Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 66
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    HairControl: A Tracking Solution for Directable Hair Simulation
    (The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2018) Milliez, Antoine; Sumner, Robert W.; Gross, Markus; Thomaszewski, Bernhard; Thuerey, Nils and Beeler, Thabo
    We present a method for adding artistic control to physics-based hair simulation. Taking as input an animation of a coarse set of guide hairs, we constrain a subsequent higher-resolution simulation of detail hairs to follow the input motion in a spatially-averaged sense. The resulting high-resolution motion adheres to the artistic intent, but is enhanced with detailed deformations and dynamics generated by physics-based simulation. The technical core of our approach is formed by a set of tracking constraints, requiring the center of mass of a given subset of detail hair to maintain its position relative to a reference point on the corresponding guide hair. As a crucial element of our formulation, we introduce the concept of dynamicallychanging constraint targets that allow reference points to slide along the guide hairs to provide sufficient flexibility for natural deformations. We furthermore propose to regularize the null space of the tracking constraints based on variance minimization, effectively controlling the amount of spread in the hair. We demonstrate the ability of our tracking solver to generate directable yet natural hair motion on a set of targeted experiments and show its application to production-level animations.
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    Example Based Repetitive Structure Synthesis
    (The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2015) Roveri, Riccardo; Ă–ztireli, A. Cengiz; Martin, Sebastian; Solenthaler, Barbara; Gross, Markus; Mirela Ben-Chen and Ligang Liu
    We present an example based geometry synthesis approach for generating general repetitive structures. Our model is based on a meshless representation, unifying and extending previous synthesis methods. Structures in the example and output are converted into a functional representation, where the functions are defined by point locations and attributes. We then formulate synthesis as a minimization problem where patches from the output function are matched to those of the example. As compared to existing repetitive structure synthesis methods, the new algorithm offers several advantages. It handles general discrete and continuous structures, and their mixtures in the same framework. The smooth formulation leads to employing robust optimization procedures in the algorithm. Equipped with an accurate patch similarity measure and dedicated sampling control, the algorithm preserves local structures accurately, regardless of the initial distribution of output points. It can also progressively synthesize output structures in given subspaces, allowing users to interactively control and guide the synthesis in real-time. We present various results for continuous/discrete structures and their mixtures, residing on curves, submanifolds, volumes, and general subspaces, some of which are generated interactively.
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    Real-Time Ray-Casting and Advanced Shading of Discrete Isosurfaces
    (The Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishing, Inc, 2005) Hadwiger, Markus; Sigg, Christian; Scharsach, Henning; Buehler, Khatja; Gross, Markus
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    Deep Compositional Denoising for High-quality Monte Carlo Rendering
    (The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2021) Zhang, Xianyao; Manzi, Marco; Vogels, Thijs; Dahlberg, Henrik; Gross, Markus; Papas, Marios; Bousseau, Adrien and McGuire, Morgan
    We propose a deep-learning method for automatically decomposing noisy Monte Carlo renderings into components that kernelpredicting denoisers can denoise more effectively. In our model, a neural decomposition module learns to predict noisy components and corresponding feature maps, which are consecutively reconstructed by a denoising module. The components are predicted based on statistics aggregated at the pixel level by the renderer. Denoising these components individually allows the use of per-component kernels that adapt to each component's noisy signal characteristics. Experimentally, we show that the proposed decomposition module consistently improves the denoising quality of current state-of-the-art kernel-predicting denoisers on large-scale academic and production datasets.
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    Deep Fluids: A Generative Network for Parameterized Fluid Simulations
    (The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2019) Kim, Byungsoo; Azevedo, Vinicius C.; Thuerey, Nils; Kim, Theodore; Gross, Markus; Solenthaler, Barbara; Alliez, Pierre and Pellacini, Fabio
    This paper presents a novel generative model to synthesize fluid simulations from a set of reduced parameters. A convolutional neural network is trained on a collection of discrete, parameterizable fluid simulation velocity fields. Due to the capability of deep learning architectures to learn representative features of the data, our generative model is able to accurately approximate the training data set, while providing plausible interpolated in-betweens. The proposed generative model is optimized for fluids by a novel loss function that guarantees divergence-free velocity fields at all times. In addition, we demonstrate that we can handle complex parameterizations in reduced spaces, and advance simulations in time by integrating in the latent space with a second network. Our method models a wide variety of fluid behaviors, thus enabling applications such as fast construction of simulations, interpolation of fluids with different parameters, time re-sampling, latent space simulations, and compression of fluid simulation data. Reconstructed velocity fields are generated up to 700x faster than re-simulating the data with the underlying CPU solver, while achieving compression rates of up to 1300x.
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    Semantic Segmentation for Line Drawing Vectorization Using Neural Networks
    (The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2018) Kim, Byungsoo; Wang, Oliver; Ă–ztireli, A. Cengiz; Gross, Markus; Gutierrez, Diego and Sheffer, Alla
    In this work, we present a method to vectorize raster images of line art. Inverting the rasterization procedure is inherently ill-conditioned, as there exist many possible vector images that could yield the same raster image. However, not all of these vector images are equally useful to the user, especially if performing further edits is desired. We therefore define the problem of computing an instance segmentation of the most likely set of paths that could have created the raster image. Once the segmentation is computed, we use existing vectorization approaches to vectorize each path, and then combine all paths into the final output vector image. To determine which set of paths is most likely, we train a pair of neural networks to provide semantic clues that help resolve ambiguities at intersection and overlap regions. These predictions are made considering the full context of the image, and are then globally combined by solving a Markov Random Field (MRF). We demonstrate the flexibility of our method by generating results on character datasets, a synthetic random line dataset, and a dataset composed of human drawn sketches. For all cases, our system accurately recovers paths that adhere to the semantics of the drawings.
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    Neural Denoising for Deep-Z Monte Carlo Renderings
    (The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2024) Zhang, Xianyao; Röthlin, Gerhard; Zhu, Shilin; Aydin, Tunç Ozan; Salehi, Farnood; Gross, Markus; Papas, Marios; Bermano, Amit H.; Kalogerakis, Evangelos
    We present a kernel-predicting neural denoising method for path-traced deep-Z images that facilitates their usage in animation and visual effects production. Deep-Z images provide enhanced flexibility during compositing as they contain color, opacity, and other rendered data at multiple depth-resolved bins within each pixel. However, they are subject to noise, and rendering until convergence is prohibitively expensive. The current state of the art in deep-Z denoising yields objectionable artifacts, and current neural denoising methods are incapable of handling the variable number of depth bins in deep-Z images. Our method extends kernel-predicting convolutional neural networks to address the challenges stemming from denoising deep-Z images. We propose a hybrid reconstruction architecture that combines the depth-resolved reconstruction at each bin with the flattened reconstruction at the pixel level. Moreover, we propose depth-aware neighbor indexing of the depth-resolved inputs to the convolution and denoising kernel application operators, which reduces artifacts caused by depth misalignment present in deep-Z images. We evaluate our method on a production-quality deep-Z dataset, demonstrating significant improvements in denoising quality and performance compared to the current state-of-the-art deep-Z denoiser. By addressing the significant challenge of the cost associated with rendering path-traced deep-Z images, we believe that our approach will pave the way for broader adoption of deep-Z workflows in future productions.
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    Optimizing Stereo-to-Multiview Conversion for Autostereoscopic Displays
    (The Eurographics Association and John Wiley and Sons Ltd., 2014) Chapiro, Alexandre; Heinzle, Simon; Aydin, Tunç Ozan; Poulakos, Steven; Zwicker, Matthias; Smolic, Aljosa; Gross, Markus; B. Levy and J. Kautz
    We present a novel stereo-to-multiview video conversion method for glasses-free multiview displays. Different from previous stereo-to-multiview approaches, our mapping algorithm utilizes the limited depth range of autostereoscopic displays optimally and strives to preserve the scene s artistic composition and perceived depth even under strong depth compression. We first present an investigation of how perceived image quality relates to spatial frequency and disparity. The outcome of this study is utilized in a two-step mapping algorithm, where we (i) compress the scene depth using a non-linear global function to the depth range of an autostereoscopic display, and (ii) enhance the depth gradients of salient objects to restore the perceived depth and salient scene structure. Finally, an adapted image domain warping algorithm is proposed to generate the multiview output, which enables overall disparity range extension.
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    BetweenIT: An Interactive Tool for Tight Inbetweening
    (The Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2010) Whited, Brian; Noris, Gioacchino; Simmons, Maryann; Sumner, Robert W.; Gross, Markus; Rossignac, Jarek
    The generation of inbetween frames that interpolate a given set of key frames is a major component in the production of a 2D feature animation. Our objective is to considerably reduce the cost of the inbetweening phase by offering an intuitive and effective interactive environment that automates inbetweening when possible while allowing the artist to guide, complement, or override the results. Tight inbetweens, which interpolate similar key frames, are particularly time-consuming and tedious to draw. Therefore, we focus on automating these high-precision and expensive portions of the process. We have designed a set of user-guided semi-automatic techniques that fit well with current practice and minimize the number of required artist-gestures. We present a novel technique for stroke interpolation from only two keys which combines a stroke motion constructed from logarithmic spiral vertex trajectories with a stroke deformation based on curvature averaging and twisting warps. We discuss our system in the context of a feature animation production environment and evaluate our approach with real production data.
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    Spatio-Temporal Geometry Fusion for Multiple Hybrid Cameras using Moving Least Squares Surfaces
    (The Eurographics Association and John Wiley and Sons Ltd., 2014) Kuster, Claudia; Bazin, Jean-Charles; Ă–ztireli, Cengiz; Deng, Teng; Martin, Tobias; Popa, Tiberiu; Gross, Markus; B. Levy and J. Kautz
    Multi-view reconstruction aims at computing the geometry of a scene observed by a set of cameras. Accurate 3D reconstruction of dynamic scenes is a key component for a large variety of applications, ranging from special effects to telepresence and medical imaging. In this paper we propose a method based on Moving Least Squares surfaces which robustly and efficiently reconstructs dynamic scenes captured by a calibrated set of hybrid color+depth cameras. Our reconstruction provides spatio-temporal consistency and seamlessly fuses color and geometric information. We illustrate our approach on a variety of real sequences and demonstrate that it favorably compares to state-of-the-art methods.