Understanding and controlling contrast oscillations in stochastic texture algorithms using Spectrum of Variance

We identify and analyze a major issue pertaining to all power-spectrum based texture synthesis algorithms – from Fourier synthesis to procedural noise algorithms like Perlin or Gabor noise – , namely, the oscillation of contrast (see Figures 1,2,3,7). One of our key contributions is to introduce a simple yet powerful descriptor of signals, the Spectrum of Variance (not to be confused with the PSD), which, to our surprise, has never been leveraged before. In this new framework, several issues get easy to understand measure and control, with new handles, as we illustrate. We finally show that fixing oscillation of contrast opens many doors to a more controllable authoring of stochastic texturing. We explore some of the new reachable possibilities such as constrained noise content and bridges towards very different families of look such as cellular patterns, points-like distributions or reaction-diffusion

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis dissertation explores three key facets of software algorithms for custom hardware ray tracing: primitive intersection, shading, and acceleration structure construction. For the first, primitive intersection, we show how nearly all of the existing direct three-dimensional (3D) ray-triangle intersection tests are mathematically equivalent. Based on this, a genetic algorithm can automatically tune a ray-triangle intersection test for maximum speed on a particular architecture. We also analyze the components of the intersection test to determine how much floating point precision is required and design a numerically robust intersection algorithm. Next, for shading, we deconstruct Perlin noise into its basic parts and show how these can be modified to produce a gradient noise algorithm that improves the visual appearance. This improved algorithm serves as the basis for a hardware noise unit. Lastly, we show how an existing bounding volume hierarchy can be postprocessed using tree rotations to further reduce the expected cost to traverse a ray through it. This postprocessing also serves as the basis for an efficient update algorithm for animated geometry. Together, these contributions should improve the efficiency of both software- and hardware-based ray tracers

A journey in a procedural volume Optimization and filtering of Perlin noise

National audiencePerlin noise is the most widely used tool in procedural texture synthesis. It is a simple and fast method to enhance the quantity of detail or to render natural materials with no use of storage resources. However, this technique is very sensitive to aliasing artifacts, especially when composed with shape and color functions. Moreover, it is computationally intensive and can become slow, especially when generating procedural volumes of density in real time. This study aims at analyzing Perlin noise properties in order to control the apparition of artifacts and optimize the computational cost. We present a method for computing a maximum and minimum frequency threshold per noise component, we propose an idea to handle the case of non linear transforms of the noise, and show an optimization method for volume generation