Search Results

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Item
    Selective BRDFs for High Fidelity Rendering
    (The Eurographics Association, 2016) Bradley, Tim; Debattista, Kurt; Bashford-Rogers, Thomas; Harvey, Carlo; Doukakis, Stratos; Chalmers, Alan; Cagatay Turkay and Tao Ruan Wan
    High fidelity rendering systems rely on accurate material representations to produce a realistic visual appearance. However, these accurate models can be slow to evaluate. This work presents an approach for approximating these high accuracy reflectance models with faster, less complicated functions in regions of an image which possess low visual importance. A subjective rating experiment was conducted in which thirty participants were asked to assess the similarity of scenes rendered with low quality reflectance models, a high quality data-driven model and saliency based hybrids of those images. In two out of the three scenes that were evaluated significant differences were not found between the hybrid and reference images. This implies that in less visually salient regions of an image computational gains can be achieved by approximating computationally expensive materials with simpler analytic models.
  • Item
    MLCut: Exploring Multi-Level Cuts in Dendrograms for Biological Data
    (The Eurographics Association, 2016) Vogogias, Athanasios; Kennedy, Jessie; Archambault, Daniel; Smith, V. Anne; Currant, Hannah; Cagatay Turkay and Tao Ruan Wan
    Choosing a single similarity threshold for cutting dendrograms is not sufficient for performing hierarchical clustering analysis of heterogeneous data sets. In addition, alternative automated or semi-automated methods that cut dendrograms in multiple levels make assumptions about the data in hand. In an attempt to help the user to find patterns in the data and resolve ambiguities in cluster assignments, we developed MLCut: a tool that provides visual support for exploring dendrograms of heterogeneous data sets in different levels of detail. The interactive exploration of the dendrogram is coordinated with a representation of the original data, shown as parallel coordinates. The tool supports three analysis steps. Firstly, a single-height similarity threshold can be applied using a dynamic slider to identify the main clusters. Secondly, a distinctiveness threshold can be applied using a second dynamic slider to identify ''weak-edges'' that indicate heterogeneity within clusters. Thirdly, the user can drill-down to further explore the dendrogram structure - always in relation to the original data - and cut the branches of the tree at multiple levels. Interactive drill-down is supported using mouse events such as hovering, pointing and clicking on elements of the dendrogram. Two prototypes of this tool have been developed in collaboration with a group of biologists for analysing their own data sets. We found that enabling the users to cut the tree at multiple levels, while viewing the effect in the original data, is a promising method for clustering which could lead to scientific discoveries.
  • Item
    Interactive GPU-based Image Deformation for Mobile Devices
    (The Eurographics Association, 2016) Vollmer, Jan Ole; Trapp, Matthias; Döllner, Jürgen; Cagatay Turkay and Tao Ruan Wan
    Interactive image deformation is an important feature of modern image processing pipelines. It is often used to create caricatures and animation for input images, especially photos. State-of-the-art image deformation techniques are based on transforming vertices of a mesh, which is textured by the input image, using affine transformations such as translation, and scaling. However, the resulting visual quality of the output image depends on the geometric resolution of the mesh. Performing these transformations on the CPU often further inhibits performance and quality. This is especially problematic on mobile devices where the limited computational power reduces the maximum achievable quality. To overcome these issue, we propose the concept of an intermediate deformation buffer that stores deformation information at a resolution independent of the mesh resolution. This allows the combination of a high-resolution buffer with a low-resolution mesh for interactive preview, as well as a high-resolution mesh to export the final image. Further, we present a fully GPU-based implementation of this concept, taking advantage of modern OpenGL ES features, such as compute shaders.
  • Item
    Volumetric Spot Noise for Procedural 3D Shell Texture Synthesis
    (The Eurographics Association, 2016) Pavie, Nicolas; Gilet, Guillaume; Dischler, Jean-Michel; Galin, Eric; Ghazanfarpour, Djamchid; Cagatay Turkay and Tao Ruan Wan
    In this paper, we present an extension of the Locally Controlled Spot Noise and a visualization pipeline for volumetric fuzzy details synthesis. We extend the noise model to author volumetric fuzzy details using filtered 3D quadratic kernel functions convolved with a projective non-uniform 2D distribution of impulses. We propose a new method based on order independent splatting to compute a fast view dependent approximation of shell noise at interactive rates. Our method outperforms ray marching techniques and avoids aliasing artifacts, thus improving interactive content authoring feedback. Moreover, generated surface details share the same properties as procedural noise: they extend on potentially infinite surfaces, are defined in an extremely compact way, are non-repetitive, continuous (no discrete voxel-artifacts when zooming) and independent of the definition of the underlying surface (no surface parameterization is required).