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Item Method for Calculation of Sky Light Luminance Aiming at an Interactive Architectural Design(Blackwell Science Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1996) Dobashi, Yoshinori; Kaneda, Kazufumi; Yamashita, Hideo; Nishita, TomoyukiRecently, computer graphics are frequently used for both architectural design and visual environmental assessment. Using computer graphics, designers can easily compare the effect of the natural light on their architectural designs under various conditions, such as different times of day, seasons, atmospheric conditions (clear or overcast sky) or building wall materials. In traditional methods of calculating the luminance due to sky light, however, all calculation must be performed from scratch if such conditions undergo change. Therefore, to compare the architectural designs under different conditions, a great deal of time has to be spent on generating the images.This paper proposes a new method of quickly generating images of an outdoor scene, taking into account glossy specular reflection, even if such conditions change. In this method, luminance due to sky light is expressed by a series of basis functions, and basis luminances corresponding to each basis function are precalculated and stored in a compressed form in the preprocess. Once the basis luminances are calculated, the luminance due to sky light can be quickly calculated by the weighted sum of the basis luminances. Several examples of an architectural design demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method.Item An Efficient Method for Rendering Underwater Optical Effects Using Graphics Hardware(Blackwell Publishers, Inc and the Eurographics Association, 2002) Iwasaki, Kei; Dobashi, Yoshinori; Nishita, TomoyukiThe display of realistic natural scenes is one of the most important research areas in computer graphics. Therendering of water is one of the essential components. This paper proposes an efficient method for renderingimages of scenes within water. For underwater scenery, the shafts of light and caustics are attractive and importantelements. However, computing these effects is difficult and time-consuming since light refracts when passingthrough waves. To address the problem, our method makes use of graphics hardware to accelerate the computation.Our method displays the shafts of light by accumulating the intensities of streaks of light by using hardware colorblending functions. Making use of a Z-buffer and a stencil buffer accelerates the rendering of caustics. Moreover,by using a shadow mapping technique, our method can display shafts of light and caustics taking account ofshadows due to objects.ACM CSS: I. 3.1 Computer Graphics-Hardware Architecture, I. 3.7 Computer Graphics-Three-DimensionalGraphics and RealismItem Interactive Rendering of Atmospheric Scattering Effects Using Graphics Hardware(The Eurographics Association, 2002) Dobashi, Yoshinori; Yamamoto, Tsuyoshi; Nishita, Tomoyuki; Thomas Ertl and Wolfgang Heidrich and Michael DoggettTo create realistic images using computer graphics, an important element to consider is atmospheric scattering, that is, the phenomenon by which light is scattered by small particles in the air. This effect is the cause of the light beams produced by spotlights, shafts of light, foggy scenes, the bluish appearance of the earth s atmosphere, and so on. This paper proposes a fast method for rendering the atmospheric scattering effects based on actual physical phenomena. In the proposed method, look-up tables are prepared to store the intensities of the scattered light, and these are then used as textures. Realistic images are then created at interactive rates by making use of graphics hardware.Item A Quick Rendering Method Using Basis Functions for Interactive Lighting Design(Blackwell Science Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1995) Dobashi, Yoshinori; Kaneda, Kazufumi; Nakatani, Hideki; Yamashita, Hideo; Nishita, TomoyukiWhen designing interior lighting effects, it is desirable to compare a variety of lighting designs involving different lighting devices and directions of light. It is, however, time-consuming to generate images with many different lighting parameters, taking interreflection into account, because all luminances must be calculated and recalculated. This makes it difficult to design lighting effects interactively. To address this problem, this paper proposes a method of quickly generating images of a given scene illustrating an interreflective environment illuminated by sources with arbitrary luminous intensity distributions. In the proposed method, the luminous intensity ditribution is expressed with basis functions. The proposed method uses a series of spherical harmonic functions as basis functions, and calculates in advance each intensity on surfaces lit by the light sources whose luminous intensity distribution are the same as the spherical harmonic functions. The proposed method makes it possible to generate images so quickly that we can change the luminous intensity distribution interactively. Combining the proposed method with an interactive walk-through that employs intensity mapping, an interactive system for lighting design is implemented. The usefulness of the proposed method is demonstrated by its application to interactive lighting design, where many images are generated by altering lighting devices and/or direction of light.Item A Modeling and Rendering Method for Snow by Using Metaballs(Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1997) Nishita, Tomoyuki; Iwasaki, Hiroshi; Dobashi, Yoshinori; Nakamae, EihachiroThe display of natural scenes such as mountains, trees, the earth as viewed from space, the sea, and waves have been attempted. Here a method to realistically display snow is proposed.In order to achieve this, two important elements have to be considered, namely the shape and shading model of snow, based on the physical phenomenon. In this paper, a method for displaying snow fallen onto objects, including curved surfaces and snow scattered by objects, such as skis, is proposed. Snow should be treated as particles with a density distribution since it consists of water particles, ice particles, and air molecules. In order to express the material property of snow, the phase functions of the particles must be taken into account, and it is well-known that the color of snow is white because of the multiple scattering of light.This paper describes a calculation method for light scattering due to snow particles taking into account both multiple scattering and sky light, and the modeling of snow.Item Skylight for Interior Lighting Design(Blackwell Science Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1994) Dobashi, Yoshinori; Kaneda, Kazufumi; Nakashima, Takanobu; Yamashita, Hideo; Nishita, Tomoyuki and Tadamura, KastumiIt is inevitable for indoor lighting design to render a room lit by natural light, especially for an atelier or an indoor pool where there are many windows. This paper proposes a method for calculating the illuminance due to natural light, i.e. direct sunlight and skylight, passing through transparent planes such as window glass. The proposed method makes it possible to efficiently calculate such illuminance accurately, because it takes into account both non-uniform luminous intensity distribution of skylight and the distribution of transparency of glass according to incident angles of light. Several examples including the lighting design in an indoor pool, are shown to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method.Item Simulation of Cumuliform Clouds Based on Computational Fluid Dynamics(Eurographics Association, 2002) Miyazaki, Ryo; Dobashi, Yoshinori; Nishita, TomoyukiSimulation of natural phenomena is one of the important research fields in computer graphics. In particular, clouds play an important role in creating images of outdoor scenes. Fluid simulation is effective in creating realistic clouds because clouds are the visualization of atmospheric fluid. In this paper, we propose a simulation technique, based on a numerical solution of the partial differential equation of the atmospheric fluid model, for creating animated cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds with features formed by turbulent vortices.Item A Method for Creating Mosaic Images Using Voronoi Diagrams(Eurographics Association, 2002) Dobashi, Yoshinori; Haga, Toshiyuki; Johan, Henry; Nishita, TomoyukiThis paper proposes a non-photorealistic rendering method that creates an artistic effect called mosaicing. The proposed method converts images provided by the user into the mosaic images. Commercial image editing applications also provide a similar function. However, these applications often trade results for low-cost computing. It is desirable to create high quality images even if the computational cost is increased. We present an automatic method for mosaicing images by using Voronoi diagrams. The Voronoi diagrams are optimized so that the error between the original image and the resulting image is as small as possible. Next, the mosaic image is generated by using the sites and edges of the Voronoi diagram. We use graphics hardware to efficiently generate Voronoi diagrams. Furthermore, we extend the method to mosaic animations from sequences of images.