Platform Independent Real-Time X3D Shaders and their Applications in Bioinformatics Visualization

Since the introduction of programmable Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and procedural shaders, hardware vendors have each developed their own individual real-time shading language standard. None of these shading languages is fully platform independent. Although this real-time programmable shader technology could be developed into 3D application on a single system, this platform dependent limitation keeps the shader technology away from 3D Internet applications. The primary purpose of this dissertation is to design a framework for translating different shader formats to platform independent shaders and embed them into the eXtensible 3D (X3D) scene for 3D web applications. This framework includes a back-end core shader converter, which translates shaders among different shading languages with a middle XML layer. Also included is a shader library containing a basic set of shaders that developers can load and add shaders to. This framework will then be applied to some applications in Biomolecular Visualization

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

Comparative of Techniques: Activation by Sequence, Morph Target Animation and CG/HLSL Programming in Surgery Incision Simulation for Virtual Reality

In this decade, the way of simulating medical scenarios has evolved considerably, for some years now, this area and virtual reality came together giving life to a much more immersive form of simulation. The great challenge in medical simulation is to achieve a consid-erable level of realism and performance, as it is limited by the complexity of the scenario and other factors, the hardware factor being the main limiting. Giving the user the possibility to choose between greater or less realism requires that it be defined with which technique it would be achieved, therefore, this research com-pares three forms of surgical incision simulation for virtual reality: Activation by Sequence, Morph Target Animation and CG/HLSL Programming, evaluating factors such as: frames per-second (fps), CPU and GPU usage, which helped to obtain the level of realism of each technique; resulting in that CG/HLSL Programming uses fewer resources, with 27% CPU usage, 5% integrated GPU, 45% dedicated GPU, 60 fps and 44.3% realism, continuing, with an intermediate level use of resources Activation by Sequence with 11% CPU usage, 18% integrated GPU, 57% dedicated GPU, 60 fps, providing 46.5% realism, finally, the technique that used the most resources and obtained the highest level of realism was Morph Target Animation with 23% CPU usage, 22% integrated GPU, 77% dedicated GPU, 53 fps and 51.3% realism; these techniques can be used depending on the objective of the project where more or less realism is required, considering the use of hardware resources

Rendering of Terrain and Water Surface in a Computer Game

Tato bakalářská práce je zaměřená na vykreslování vody a terénu, což je klíčová část mnoha počítačových her a simulací. Výsledná aplikace běží plynule a je vytvořená v XNA Frameworku. Vykreslování terénu zahrnuje multitexturování a stínování. Simulace vody popisuje odraz a lom paprsků na vodní hladině. Pěna je vykreslována na břehu vody. Vodní vlny jsou počítány pomocí inverzní diskrétní Fourierovy transformace.This bachelor's thesis deals with rendering of water and terrain, which is a key part of many computer games and simulations. The resulting application runs fluently and is powered by XNA Framework. Rendering of terrain includes multi-texturing and lighting. The water simulation includes reflection and refraction of ray on water surface. Foam is rendered on the bank of water. Water waves are computed using the inverse discrete Fourier transform.

Performance of a simple remote video-based eye tracker with GPU acceleration

Eye tracking is a well-established tool that is often utilised in research. There are currently many different types of eye trackers available, but they are either expensive, or provide a relatively low sampling frequency. The eye tracker presented in this paper was developed in an effort to address the lack of low-cost high-speed eye trackers. It utilises the Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) in an attempt to parallelise aspects of the process to localize feature points in eye images to attain higher sampling frequencies. Moreover, the proposed implementation allows for the system to be used on a variety of different GPUs. The developed solution is capable of sampling at frequencies of 200 Hz and higher, while allowing for head movements within an area of 10×6×10 cm and an average accuracy of one degree of visual angle. The entire system can be built for less than 700 euros, and will run on a mid-range laptop

XNA-like 3D Graphics Programming on the Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computing device created by Broadcom in 2012. This device is a kind of mini PC, and it is capable of doing things that desktop PC can do. The goal of the Raspberry Pi Foundation is to allow people all over the world to learn programming. Therefore, the Raspberry Pi is designed as a small sized, low cost device that can provide reasonable data processing capability. However, because of its goal is to keep the price down to maximize openness for learning, Raspberry Pi can only run the Linux operating system. XNA is a set of libraries developed by Microsoft to facilitate the creation and management of video games. It provides a large number of underlying functions to help the development of systems that based on runtime. Therefore, programmers may focus on programming their own code. XNA is built on Microsoft's .NET framework, and it is designed to be used with DirectX. However, as no drivers are developed to provide the low level API defined by DirectX on Linux, it is currently impossible to program with XNA on a Raspberry Pi. This thesis investigates the possibility of developing XNA like programs directly on the Raspberry Pi. Instead of using DirectX, OpenGL ES is used to provide the low level graphics APIs. The code of a project named "JBBRXG11", which is an open source project extending XNA classes on Windows to access DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 graphics features is used as a reference for this project. The project successfully built a library that allows an XNA like program to produce moving, textured 3D models on screen

Keyframe Animation and Non-Photorealistic Effects in a Computer Game

Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá vývojem počítačové hry - zvláště tvorbou knihovny pro práci s animacemi a tvorbou nefotorealistických efektů. Úvodní část objasňuje teoretické podklady nutné pro vytvoření nefotorealistických efektů a animační knihovny. Dále podrobně rozebírá jednotlivé nefotorealistické efekty a zabývá se jejich tvorbou. Podobně se věnuje i tvorbě animační knihovny - rozebírá existující řešení a na jejich základě je v ní popsána tvorba nové animační knihovny. Výstupem této práce je pak počítačová hra, která v sobě tyto části kloubí.This bachelor's thesis deals with a development of a computer game - especially an animation library and creation of non-photorealistic effects. At the beginning it clarifies the theoretical basics which are necessary to creation of the non-photorealistic effects and an animation library.  Further it describes every single non-photorealistic effect and their creation in details. It also deals with creation of an animation library - it holds forth on existing solutions and describes a creation of the new animation library on their basis. Output of this thesis is a computer game which combines these parts together.

Particle Systems

Tato bakalářská práce se týká implementace částicových systémů s využitím výpočetního výkonu GPU. Klade si za cíl popsat důležitá fakta o stavbě částicových systémů a poukázat na různé možnosti využití. Rozebírá schopnosti moderních shaderů a jejich aplikování na výpočet pohybu částic. Základem práce je analýza implementované aplikace, která dokáže dynamicky měnit všechny parametry systému.This bachelor's thesis deals with the implementation of particle systems with the usage of calculation power of GPU. The purpose of this work is to describe all important facts about the particle systems construction and to show up various possibilities of its usage. It analysis the abilities of modern shaders and their usage for calculation of particles movement. The basis of this work is the analysis of the implemented application, which is able to dynamically change all parameters of the system.