EG2006
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Item 3D Role-Playing Games as Language Learning Tools(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Rankin, Yolanda; Gold, Rachel; Gooch, Bruce; Judy Brown and Werner HansmannLeveraging the experiential cognition and motivational factors of 3D games, we conduct a pilot study that utilizes Ever Quest 2 as pedagogical learning tool for English as a second language (ESL) students. We combine the benefits of massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and second language methodology to create a digital learning environment for second language acquisition (SLA). Rather than using traditional computerassisted language learning (CALL) software, we explore the immersive, virtual environment of Ever Quest 2 as ESL participants assume virtual identities and engage in social interactions within the game world. We suggest that language becomes a crucial artifact for character development and completion of game tasks in the virtual world. Preliminary results demonstrate that Ever Quest 2 intermediate and advanced ESL students increase their English vocabulary by 40% as result of game play interactions with non-playing characters (NPCs). Furthermore, intermediate and advanced ESL students practice their conversational skills with playing characters (PCs), generating a 100% increase in chat messages during eight sessions of game play. These results lead to the conclusion that MMORPGs can provide motivation and adequate language learning support for intermediate and advanced ESL students.Item Articulated Video Sprites(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Vanaken, C.; Gerrits, M.; Bekaert, P.; Dieter Fellner and Charles HansenIn this paper, we present an extension to video sprites for articulated characters. Central to our technique is a matching cost which works on high-level 2D skeletal representations of the characters, instead of their visual appearance. Through a combination of different heuristics, we are able to animate a character according to a new sequence of target skeletons. This way we achieve an accurate matching and a hitherto unseen level of control over the video sprite.Item Automatic Depth-Map Colorization(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Hassner, T.; Basri, R.; Dieter Fellner and Charles HansenWe present a system for automatically generating custom, structured image-maps for input depth-maps. Our system thus allows quick fitting of masses of objects with tailor-made image-maps. Given a depth-map of a novel 3D object, our method tiles it with intensities from similar, pre-collected, textured objects. These are seamlessly merged to form the new image-map. This process is performed by optimizing a well defined target likelihood function, via a hard-EM procedure. We present results for varied object classes including human figures, and fish.Item A Breadth-First Approach for Teaching Computer Graphics(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Domik, Gitta; Goetz, Frank; Judy Brown and Werner HansmannTwo themes of computer graphics, namely computer-generated color and computer-generated visualization, are introduced in a teaching/learning tool using a breadth-first approach. The breadth-first approach provides a holistic view of the topics to teach, aids in interdisciplinary teaching and is equally motivating to male and female students. The breadth-first approach has now been used for several years and we can also report on evaluations of the teaching/learning tool.Item Building Expression into Virtual Characters(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Vinayagamoorthy, V.; Gillies, M.; Steed, A.; Tanguy, E.; Pan, X.; Loscos, C.; Slater, M.; Brian Wyvill and Alexander WilkieVirtual characters are an important part of many 3D graphical simulations. In entertainment or training applications, virtual characters might be one of the main mechanisms for creating and developing content and scenarios. In such applications the user may need to interact with a number of different characters that need to invoke specific responses in the user, so that the user interprets the scenario in the way that the designer intended. Whilst representations of virtual characters have come a long way in recent years, interactive virtual characters tend to be a bit "wooden" with respect to their perceived behaviour. In this STAR we give an overview of work on expressive virtual characters. In particular, we assume that a virtual character representation is already available, and we describe a variety of models and methods that are used to give the characters more "depth" so that they are less wooden and more plausible. We cover models of individual characters emotion and personality, models of interpersonal behaviour and methods for generating expression.Item Camera Control in Computer Graphics(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Christie, Marc; Olivier, Patrick; Brian Wyvill and Alexander WilkieProgress in modeling, animation and rendering means that rich, high fidelity interactive virtual worlds are now commonplace. But as photographers and cinematographers know, achievement of the intended informational and aesthetic goals is highly dependent on the position and motion of the camera in relation to the elements of the scene. Camera control encompasses interactive approaches, semi-automatic camera positioning, and fully declarative approaches to the management of a user's viewpoint on a scene. Camera control is required in nearly all interactive 3D applications and presents a particular combination of technical challenges for which there have been a number of recent proposals (e.g. specific path-planning, management of occlusion, modeling of high-level communicative goals). We present, classify the approaches, analyze the requirements and limits of solving techniques and explore in detail the main difficulties and challenges in automatic camera control.Item Clothing the Masses: Real-Time Clothed Crowds With Variation(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Dobbyn, S.; McDonnell, R.; Kavan, L.; Collins, S.; O'Sullivan, C.; Dieter Fellner and Charles HansenThe animation and rendering of crowds of realistically clothed characters presents a difficult challenge in computer graphics, which is further exacerbated when real-time frame rates are required. To date, due to real-time constraints, standard skinning methods have been used to animate the clothes of individuals in real-time crowds, which does not create the appropriate secondary motion for flowing garments. However, plausible cloth simulation is vital for the depiction of realistic characters, so we have developed a novel crowd system in which the individuals are endowed with realism and variety through the addition of physically simulated clothing and hardware assisted pattern variation.Item Collision Handling and its Applications(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Teschner, Matthias; Cani, Marie-Paule; Fedkiw, Ron; Bridson, Robert; Redon, Stephane; Volino, Pascal; Zachmann, Gabriel; Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann and Katja BühlerIn contrast to real-world scenarios, object representations in virtual environments have no notion of interpenetration. Therefore, algorithms for the detection of interfering object representations are an essential component in virtual environments. Applications are wide-spread and can be found in areas such as surgery simulation, games, cloth simulation, and virtual prototyping. Early collision detection approaches have been presented in robotics and computational geometry more than twenty years ago. Nevertheless, collision detection is still a very active research topic in computer graphics. This ongoing interest is constantly documented by new results presented in journals and at major conferences, such as Siggraph and Eurographics. In order to enable a realistic behavior of interacting objects in dynamic simulations, collision detection algorithms have to be accompanied by collision response schemes.Item Competitive Runtime Performance for Inverse Kinematics Algorithms using Conformal Geometric Algebra(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Hildenbrand, Dietmar; Fontijne, Daniel; Wang, Yusheng; Alexa, Marc; Dorst, Leo; Dieter Fellner and Charles HansenConformal geometric algebra is a powerful tool to find geometrically intuitive solutions. We present an approach for the combination of compact and elegant algorithms with the generation of very efficient code based on two different optimization approaches with different advantages, one is based on Maple, the other one is based on the code generator Gaigen 2. With these results, we are convinced that conformal geometric algebra will be able to become fruitful in a great variety of applications in Computer Graphics.Item Compter Graphics Education: Where and How Do We Develop Spatial Ability?(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Mohler, James L.; Judy Brown and Werner HansmannThis contribution provides an overview to the expansive research and literature concerning spatial ability. Its aim is to provide the reader with relevant historical and applied background and to make a call for computer graphics educators to focus on developing the spatial ability of computer graphics majors and non-majors. Spatial ability has broad applicability and provides a necessary area for computer graphics educators to contribute to the student development. Practical activities for the development of spatial ability are also provided.Item Computational Photography(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Raskar, Ramesh; Tumblin, Jack; Mohan, Ankit; Agrawal, Amit; Li, Yuanzen; Brian Wyvill and Alexander WilkieComputational photography combines plentiful computing, digital sensors, modern optics, actuators, probes and smart lights to escape the limitations of traditional film cameras and enables novel imaging applications. Unbounded dynamic range, variable focus, resolution, and depth of field, hints about shape, reflectance, and lighting, and new interactive forms of photos that are partly snapshots and partly videos are just some of the new applications found in Computational Photography. The computational techniques encompass methods from modification of imaging parameters during capture to sophisticated reconstructions from indirect measurements. We provide a practical guide to topics in image capture and manipulation methods for generating compelling pictures for computer graphics and for extracting scene properties for computer vision, with several examples. Many ideas in computational photography are still relatively new to digital artists and programmers and there is no upto- date reference text. A larger problem is that a multi-disciplinary field that combines ideas from computational methods and modern digital photography involves a steep learning curve. For example, photographers are not always familiar with advanced algorithms now emerging to capture high dynamic range images, but image processing researchers face difficulty in understanding the capture and noise issues in digital cameras. These topics, however, can be easily learned without extensive background. The goal of this STAR is to present both aspects in a compact form. The new capture methods include sophisticated sensors, electromechanical actuators and on-board processing. Examples include adaptation to sensed scene depth and illumination, taking multiple pictures by varying camera parameters or actively modifying the flash illumination parameters. A class of modern reconstruction methods is also emerging. The methods can achieve a photomontage by optimally fusing information from multiple images, improve signal to noise ratio and extract scene features such as depth edges. The STAR briefly reviews fundamental topics in digital imaging and then provides a practical guide to underlying techniques beyond image processing such as gradient domain operations, graph cuts, bilateral filters and optimizations. The participants learn about topics in image capture and manipulation methods for generating compelling pictures for computer graphics and for extracting scene properties for computer vision, with several examples. We hope to provide enough fundamentals to satisfy the technical specialist without intimidating the curious graphics researcher interested in recent advances in photography. The intended audience is photographers, digital artists, image processing programmers and vision researchers using or building applications for digital cameras or images. They will learn about camera fundamentals and powerful computational tools, along with many real world examples.Item Computer Graphics Applications in the Education Process of People with Learning Difficulties(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Vera, Lucia; Campos, Ruben; Herrera, Gerardo; Sebastian, Beleu; Judy Brown and Werner HansmannThis paper describes the use of Real Time graphic applications as educational tools, specifically oriented to working with people who have certain learning difficulties. We first focus on identifying the most relevant traits (from a psychological point of view) of those disorders, then we continue by analysing the advantages of graphics in Real Time in this context, and how they can be used to complement the conventional teaching methods. Finally, we review the main characteristics of two applications belonging to this category, which serve as a practical example of this encounter between education and technology.Item Connectivity-Aware Sectional Visualization of 3D DTI Volumes using Perceptual Flat-Torus Coloring and Edge Rendering(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Demiralp, Çagatay; Zhang, Song; Tate, David F.; Correia, Stephen; Laidlaw, David H.; Dieter Fellner and Charles HansenWe present two new methods for visualizing cross-sections of 3D diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DTI) volumes. For each of the methods we show examples of visualizations of the corpus callosum in the midsagittal plane of several normal volunteers. In both methods, we start from points sampled on a regular grid on the cross-section and, from each point, generate integral curves in both directions following the principal eigenvector of the underlying diffusion tensor field.We compute an anatomically motivated pairwise distance measure between each pair of integral curves and assemble the measures to create a distance matrix. We next find a set of points in a plane that best preserves the calculated distances that are small each point in this plane represents one of the original integral curves. Our first visualization method wraps this planar representation onto a flat-torus and then projects that torus into a visible portion of a perceptually uniform color space (L*a*b*). The colors for the paths are used to color the corresponding grid points on the original cross-section. The resulting image shows larger changes in color where neighboring integral curves differ more. Our second visualization method lays out the grid points on the cross section and connects the neighboring points with edges that are rendered according to the distances between curves generated from these points. Both methods provide a way to visually segment 2D cross sections of DTI data. Also, a particular contribution of the coloring technique used in our first visualization method is to give a continuous 2D color mapping that provides approximate perceptual uniformity and can be repeated an arbitrary number of times in both directions to increase sensitivity.Item Developing Mobile 3D Applications with OpenGL ES and M3G(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Pulli, K.; Vaarala, J.; Miettinen, V.; Aarnio, T.; Callow, M.; Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann and Katja BühlerMobile phones offer exciting new opportunities for graphics application developers. However, they also have significant limitations compared to traditional desktop graphics environments, including absence of dedicated graphics hardware, limited memory (both RAM and ROM), limited communications bandwidth, and lack of floating point hardware. Existing graphics APIs ignore these limitations and thus are infeasible to implement in embedded devices. This course presents two new 3D graphics APIs that address the special needs and constraints of mobile/embedded platforms: OpenGL ES and M3G. OpenGL ES is a light-weight version of the well-known workstation standard, offering a subset of OpenGL 1.5 capability plus support for fixed point arithmetic. M3G, Mobile 3D Graphics API for Java MIDP (Mobile Information Device Profile), also known as JSR-184, provides scene graph and animation support, binary file format, and immediate mode rendering that bypasses scene graphs. These APIs provide powerful graphics capabilities in a form that fits well on today s devices, and will support hardware acceleration in the future. The course begins with a discussion of the target environments and their limitations, and general techniques for coping with platform/environment constraints (such as fixed point arithmetic). This is followed by detailed presentations of the APIs. For each API, we describe the included functionality and compare it to related workstation standards, explaining what was left out and why. We also discuss practical aspects of working with the APIs on the target platforms, and present strategies for porting existing applications and creating new ones.Item Digital HPO Hologram Rendering Pipeline(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Janda, M.; Hanák, I.; Skala, V.; Dieter Fellner and Charles HansenThis paper describes a rendering pipeline for digital hologram synthesis. The pipeline is capable of handling triangle meshes, directional light sources, texture coordinates, and advanced illumination models. Due to the huge computational requirements of hologram synthesis only the HPO holograms are considered.Item Dynamic Anisotropic Occlusion(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Gong, Yi; Zhang, Yubo; Chen, Wei; Peng, Qunsheng; Dieter Fellner and Charles HansenWe present a new real-time shadow rendering approach whose kernel is a hierarchical disk-based approximation to the scene geometry. We show that this approximated representation greatly accelerates the visibility inquiry, facilitating the real-time computation of anisotropic occlusion in GPU. By taking account of anisotropic occlusion, our approach can simulate the shadow cast from not only ambient light, but also point, directional and environment lights. Because no pre-computation is required, it is suitable for dynamically deforming objects.Item Efficient Sorting and Searching in Rendering Algorithms(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Havran, Vlastimil; Bittner, Jiri; Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann and Katja BühlerIn the proposed tutorial we would like to highlight the connection between rendering algorithms and sorting and searching as classical problems studied in computer science. We will provide both theoretical and empirical evidence that for many rendering techniques most time is spent by sorting and searching. In particular we will discuss problems and solutions for visibility computation, density estimation, and importance sampling. For each problem we mention its specific issues such as dimensionality of the search domain or online versus offline searching. We will present the underlying data structures and their enhancements in the context of specific rendering algorithms such as ray shooting, photon mapping, and hidden surface removal.Item EG 2006 Course on Populating Virtual Environments with Crowds(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Thalmann, Daniel; O'Sullivan, Carol; Ciechomski, Pablo de Heras; Dobbyn, Simon; Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann and Katja BühlerNecessary background and potential target audience for the tutorial: experience with computer animation is recommended but not mandatory. The course is intended for animators, designers, and students in computer science.Item Elastic Facial Caricature Warping(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Clarke, Lyndsey; Chen, Min; Townsend, Peter; Mora, Benjamin; Dieter Fellner and Charles HansenCaricatures are usually created by skilled artists, and, due to their amusing appearance, they serve mainly as a source of entertainment and humour. This short paper is therefore concerned with a means for generating facial caricatures from given photographs using image warping. In particular, we propose to assign virtual physical and material properties to various facial features in order to specify and render exaggerated transformations in an intuitive manner. Though our objective is not for creating physically accurate photorealism, our physically-based approach enables users to associate virtual displacements in caricatures, with common physical phenomena.Item Enhanced Cartoon and Comic Rendering(The Eurographics Association, 2006) Spindler, Martin; Röber, Niklas; Döhring, Robert; Masuch, Maic; Dieter Fellner and Charles HansenIn this work we present an extension to common cel shading techniques, and describe four new cartoon-like rendering styles applicable for real-time implementations: stylistic shadows, double contour lines, soft cel shading, and pseudo edges. Our work was mainly motivated by the rich set of stylistic elements and expressional possibilities within the medium comic. In particular, we were inspired by Miller s Sin City and McFarlane s Spawn . We designed algorithms for these styles, developed a real-time implementation and integrated it into a regular 3D game engine.