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Now showing 1 - 10 of 15
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    Study of the Influence of User Characteristics on the Virtual Reality Presence
    (The Eurographics Association, 2018) Mayor, Jesús; Sánchez, Alberto; Raya, Laura; García-Fernández, Ignacio and Ureña, Carlos
    In recent years, virtual reality has grown a lot in different areas of application, including ludic, social and research, being used by a large and growing number of users with different profiles. Presence is one of the most distinctive and important features of a virtual reality experience. The aim of this article is to study the most suitable areas of application for users and to analyze the influence of different characteristics of the user's profile in the perceived presence. We have tested the interest applications indicated by 159 subjects and we have designed an immersive virtual reality experience, testing the behavior and performance of 48 users. The results obtained show that gender can influence the perceptual sensation of presence in these types of virtual environments.
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    Modelling the Fluid-Boundary Interaction in SPH
    (The Eurographics Association, 2018) Perea, Juan J.; Cordero, Juan M.; García-Fernández, Ignacio and Ureña, Carlos
    Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) is a numerical method based on mutually interacting meshfree particles, and has been widely applied to fluid simulation in Computer Graphics. Originally SPH does not define the behaviour of the particle system in the contour, so the different variants of SPH have been solving this deficiency with different techniques. Some of these techniques are based on fictitious forces, specular particles or semi-analytic fields. However, all these proposals present a drawback, that are may introduce additional inaccuracy as a divergent behaviour of the particle dynamics or an artificial separation between the fluid limits and the contour. To solve these limitations at this paper presents a new technique based on contour particles that are used during simulation to model the interaction with the fluid. The use of contour particles had already been used in other works to construct the contour like a particle layer. That solution presents problems especially when increasing the complexity of the contour shape. In addition, unlike other techniques, this paper presents an additional advantage, the possibility of obtaining all the dynamic magnitudes for improving efficiency and versatility.
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    A Prototype of Virtual Reality System for the Visualization, Exploration and Modeling of Huge Point Clouds
    (The Eurographics Association, 2018) Ortega-Donaire, José; Segura-Sánchez, Rafael Jesús; Ogáyar-Anguita, Carlos-Javier; Rueda-Ruiz, Antonio Jesús; García-Fernández, Ignacio and Ureña, Carlos
    The use of specific techniques for the management and visualization of huge point clouds is necessary to solve the drawbacks of inefficiency derived from the size of the dataset and the techniques used to visualize it. This work presents a prototype of VR system for the visualization and management of extensive point clouds in 3D with the ability to edit specific points. For this, the tool incorporates multiresolution techniques, which improve the performance and efficiency of the system. The prototype also incorporates the management of the point cloud stored in an unstructured database; so the prototype can request parts of the dataset from the required fractions generated by an octree. This allows the progressive processing of 3D point clouds, which is very useful to control and visualize a large data set in real time.
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    Rendering and Interacting With Volume Models in Immersive Environments
    (The Eurographics Association, 2018) Fons, Joan; Monclús, Eva; Vázquez, Pere-Pau; Navazo, Isabel; García-Fernández, Ignacio and Ureña, Carlos
    The recent advances in VR headsets, such as the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, at affordable prices offering a high resolution display, has empowered the development of immersive VR applications. data. In this paper we propose an immersive VR system that uses some well-known acceleration algorithms to achieve real-time rendering of volumetric datasets in an immersive VR system. Moreover, we have incorporated different basic interaction techniques to facilitate the inspection of the volume dataset. The interaction has been designed to be as natural as possible in order to achieve the most comfortable, user-friendly virtual experience. We have conducted an informal user study to evaluate the user preferences. Our evaluation shows that our application is perceived usable, easy of learn and very effective in terms of the high level of immersion achieved.
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    Muscle Simulation with Extended Position Based Dynamics
    (The Eurographics Association, 2018) Romeo, Marco; Monteagudo, Carlos; Sánchez-Quirós, Daniel; García-Fernández, Ignacio and Ureña, Carlos
    Recent research on muscle simulation for Visual Effects relies on numerical methods such as the Finite Element Method or Finite Volume Method. These approaches produce realistic results, but require high computational time and are complex to set up. On the other hand Position Based Dynamics offers a fast and controllable solution to simulate surfaces and volumes, but there is no literature on how to implement constraints that could be used to realistically simulate muscles for digital creatures with this method. In this paper we extend the current state-of-the-art in Position Based Dynamics to efficiently compute realistic skeletal-muscle simulation. In particular we embed muscle fibers in the solver by adding an anisotropic component to the distance constraints between mesh points and apply overpressure to realistically model muscle volume changes under contraction. We also present a technique that consistently provides an internal structure for our muscle volumes. We use this structure to preserve the shape and extract relevant information for the activation of the muscle fibers. Finally, we propose a modification of the Extended Position Based Dynamics algorithm and describe other details for proper simulation of character’'s muscle dynamics.
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    Toward Estimation of Yarn-Level Cloth Simulation Models
    (The Eurographics Association, 2018) Martín-Garrido, Alberto; Miguel, Eder; Otaduy, Miguel Ángel; García-Fernández, Ignacio and Ureña, Carlos
    Efficient and realistic cloth simulation is an unsolved problem, with yarn-level models emerging as a new alternative thanks to new hardware capabilities. Modeling yarns as flexible rods with persistent contacts enables a very robust and efficient simulation. However, this assumption also complicates the definition of elastic deformation potentials. This work explores more accurate yarn-level cloth models together with experiments that compare model features in order to detect shortcomings in the persistent contact model. In particular, we have implemented a discrete elastic model of flexible yarns with contact which treats yarns as unidimensional splines, together with a model that discretizes yarns using three-dimensional finite elements.
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    A Visual Interface for Feature Subset Selection Using Machine Learning Methods
    (The Eurographics Association, 2018) Rojo, Diego; Raya, Laura; Rubio-Sánchez, Manuel; Sánchez, Alberto; García-Fernández, Ignacio and Ureña, Carlos
    Visual representation of information remains a key part of exploratory data analysis. This is due to the high number of features in datasets and their increasing complexity, together with users' ability to visually understand information. One of the most common operations in exploratory data analysis is the selection of relevant features in the available data. In multidimensional scenarios, this task is often done with the help of automatic dimensionality reduction algorithms from the machine learning field. In this paper we develop a visual interface where users are integrated into the feature selection process of several machine learning algorithms. Users can work interactively with the algorithms in order to explore the data, compare the results and make the appropriate decisions about the feature selection process.
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    Blast Features and Requirements for Fracturing Osseous Models
    (The Eurographics Association, 2018) Pérez, Francisco Daniel; Jiménez, Juan José; Jiménez, Juan Roberto; García-Fernández, Ignacio and Ureña, Carlos
    Fracturing osseous models is a challenge in computer graphics. The generation of bone fractures is important in the field of traumatology mainly for training. This field of research can provide specialists with a rich and varied amount of fracture cases. Traditionally, the generation of bone fractures has been carried out by using a finite element method (FEM) approach. Nevertheless, this approach requires a precise physical information of the model and the incoming forces that are not usually available. Thus, we propose a geometric approach to avoid these initial requirements. This paper evaluates the adequacy of a given generic destruction library (Blast) within the bone fracture generation context. Our aim is to assess its suitability to provide varied, uncommon cases and morphologically rich fractures in the field of bone fractures. In order to achieve quality results, bone models are evaluated at different scales, spanning from the macroscale to the nanoscale. This study highlights the advantages and shortcomings of the revised library. Additionally, it provides a groundwork for the use of this library in the context of fracturing osseous models as well as a set of addons needed to get a tool specifically designed for this aim.
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    Design and Implementation of a Volumetric Merging Tool
    (The Eurographics Association, 2018) Vidaurre-Gallart, Isabel; Sújar, Aaron; García, Marcos; García-Fernández, Ignacio and Ureña, Carlos
    The study of the human brain is one of the biggest research challenges nowadays. Thanks to the impressive improvement in technology, great advances are being achieved in the study of the microanatomical structures of the neurons, which are the main nervous system processing cells. The study of those structures requires to capture high-resolution images. In such cases, due to the resolution required, processing of complete neurons is unfeasible. The purpose of this project is to provide the neuroscientists with a tool that allows them to visualize and reconstruct complete neurons from multiple high-resolution sections. To this end, we developed a tool capable of loading different volumetric data sets and merging them into a new volume. A rendering engine was designed to support several volumetric rendering modes. The graphical user interface allows the user to interact with the volumes in intuitive way and facilitates volume stitching task. Furthermore, the implementation makes use of GPU to improve the application.
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    A Prototype of a Scalable Multi-GPU Molecular Dynamics Simulator for Large Molecular Systems
    (The Eurographics Association, 2018) Nicolas-Barreales, Gonzalo; Novalbos, Marcos; Otaduy, Miguel Ángel; Sánchez, Alberto; García-Fernández, Ignacio and Ureña, Carlos
    Parallel architectures, in the form of multi-core or multiple computers, have produced a major impact in the field of information technology. GPU devices, as an extreme example of parallel architectures, have been adapted to enable generic computation in massively parallel architectures. Molecular dynamics is a problem that fits perfectly such architectures, as it relies on the computation of many similar interactions between atoms. Moreover, large molecular systems require resources that exceed those available in a single computer, even multi-GPU computers. Therefore, the ideal architecture to simulate molecular dynamics is a distributed multi-GPU cluster, which consists of multiple interconnected computers with one or more GPUs each. A molecular dynamics simulation usually needs days, and even weeks of computation time to produce results that represent only a few microseconds of atom interactions. In contrast, distributed multi-GPU clusters allows us to develop an efficient and scalable simulator. This paper aims to develop a prototype of a molecular dynamics simulator for large molecular systems. It uses the GPU as the main computing device, using only the CPU to control the workflow. We have implemented parallel processing techniques to develop a fully scalable system.