Image Synthesis
My main interest in graphics is image synthesis. This involves several
different subjects.
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Global illumination:
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The propagation of light or energy throughout the environment.
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Local illumination:
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The way a material or BRDF reflects incident light back into the
environment.
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Rendering:
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The projection of an environment into an image.
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Visual Perception:
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Understanding how the eye/brain percieves an image, what information is
important, what can be safely discarded.
The goal of realistic image synthesis is to create an image that is
indistinguishable from the real scene. This is not as well defined as
it may sound. More can be found here.
Current Projects
- Global illumination:
- Neither finite element
methods (radiosity) nor Monte Carlo methods work very well in practice.
Can we come up with something better?
- Outdoor rendering:
- Rendering outdoor scenes is very different from indoor
scenes. Usually only the sun and sky provide
illumination, and the atmosphere can have a significant
effect of the transport.
- Real time raytracing:
- Parallel machines are now fast enough that raytracing can be done in
real time. This provides an entirely new framework for
displaying images than the current hardware assistend z-buffer
technology. There are many
advantages to ray tracing, as well as several unsolved
problems.
The group at Utah that is focusing on these sorts of problems is
the
Visual Simulation group.
Last modified: Thu Aug 3 10:19:44 MDT 2000
by Brian Smits
