Efficient Streaming of 3D Scenes with Complex Geometry and Complex Lighting

International audienceStreaming data to efficiently render complex 3D scenes in presence of global illumination is still a challenging task. In this paper, we introduce a new data structure based on a 3D grid of irradiance vectors to store the indirect illumination appearing on complex and detailed objects: the Irradiance Vector Grid (IVG). This representation is independent of the geometric complexity and is suitable for quantization to different quantization schemes. Moreover, its streaming over network involves only a small overhead compared to detailed geometry, and can be achieved independently of the geometry. Furthermore, it can be efficiently rendered using modern graphics hardware. We demonstrate our new data structure in a new remote 3D visualization system, that integrates indirect lighting streaming and progressive transmission of the geometry, and study the impact of different strategies on data transfer

Mobile graphics: SIGGRAPH Asia 2017 course

Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Serious Games in Cultural Heritage

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

Ubiquitous Scalable Graphics: An End-to-End Framework using Wavelets

Advances in ubiquitous displays and wireless communications have fueled the emergence of exciting mobile graphics applications including 3D virtual product catalogs, 3D maps, security monitoring systems and mobile games. Current trends that use cameras to capture geometry, material reflectance and other graphics elements means that very high resolution inputs is accessible to render extremely photorealistic scenes. However, captured graphics content can be many gigabytes in size, and must be simplified before they can be used on small mobile devices, which have limited resources, such as memory, screen size and battery energy. Scaling and converting graphics content to a suitable rendering format involves running several software tools, and selecting the best resolution for target mobile device is often done by trial and error, which all takes time. Wireless errors can also affect transmitted content and aggressive compression is needed for low-bandwidth wireless networks. Most rendering algorithms are currently optimized for visual realism and speed, but are not resource or energy efficient on mobile device. This dissertation focuses on the improvement of rendering performance by reducing the impacts of these problems with UbiWave, an end-to-end Framework to enable real time mobile access to high resolution graphics using wavelets. The framework tackles the issues including simplification, transmission, and resource efficient rendering of graphics content on mobile device based on wavelets by utilizing 1) a Perceptual Error Metric (PoI) for automatically computing the best resolution of graphics content for a given mobile display to eliminate guesswork and save resources, 2) Unequal Error Protection (UEP) to improve the resilience to wireless errors, 3) an Energy-efficient Adaptive Real-time Rendering (EARR) heuristic to balance energy consumption, rendering speed and image quality and 4) an Energy-efficient Streaming Technique. The results facilitate a new class of mobile graphics application which can gracefully adapt the lowest acceptable rendering resolution to the wireless network conditions and the availability of resources and battery energy on mobile device adaptively

Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result, the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

An asynchronous method for cloud-based rendering

Interactive high-fidelity rendering is still unachievable on many consumer devices. Cloud gaming services have shown promise in delivering interactive graphics beyond the individual capabilities of user devices. However, a number of shortcomings are manifest in these systems: high network bandwidths are required for higher resolutions and input lag due to network fluctuations heavily disrupts user experience. In this paper, we present a scalable solution for interactive high-fidelity graphics based on a distributed rendering pipeline where direct lighting is computed on the client device and indirect lighting in the cloud. The client device keeps a local cache for indirect lighting which is asynchronously updated using an object space representation; this allows us to achieve interactive rates that are unconstrained by network performance for a wide range of display resolutions that are also robust to input lag. Furthermore, in multi-user environments, the computation of indirect lighting is amortised over participating clients

Shaping the Future of Animation towards Role of 3D Simulation Technology in Animation Film and Television

The application of 3D simulation technology has revolutionized the field of animation film and television art, providing new possibilities and creative opportunities for visual storytelling. This research aims to explore the various aspects of applying 3D simulation technology in animation film and television art. It examines how 3D simulation technology enhances the creation of realistic characters, environments, and special effects, contributing to immersive and captivating storytelling experiences. The research also investigates the technical aspects of integrating 3D cloud simulation technology into the animation production pipeline, including modeling, texturing, rigging, and animation techniques. This paper explores the application of these optimization algorithms in the context of cloud-based 3D environments, focusing on enhancing the efficiency and performance of 3D simulations. Black Widow and Spider Monkey Optimization can be used to optimize the placement and distribution of 3D assets in cloud storage systems, improving data access and retrieval times. The algorithms can also optimize the scheduling of rendering tasks in cloud-based rendering pipelines, leading to more efficient and cost-effective rendering processes. The integration of 3D cloud environments and optimization algorithms enables real-time optimization and adaptation of 3D simulations. This allows for dynamic adjustments of simulation parameters based on changing conditions, resulting in improved accuracy and responsiveness. Moreover, it explores the impact of 3D cloud simulation technology on the artistic process, examining how it influences the artistic vision, aesthetics, and narrative possibilities in animation film and television. The research findings highlight the advantages and challenges of using 3D simulation technology in animation, shedding light on its potential future developments and its role in shaping the future of animation film and television art

Out-of-Core GPU Path Tracing on Large Instanced Scenes via Geometry Streaming

We present a technique for out-of-core GPU path tracing of arbitrarily large scenes that is compatible with hardware-accelerated ray-tracing. Our technique improves upon previous works by subdividing the scene spatially into streamable chunks that are loaded using a priority system that maximizes ray throughput and minimizes GPU memory usage. This allows for arbitrarily large scaling of scene complexity. Our system required under 19 minutes to render a solid color version of Disney\u27s Moana Island scene (39.3 million instances, 261.1 million unique quads, and 82.4 billion instanced quads at a resolution of 1024x429 and 1024spp on an RTX 5000 (24GB memory total, 22GB used, 13GB geometry cache, with the remainder for temporary buffers and storage) (Wald et al.). As a scalability test, our system rendered 26 Moana Island scenes without multi-level instancing (1.02 billion instances, 2.14 trillion instanced quads, ~230GB if all resident) in under 1h:28m. Compared to state-of-the-art hardware-accelerated renders of the Moana Island scene, our system can render larger scenes on a single GPU. Our system is faster than the previous out-of-core approach and is able to render larger scenes than previous in-core approaches given the same memory constraints (Hellmuth, Zellman et al, Wald)