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Now showing 1 - 10 of 40
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    Use of Shader Technology for Realistic Presentation of Train Prototypes in Virtual Reality
    (The Eurographics Association, 2006) Gironimo, G. Di; Papa, S.; S. Battiato and G. Gallo and F. Stanco
    The aim of the paper is to make up a virtual showroom and work-through of a train model in order to allow railway companies showing new trains prototypes, in phase of concept, and present their new design in more exhaustive way than simply technical documentation. The possibility of applying Virtual Reality (VR) methodologies to make a scene more realistic as possible is a great advantage for the effectiveness of the presentation, in order to increase their competitivity. Shader technology allows the programmers to have control over shape, appearance (such as colour, lighting, reflection) and animation of objects, in order to make very realistic real-time rendering. In the paper the authors describe the use of shader technology in Virtual Design 2 (VD2) for realistic presentation of train prototypes in VR. The software VD2 is an extensive tool that allows following many phases of product development, from the creation of showroom for realistic presentations supporting shader technology to the assembly simulation or ergonomics analysis. Moreover, the possibility of interfacing with a wide range of input/output devices and the possibility to access to the API made this software to be chosen for Virtual Reality applications in the VR laboratory of the Competence Center for the Qualification of Transportation Systems founded by Campania Region (www.centrodicompetenzatrasporti.unina.it).
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    A Natural and Effective Calibration of the CyberGlove
    (The Eurographics Association, 2006) Partipilo, S.; Felice, F. De; Renna, F.; Attolico, G.; Distante, A.; S. Battiato and G. Gallo and F. Stanco
    This work addresses the calibration of the CyberGlove, a device which provides information about the position and attitude in space of all the components of the user hand in a haptic system for the fruition of digital 3D contents by blind people. A realistic haptic interaction requires a reliable detection of user movements and a good calibration of the device to account for size and articulation capability of the specific hand. At the same time the application of interest calls for a calibration procedure that should be executable in a natural and straightforward way by every user. The two methods provided by the CyberGlove software are not suitable for these purposes: one is very simple and fast but produces quite imprecise results while the other is effective and accurate but involves a complex and cumbersome trial-and-error process not suited for general users. The proposed method aims to reach satisfactory results using a intuitive and simple approach. The user is asked to assume with his hand several pre-defined poses, each supplying the sensors output associated to known joints angles. Combining these data with the constraints derived by the anatomical structure of the hand it is possible to evaluate the values of the two parameters, gain and offset, that drive the digitalization of the sensor output. This process, in spite of its simplicity, has provided satisfactory results in several experimental sessions, enabling a realistic and reliable mirroring of user movements in the virtual space.
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    Unambiguous Analysis of Woman Breast Shape for Plastic Surgery Outcome Evaluation
    (The Eurographics Association, 2006) Farinella, G. M.; Impoco, G.; Gallo, G.; Spoto, S.; Catanuto, G.; S. Battiato and G. Gallo and F. Stanco
    This paper reports a multidisciplinary research between computer science and plastic and reconstructive surgery. In particular, a new method is proposed to unambiguously define a geometric partitioning of a large thoracic area including the breast mound. The new technique uses only well-defined anatomical points, defined and selected by surgeons. A simple sequence of geometric operations is performed to partition the breast surface into four anatomic subunits, according to clinically derived breast meridian and equator lines. Using this breast shape partition, useful measurement can be extrapolated on 3D model data set. Our method has been validated on a number of breast 3D models acquired by means of a commercial scanner on real clinical cases collected by Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori in Milan (INT).
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    Sub-part correspondence using structure and geometry
    (The Eurographics Association, 2006) Biasotti, S.; Marini, S.; S. Battiato and G. Gallo and F. Stanco
    The paper describes a method for recognizing similar sub-parts of objects described by 3D polygonal meshes. The innovation of our method is the coupling of structure and geometry in the matching process. First of all, the structure of the shape is coded in a graph where each node is associated to a sub-part of the shape. Then, the matching between two shapes is approached using a graph-matching technique relying upon a geometric description of each sub-part.
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    Real-time Cataract Surgery Simulation for Training
    (The Eurographics Association, 2006) Agus, M.; Gobbetti, E.; Pintore, G.; Zanetti, G.; Zorcolo, A.; S. Battiato and G. Gallo and F. Stanco
    Cataract is a clouding of the eye's natural lens, normally due to natural aging changes, and involving at least half of the population over 65 years. Cataract extraction is the only solution for restoring a clear vision, and nowadays is probably the most frequently practiced surgical procedure. This paper describes a novel virtual reality simulation system for cataract surgery training, involving the capsulorhexis and phacoemulsification tasks. The simulator runs on a multiprocessing PC platform and provides realistic physically-based visual simulations of tools interactions. The current setup employs SensAble PHANToM for simulating the interaction devices, and a binocular display for presenting images to the user.
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    A Message-Based Annotation System for Collaborative Design Review
    (The Eurographics Association, 2006) Witzel, M.; Conti, G.; Amicis, R. De; S. Battiato and G. Gallo and F. Stanco
    The paper illustrates a shared annotation mechanism developed within a collaborative virtual environment for design review. This represents one of the first prototypes being developed within the European Project IMPROVE and it has been designed to be used within two distinct industrial scenarios: automotive and architectural design. The key feature of the system is that its functionalities (modelling, rendering, tracking) are distributed across a network of computers performing specific tasks and that the communication among these takes place through a standardised data message exchange. This paper shows the effectiveness of this approach by focusing on the implementation of the distributed annotation feature.
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    Hand Made 3d Modelling for the Reconstructive Study of Temple C in Selinunte : Preliminary Results
    (The Eurographics Association, 2006) Gabellone, F.; S. Battiato and G. Gallo and F. Stanco
    This paper illustrates the preliminary results of the virtual reconstruction of temple C in Selinunte. The reconstruction was undertaken as part of the Land-Lab Project launched by the University of Lecce in 2003 for the promotion and appropriate exploitation of the cultural, historic, artistic and archaeological heritage of two Italian regions, Puglia and Sicily, using advanced technologies. The reconstruction of temple C was launched with the help of numerous experts in the field of surveying and representation, as well as art historians, archaeologists and architects, following a fully multidisciplinary approach. The reconstructive study was conducted in a 3D environment mainly using NURBS modelling, Subdivision Surfaces and sub-polygonal displacement. Our reconstructive approach, which might be defined numerical, makes it possible to recompose, at least in the initial phases of the work, all the surveyed architectural elements in accordance with a procedure based on digital anastylosis. The reconstruction of the monument represents a contribution to the study of Doric architecture in southern Italy conducted with the help of modern technologies.
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    Easy Access to Huge 3D Models ofWorks of Art
    (The Eurographics Association, 2006) Callieri, M.; Ponchio, F.; Cignoni, P.; Scopigno, R.; S. Battiato and G. Gallo and F. Stanco
    Automatic shape acquisition technologies evolved rapidly in recent years, and huge mass of 3D data can be easily produced. The high accuracy of range scanning technology makes the Cultural Heritage domain one of the ideal fields of use of these devices. Given this particular application domain, two issues arise: how to visualize at interactive rates these complex data on commodity computers (both locally and on web), and how to improve the ease of use of the visualization tools (as potential users are often not expert with interactive graphics). We present a new visualization system designed to support easy implementation of multimedia kiosk for museums or expositions, which has also been extended to web-based usage. The system allows naive users to inspect a large complex 3D model at interactive frame rates on off-the-shelf PC s, presenting the 3D model and all the multimedia data that has been linked to selected points of its surface. A main goal in the design of the system was to provide the user with a very easy and natural interaction approach, based on a straightforward "point and click" metaphor. Visualization efficiency is obtained by adopting a continuous level-of-detail (LOD) representation, where on-line automatic selection of the best-fit level of detail (according to the current view frustum) is coupled with visibility culling and ready-to-render representation of the geometry.
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    A Survey of Digital Mosaic Techniques
    (The Eurographics Association, 2006) Battiato, S.; Blasi, G. Di; Farinella, G.M.; Gallo, G.; S. Battiato and G. Gallo and F. Stanco
    Art often provides valuable hints for technological innovations especially in the field of Image Processing and Computer Graphics. In this paper we survey in an unified framework several methods to transform a raster input image into good quality mosaics. The common and different ideas among the methods are reported and described. Finally we try to address the evaluation problem of an NPR algorithm.
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    Implementing Mesh-Based Approaches for Deformable Objects on GPU
    (The Eurographics Association, 2006) Ranzuglia, G.; Cignoni, P.; Ganovelli, F.; Scopigno, R.; S. Battiato and G. Gallo and F. Stanco
    These latest years witnessed an impressive improvement of graphics hardware both in terms of features and in terms of computational power. This improvement can be easily observed in computer games, where effects which, until few years ago, could only be achieved with expensive CPU computation are now shown interactively. Although the GPU has been designed for implementing graphics effects, it is still it basically a processing unit with its own memory, and, being specialized for algebraic tasks, supplies a number of floating point operations per second which is orders of magnitude greater than the CPU. This suggested to the graphics community that the GPU could also be used for general purpose computation and a number of papers have been published on how to hack the GPU to this target. Following this trend we propose a framework for using GPU for implementing techniques for deformable objects represented as generic meshes. The framework only assumes than the global computation is the union of local computations, which is true for all the explicit methods.