Perceptual models for high-refresh-rate rendering

Rendering realistic images requires substantial computational power. With new high-refresh-rate displays as well as the renaissance of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), one cannot expect that GPU performance will scale fast enough to meet the requirements of immersive photo-realistic rendering with current rendering techniques. In this dissertation, I follow the dual of the well-known computer vision approach: vision is inverse graphics: to improve graphical algorithms, I consider the operation of the human visual system. I propose to model and exploit the limitations of the visual system in the context of novel high-refresh-rate displays; specifically, I focus on spatio-temporal perception, a topic that has received remarkably less attention than spatial-only perception so far. I present three main contributions. First, I demonstrate the validity of the perceptual approach by presenting a conceptually simple rendering technique motivated by our eyes' limited sensitivity to high spatio-temporal change which reduces the rendering load and transmission requirement of current-generation VR headsets without introducing perceivable visual artefacts. Second, I present two visual models related to motion perception: (a) a metric for detecting flicker; and (b) a comprehensive visual model to predict perceived motion quality on monitors with arbitrary refresh rates and monitor resolutions. Third, I propose an adaptive rendering algorithm that utilises the proposed models. All algorithms operate on physical colorimetric units (instead of display-referenced pixel values), for which I provide the appropriate display measurements and models. All proposed algorithms and visual models are calibrated and validated with psychophysical experiments

Perceptual model for adaptive local shading and refresh rate

When the rendering budget is limited by power or time, it is necessary to find the combination of rendering parameters, such as resolution and refresh rate, that could deliver the best quality. Variable-rate shading (VRS), introduced in the last generations of GPUs, enables fine control of the rendering quality, in which each 16×16 image tile can be rendered with a different ratio of shader executions. We take advantage of this capability and propose a new method for adaptive control of local shading and refresh rate. The method analyzes texture content, on-screen velocities, luminance, and effective resolution and suggests the refresh rate and a VRS state map that maximizes the quality of animated content under a limited budget. The method is based on the new content-adaptive metric of judder, aliasing, and blur, which is derived from the psychophysical models of contrast sensitivity. To calibrate and validate the metric, we gather data from literature and also collect new measurements of motion quality under variable shading rates, different velocities of motion, texture content, and display capabilities, such as refresh rate, persistence, and angular resolution. The proposed metric and adaptive shading method is implemented as a game engine plugin. Our experimental validation shows a substantial increase in preference of our method over rendering with a fixed resolution and refresh rate, and an existing motion-adaptive techniqu

Real-Time Algorithms for High Dynamic Range Video

A recurring problem in capturing video is the scene having a range of brightness values that exceeds the capabilities of the capturing device. An example would be a video camera in a bright outside area, directed at the entrance of a building. Because of the potentially big brightness difference, it may not be possible to capture details of the inside of the building and the outside simultaneously using just one shutter speed setting. This results in under- and overexposed pixels in the video footage. The approach we follow in this thesis to overcome this problem is temporal exposure bracketing, i.e., using a set of images captured in quick sequence at different shutter settings. Each image then captures one facet of the scene's brightness range. When fused together, a high dynamic range (HDR) video frame is created that reveals details in dark and bright regions simultaneously. The process of creating a frame in an HDR video can be thought of as a pipeline where the output of each step is the input to the subsequent one. It begins by capturing a set of regular images using varying shutter speeds. Next, the images are aligned with respect to each other to compensate for camera and scene motion during capture. The aligned images are then merged together to create a single HDR frame containing accurate brightness values of the entire scene. As a last step, the HDR frame is tone mapped in order to be displayable on a regular screen with a lower dynamic range. This thesis covers algorithms for these steps that allow the creation of HDR video in real-time. When creating videos instead of still images, the focus lies on high capturing and processing speed and on assuring temporal consistency between the video frames. In order to achieve this goal, we take advantage of the knowledge gained from the processing of previous frames in the video. This work addresses the following aspects in particular. The image size parameters for the set of base images are chosen such that only as little image data as possible is captured. We make use of the fact that it is not always necessary to capture full size images when only small portions of the scene require HDR. Avoiding redundancy in the image material is an obvious approach to reducing the overall time taken to generate a frame. With the aid of the previous frames, we calculate brightness statistics of the scene. The exposure values are chosen in a way, such that frequently occurring brightness values are well-exposed in at least one of the images in the sequence. The base images from which the HDR frame is created are captured in quick succession. The effects of intermediate camera motion are thus less intense than in the still image case, and a comparably simpler camera motion model can be used. At the same time, however, there is much less time available to estimate motion. For this reason, we use a fast heuristic that makes use of the motion information obtained in previous frames. It is robust to the large brightness difference between the images of an exposure sequence. The range of luminance values of an HDR frame must be tone mapped to the displayable range of the output device. Most available tone mapping operators are designed for still images and scale the dynamic range of each frame independently. In situations where the scene's brightness statistics change quickly, these operators produce visible image flicker. We have developed an algorithm that detects such situations in an HDR video. Based on this detection, a temporal stability criterion for the tone mapping parameters then prevents image flicker. All methods for capture, creation and display of HDR video introduced in this work have been fully implemented, tested and integrated into a running HDR video system. The algorithms were analyzed for parallelizability and, if applicable, adjusted and implemented on a high-performance graphics chip

Polarization fields: dynamic light field display using multi-layer LCDs

We introduce polarization field displays as an optically-efficient design for dynamic light field display using multi-layered LCDs. Such displays consist of a stacked set of liquid crystal panels with a single pair of crossed linear polarizers. Each layer is modeled as a spatially-controllable polarization rotator, as opposed to a conventional spatial light modulator that directly attenuates light. Color display is achieved using field sequential color illumination with monochromatic LCDs, mitigating severe attenuation and moiré occurring with layered color filter arrays. We demonstrate such displays can be controlled, at interactive refresh rates, by adopting the SART algorithm to tomographically solve for the optimal spatially-varying polarization state rotations applied by each layer. We validate our design by constructing a prototype using modified off-the-shelf panels. We demonstrate interactive display using a GPU-based SART implementation supporting both polarization-based and attenuation-based architectures. Experiments characterize the accuracy of our image formation model, verifying polarization field displays achieve increased brightness, higher resolution, and extended depth of field, as compared to existing automultiscopic display methods for dual-layer and multi-layer LCDs.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant IIS-1116452)United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Grant HR0011-10-C-0073)Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Research Fellowship)United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Young Faculty Award

Optimization techniques for computationally expensive rendering algorithms

Realistic rendering in computer graphics simulates the interactions of light and surfaces. While many accurate models for surface reflection and lighting, including solid surfaces and participating media have been described; most of them rely on intensive computation. Common practices such as adding constraints and assumptions can increase performance. However, they may compromise the quality of the resulting images or the variety of phenomena that can be accurately represented. In this thesis, we will focus on rendering methods that require high amounts of computational resources. Our intention is to consider several conceptually different approaches capable of reducing these requirements with only limited implications in the quality of the results. The first part of this work will study rendering of time-­¿varying participating media. Examples of this type of matter are smoke, optically thick gases and any material that, unlike the vacuum, scatters and absorbs the light that travels through it. We will focus on a subset of algorithms that approximate realistic illumination using images of real world scenes. Starting from the traditional ray marching algorithm, we will suggest and implement different optimizations that will allow performing the computation at interactive frame rates. This thesis will also analyze two different aspects of the generation of anti-­¿aliased images. One targeted to the rendering of screen-­¿space anti-­¿aliased images and the reduction of the artifacts generated in rasterized lines and edges. We expect to describe an implementation that, working as a post process, it is efficient enough to be added to existing rendering pipelines with reduced performance impact. A third method will take advantage of the limitations of the human visual system (HVS) to reduce the resources required to render temporally antialiased images. While film and digital cameras naturally produce motion blur, rendering pipelines need to explicitly simulate it. This process is known to be one of the most important burdens for every rendering pipeline. Motivated by this, we plan to run a series of psychophysical experiments targeted at identifying groups of motion-­¿blurred images that are perceptually equivalent. A possible outcome is the proposal of criteria that may lead to reductions of the rendering budgets

Adaptation of Images and Videos for Different Screen Sizes

With the increasing popularity of smartphones and similar mobile devices, the demand for media to consume on the go rises. As most images and videos today are captured with HD or even higher resolutions, there is a need to adapt them in a content-aware fashion before they can be watched comfortably on screens with small sizes and varying aspect ratios. This process is called retargeting. Most distortions during this process are caused by a change of the aspect ratio. Thus, retargeting mainly focuses on adapting the aspect ratio of a video while the rest can be scaled uniformly. The main objective of this dissertation is to contribute to the modern image and video retargeting, especially regarding the potential of the seam carving operator. There are still unsolved problems in this research field that should be addressed in order to improve the quality of the results or speed up the performance of the retargeting process. This dissertation presents novel algorithms that are able to retarget images, videos and stereoscopic videos while dealing with problems like the preservation of straight lines or the reduction of the required memory space and computation time. Additionally, a GPU implementation is used to achieve the retargeting of videos in real-time. Furthermore, an enhancement of face detection is presented which is able to distinguish between faces that are important for the retargeting and faces that are not. Results show that the developed techniques are suitable for the desired scenarios

Blickpunktabhängige Computergraphik

Contemporary digital displays feature multi-million pixels at ever-increasing refresh rates. Reality, on the other hand, provides us with a view of the world that is continuous in space and time. The discrepancy between viewing the physical world and its sampled depiction on digital displays gives rise to perceptual quality degradations. By measuring or estimating where we look, gaze-contingent algorithms aim at exploiting the way we visually perceive to remedy visible artifacts. This dissertation presents a variety of novel gaze-contingent algorithms and respective perceptual studies. Chapter 4 and 5 present methods to boost perceived visual quality of conventional video footage when viewed on commodity monitors or projectors. In Chapter 6 a novel head-mounted display with real-time gaze tracking is described. The device enables a large variety of applications in the context of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. Using the gaze-tracking VR headset, a novel gaze-contingent render method is described in Chapter 7. The gaze-aware approach greatly reduces computational efforts for shading virtual worlds. The described methods and studies show that gaze-contingent algorithms are able to improve the quality of displayed images and videos or reduce the computational effort for image generation, while display quality perceived by the user does not change.Moderne digitale Bildschirme ermöglichen immer höhere Auflösungen bei ebenfalls steigenden Bildwiederholraten. Die Realität hingegen ist in Raum und Zeit kontinuierlich. Diese Grundverschiedenheit führt beim Betrachter zu perzeptuellen Unterschieden. Die Verfolgung der Aug-Blickrichtung ermöglicht blickpunktabhängige Darstellungsmethoden, die sichtbare Artefakte verhindern können. Diese Dissertation trägt zu vier Bereichen blickpunktabhängiger und wahrnehmungstreuer Darstellungsmethoden bei. Die Verfahren in Kapitel 4 und 5 haben zum Ziel, die wahrgenommene visuelle Qualität von Videos für den Betrachter zu erhöhen, wobei die Videos auf gewöhnlicher Ausgabehardware wie z.B. einem Fernseher oder Projektor dargestellt werden. Kapitel 6 beschreibt die Entwicklung eines neuartigen Head-mounted Displays mit Unterstützung zur Erfassung der Blickrichtung in Echtzeit. Die Kombination der Funktionen ermöglicht eine Reihe interessanter Anwendungen in Bezug auf Virtuelle Realität (VR) und Erweiterte Realität (AR). Das vierte und abschließende Verfahren in Kapitel 7 dieser Dissertation beschreibt einen neuen Algorithmus, der das entwickelte Eye-Tracking Head-mounted Display zum blickpunktabhängigen Rendern nutzt. Die Qualität des Shadings wird hierbei auf Basis eines Wahrnehmungsmodells für jeden Bildpixel in Echtzeit analysiert und angepasst. Das Verfahren hat das Potenzial den Berechnungsaufwand für das Shading einer virtuellen Szene auf ein Bruchteil zu reduzieren. Die in dieser Dissertation beschriebenen Verfahren und Untersuchungen zeigen, dass blickpunktabhängige Algorithmen die Darstellungsqualität von Bildern und Videos wirksam verbessern können, beziehungsweise sich bei gleichbleibender Bildqualität der Berechnungsaufwand des bildgebenden Verfahrens erheblich verringern lässt