Virtual prototyping with surface reconstruction and freeform geometric modeling using level-set method

More and more products with complex geometries are being designed and manufactured by computer aided design (CAD) and rapid prototyping (RP) technologies. Freeform surface is a geometrical feature widely used in modern products like car bodies, airfoils and turbine blades as well as in aesthetic artifacts. How to efficiently design and generate digital prototypes with freeform surfaces is an important issue in CAD. This paper presents the development of a Virtual Sculpting system and addresses the issues of surface reconstruction from dexel data structures and freeform geometric modeling using the level-set method from distance field structure. Our virtual sculpting method is based on the metaphor of carving a solid block into a 3D freeform object using a 3D haptic input device integrated with the computer visualization. This dissertation presents the result of the study and consists primarily of four papers --Abstract, page iv

Staging and production : a proposal to develop a computer software program for opera and theatre directors

"The production of a play, musical or opera can be compared to the manufacture of any complicated process or product. At present, there is no standard method of accumulating the data necessary for staging a play, musical, or opera, even though the production process is similar for all three. Theatrical productions have stage managers, directors, and assistants responsible for collecting forms, reports, and design-plans in various formats. This data is taken by hand, on personal laptops, or on software programs such as AutoCAD (Computer Assisted Design) or WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get). Software programs currently in use are not particularly linked or compatible. This lack of a cohesive data retrieval system is frustrating, time consuming, and expensive. The focus of this study is to propose and describe one possible solution. Existing technologies could be developed into a software system, henceforward called Artisterene´, that gathers, stores, and organizes theatrical production data. This software system functions as a virtual prompt script with three major components that work in tandem. The first component is an interactive, three-dimensional animation program for blocking (movement on stage). The second module is a secure online subscription service of theatrical databases (stage dimensions, technical capabilities, scores or scripts, contacts, etc.). The third component synchronizes cues extracted from master lists submitted by each production team (lighting, sound, and set design). These color-coded cues are superimposed on the U¨berscript (master script or score) for the current production. This system manages the production process from beginning to end. Management can remotely edit production data by using hand-held devices. The production data is then added to a show-specific repository with online access by authorized personnel. Database subscriptions and software sales of Artisterene´ will target opera and theatre companies, and educational institutions. This software system will standardize the production process and greatly reduce planning and rehearsal time. Artisterene´ could emerge as the universal format for sharing production data, and could become a definitive teaching tool used to train directors and stage managers."--Abstract from author supplied metadata

3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering

Radiance Field methods have recently revolutionized novel-view synthesis of scenes captured with multiple photos or videos. However, achieving high visual quality still requires neural networks that are costly to train and render, while recent faster methods inevitably trade off speed for quality. For unbounded and complete scenes (rather than isolated objects) and 1080p resolution rendering, no current method can achieve real-time display rates. We introduce three key elements that allow us to achieve state-of-the-art visual quality while maintaining competitive training times and importantly allow high-quality real-time (>= 30 fps) novel-view synthesis at 1080p resolution. First, starting from sparse points produced during camera calibration, we represent the scene with 3D Gaussians that preserve desirable properties of continuous volumetric radiance fields for scene optimization while avoiding unnecessary computation in empty space; Second, we perform interleaved optimization/density control of the 3D Gaussians, notably optimizing anisotropic covariance to achieve an accurate representation of the scene; Third, we develop a fast visibility-aware rendering algorithm that supports anisotropic splatting and both accelerates training and allows realtime rendering. We demonstrate state-of-the-art visual quality and real-time rendering on several established datasets.Comment: https://repo-sam.inria.fr/fungraph/3d-gaussian-splatting

Interactive Video Game Content Authoring using Procedural Methods

This thesis explores avenues for improving the quality and detail of game graphics, in the context of constraints that are common to most game development studios. The research begins by identifying two dominant constraints; limitations in the capacity of target gaming hardware/platforms, and processes that hinder the productivity of game art/content creation. From these constraints, themes were derived which directed the research‟s focus. These include the use of algorithmic or „procedural‟ methods in the creation of graphics content for games, and the use of an „interactive‟ content creation strategy, to better facilitate artist production workflow. Interactive workflow represents an emerging paradigm shift in content creation processes used by the industry, which directly integrates game rendering technology into the content authoring process. The primary motivation for this is to provide „high frequency‟ visual feedback that enables artists to see games content in context, during the authoring process. By merging these themes, this research develops a production strategy that takes advantage of „high frequency feedback‟ in an interactive workflow, to directly expose procedural methods to artists‟, for use in the content creation process. Procedural methods have a characteristically small „memory footprint‟ and are capable of generating massive volumes of data. Their small „size to data volume‟ ratio makes them particularly well suited for use in game rendering situations, where capacity constraints are an issue. In addition, an interactive authoring environment is well suited to the task of setting parameters for procedural methods, reducing a major barrier to their acceptance by artists. An interactive content authoring environment was developed during this research. Two algorithms were designed and implemented. These algorithms provide artists‟ with abstract mechanisms which accelerate common game content development processes; namely object placement in game environments, and the delivery of variation between similar game objects. In keeping with the theme of this research, the core functionality of these algorithms is delivered via procedural methods. Through this, production overhead that is associated with these content development processes is essentially offloaded from artists onto the processing capability of modern gaming hardware. This research shows how procedurally based content authoring algorithms not only harmonize with the issues of hardware capacity constraints, but also make the authoring of larger and more detailed volumes of games content more feasible in the game production process. Algorithms and ideas developed during this research demonstrate the use of procedurally based, interactive content creation, towards improving detail and complexity in the graphics of games

Development and Application of Semi-automated ITK Tools Development and Application of Semi-automated ITK Tools for the Segmentation of Brain MR Images

Image segmentation is a process to identify regions of interest from digital images. Image segmentation plays an important role in medical image processing which enables a variety of clinical applications. It is also a tool to facilitate the detection of abnormalities such as cancerous lesions in the brain. Although numerous efforts in recent years have advanced this technique, no single approach solves the problem of segmentation for the large variety of image modalities existing today. Consequently, brain MRI segmentation remains a challenging task. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate brain MRI segmentation for delineation of tumors, ventricles and other anatomical structures using Insight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit (ITK) routines as the foundation. ITK is an open-source software system to support the Visible Human Project. Visible Human Project is the creation of complete, anatomically detailed, three-dimensional representations of the normal male and female human bodies. Currently under active development, ITK employs leading-edge segmentation and registration algorithms in two, three, and more dimensions. A goal of this thesis is to implement those algorithms to facilitate brain segmentation for a brain cancer research scientist

MeshPotato: A C++/Python API for Production Volumetric Rendering

MeshPotato is a production volume rendering API written in C++. Its purpose is to simplify the creation of high quality volumetric effects such as fire, smoke, clouds and explosions. MeshPotato has been designed to be extensible and flexible for quick changes. Python bindings have been implemented with this library to allow for tools that are scripted and integrated within popular 3D modeling applications such as Maya and Houdini. The design of MeshPotato is discussed along with its plugin system, volume rendering API and some results from using the tool

Liquid simulation with mesh-based surface tracking

Animating detailed liquid surfaces has always been a challenge for computer graphics researchers and visual effects artists. Over the past few years, researchers in this field have focused on mesh-based surface tracking to synthesize extremely detailed liquid surfaces as efficiently as possible. This course provides a solid understanding of the steps required to create a fluid simulator with a mesh-based liquid surface. The course begins with an overview of several existing liquid-surface-tracking techniques and the pros and cons of each method. Then it explains how to embed a triangle mesh into a finite-difference-based fluid simulator and describes several methods for allowing the liquid surface to merge together or break apart. The final section showcases the benefits and further applications of a mesh-based liquid surface, highlighting state-of-the-art methods for tracking colors and textures, maintaining liquid volume, preserving small surface features, and simulating realistic surface-tension waves

The Register, 1980-09-23

https://digital.library.ncat.edu/atregister/1865/thumbnail.jp