifies the adaptation of the engine to various languages and platforms. Its applicability and flexibility are demonstrated by the successful embedding the engine in multiple environments, including C/C++, C#, Python, Javascript, and Matlab. It also demonstrates its versatility in diverse forms such as CLI renderers, Web GUI framework-based renderers, remote renderers, physical simulations, and more, while also enabling the easy adoption of other rendering algorithms to the engine.Item Next Generation 3D Face Models(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Chandran, Prashanth; Yang, Lingchen; Mania, Katerina; Artusi, AlessandroHaving a compact, expressive and artist friendly way to represent and manipulate human faces has been of prime interest to the visual effects community for the past several decades as face models play a very important role in many face capture workflows. In this short course, we go over the evolution of 3D face models used to model and animate facial identity and expression in the computer graphics community, and discuss how the recent emergence of deep face models is transforming this landscape by enabling new artistic choices. In this first installment, the course will take the audience through the evolution of face models, starting with simple blendshape models introduced in the 1980s; that continue to be extremely popular today, to recent deep shape models that utilize neural networks to represent and manipulate face shapes in an artist friendly fashion. As the course is meant to be beginner friendly, the course will commence with a quick introduction to non-neural parametric shape models starting with linear blendshape and morphable models. We will then switch focus to deep shape models, particularly those that offer intuitive control to artists. We will discuss multiple variants of such deep face models that i) allow semantic control, ii) are agnostic to the underlying topology of the manipulated shape, iii) provide the ability to explicitly model a sequence of 3D shapes or animations, and iv) allow for the simulation of physical effects. Applications that will be discussed include face shape synthesis, identity and expression interpolation, rig generation, performance retargeting, animation synthesis and more.
- «
- 1 (current)
- 2
- 3
- »