Visual Climate Change Communication: From Iconography To Locally Framed 3D Visualization

Climate change is an urgent problem with implications registered not only globally, but also on national and local scales. It is a particularly challenging case of environmental communication because its main cause, greenhouse gas emissions, is invisible. The predominant approach of making climate change visible is the use of iconic, often affective, imagery. Literature on the iconography of climate change shows that global iconic motifs, such as polar bears, have contributed to a public perception of the problem as spatially and temporally remote. This paper proposes an alternative approach to global climate change icons by focusing on recognizable representations of local impacts within an interactive game environment. This approach was implemented and tested in a research project based on the municipality of Delta, British Columbia. A major outcome of the research is Future Delta, an interactive educational game featuring 3D visualizations and simulation tools for climate change adaptation and mitigation future scenarios. The empirical evaluation is based on quantitative pre/post-game play questionnaires with 18 students and 10 qualitative expert interviews. The findings support the assumption that interactive 3D imagery is effective in communicating climate change. The quantitative post-questionnaires particularly highlight a shift in support of more local responsibility

Transition Contour Synthesis with Dynamic Patch Transitions

In this article, we present a novel approach for modulating the shape of transitions between terrain materials to produce detailed and varied contours where blend resolution is limited. Whereas texture splatting and blend mapping add detail to transitions at the texel level, our approach addresses the broader shape of the transition by introducing intermittency and irregularity. Our results have proven that enriched detail of the blend contour can be achieved with a performance competitive to existing approaches without additional texture, geometry resources, or asset preprocessing. We achieve this by compositing blend masks on-the-fly with the subdivision of texture space into differently sized patches to produce irregular contours from minimal artistic input. Our approach is of particular importance for applications where GPU resources or artistic input is limited or impractical

Blood Splats and Bodily Collapse: Reported Realism and the Perception of Violence in Combat Films and Video Games

A clear definition of realism is understandably difficult for critics and theorists to agree upon when applied to texts such as the war film or combat shooter, which can have a very direct connection to events that have actually taken place. In this paper, I use textual observation and analysis to advance the concept of “reported realism” as an alternate analytic tool to account for the impression of truth and authenticity produced by specific stylistic components of these representations of combat violence. Drawing upon cognitivist theories of meaning and the imagination (Torben Grodal, Stephen Prince) and neoformalist film studies (Kristin Thompson) this paper points toward some of the significant developments in the evolution of violence in war films as well as the adjacent genre of the first-person shooter video game. I show that the intensified audio-visual detail in contemporary screen representations of war enable film viewers and game players to construct more vividly imagined mental simulations, thus offering a greater affective realism

Lighting Styles and Moods in Unreal Engine

This writing covers the process of lighting stylized and realistic scenes in different moods in Unreal Engine. Lighting can be used to express a mood in an environment, which can aid storytelling in films and games. Lighting in Unreal consists of positioning directional lights, sky lights, spot lights, point lights, and rect lights, as well as various fog effects that help create the ambiance of the scene. This project utilizes free Epic Games Pack content to show the lighting process for different moods in several environments. The use of lights and colors are an important part of designing a game environment which conveys moods and allows for playability

THE REALISM OF ALGORITHMIC HUMAN FIGURES A Study of Selected Examples 1964 to 2001

It is more than forty years since the first wireframe images of the Boeing Man revealed a stylized hu-man pilot in a simulated pilot's cabin. Since then, it has almost become standard to include scenes in Hollywood movies which incorporate virtual human actors. A trait particularly recognizable in the games industry world-wide is the eagerness to render athletic muscular young men, and young women with hour-glass body-shapes, to traverse dangerous cyberworlds as invincible heroic figures. Tremendous efforts in algorithmic modeling, animation and rendering are spent to produce a realistic and believable appearance of these algorithmic humans. This thesis develops two main strands of research by the interpreting a selection of examples. Firstly, in the computer graphics context, over the forty years, it documents the development of the creation of the naturalistic appearance of images (usually called photorealism ). In particular, it de-scribes and reviews the impact of key algorithms in the course of the journey of the algorithmic human figures towards realism . Secondly, taking a historical perspective, this work provides an analysis of computer graphics in relation to the concept of realism. A comparison of realistic images of human figures throughout history with their algorithmically-generated counterparts allows us to see that computer graphics has both learned from previous and contemporary art movements such as photorealism but also taken out-of-context elements, symbols and properties from these art movements with a questionable naivety. Therefore, this work also offers a critique of the justification of the use of their typical conceptualization in computer graphics. Although the astounding technical achievements in the field of algorithmically-generated human figures are paralleled by an equally astounding disregard for the history of visual culture, from the beginning 1964 till the breakthrough 2001, in the period of the digital information processing machine, a new approach has emerged to meet the apparently incessant desire of humans to create artificial counterparts of themselves. Conversely, the theories of traditional realism have to be extended to include new problems that those active algorithmic human figures present

Generation and Rendering of Interactive Ground Vegetation for Real-Time Testing and Validation of Computer Vision Algorithms

During the development process of new algorithms for computer vision applications, testing and evaluation in real outdoor environments is time-consuming and often difficult to realize. Thus, the use of artificial testing environments is a flexible and cost-efficient alternative. As a result, the development of new techniques for simulating natural, dynamic environments is essential for real-time virtual reality applications, which are commonly known as Virtual Testbeds. Since the first basic usage of Virtual Testbeds several years ago, the image quality of virtual environments has almost reached a level close to photorealism even in real-time due to new rendering approaches and increasing processing power of current graphics hardware. Because of that, Virtual Testbeds can recently be applied in application areas like computer vision, that strongly rely on realistic scene representations. The realistic rendering of natural outdoor scenes has become increasingly important in many application areas, but computer simulated scenes often differ considerably from real-world environments, especially regarding interactive ground vegetation. In this article, we introduce a novel ground vegetation rendering approach, that is capable of generating large scenes with realistic appearance and excellent performance. Our approach features wind animation, as well as object-to-grass interaction and delivers realistically appearing grass and shrubs at all distances and from all viewing angles. This greatly improves immersion, as well as acceptance, especially in virtual training applications. Nevertheless, the rendered results also fulfill important requirements for the computer vision aspect, like plausible geometry representation of the vegetation, as well as its consistence during the entire simulation. Feature detection and matching algorithms are applied to our approach in localization scenarios of mobile robots in natural outdoor environments. We will show how the quality of computer vision algorithms is influenced by highly detailed, dynamic environments, like observed in unstructured, real-world outdoor scenes with wind and object-to-vegetation interaction

3D Weather – Towards a Real-time 3D Simulation of Localised Weather presented at EVA 2011

Weather forecasts are nearly always portrayed from either a satellite view perspective, a numerical or symbol based representation. None of these methods actually portray weather visually from the point of view of the observer, that is, they do not represent our experience of weather. This problem presents a challenge to displaying weather using real-time 3D computer graphics. 3D Weather is a proposed method to solve this problem, to create more believable representations of the weather using real weather data. By employing computer graphic techniques and computer game concepts the project intends to create a localized display of weather using mapping and weather data. Started in 2010, the project has been exploring existing techniques, scoping out the needs of stakeholders (such as the Met Office), and creating a prototype to explore the issues. The paper concludes that the quest for realism with computer graphics can be a double-edged sword. It can lead to expectations of accuracy in the data its meant to represent, which can be desired, but in the case of the weather forecast the representation is not necessary what the weather will be, its what the weather might be. The continuing project will explore the balance of issues when representing the weather for past events as well as for forecasts

Virtual production in The Lion King (2019): formal and stylistics presentation

O Rei Leão (2019), da Disney, dirigido por Jon Favreau, foi produzido usando tecnologias de produção virtual, como filmagem em um espaço virtual. Embora a produção virtual de O Rei Leão (2019) tenha sido descrita em artigos jornalísticos, bem como em alguns trabalhos acadêmicos, quase não houve discussão sobre o impacto que a tecnologia teve no próprio filme. Utilizando a análise cinematográfica do neoformalismo, este estudo examina criticamente como a produção virtual de O Rei Leão (2019) influencia sua apresentação formal e estilística.El Rey León (2019) de Disney, dirigida por Jon Favreau, se produjo utilizando tecnologías de producción virtual, como filmar dentro de un espacio virtual. Si bien la producción virtual de El Rey León (2019) ha sido descrita en artículos periodísticos, así como en algunos trabajos académicos, apenas hubo discusión sobre el impacto que tuvo la tecnología en la película misma. Utilizando el análisis cinematográfico del neoformalismo, este estudio examina críticamente cómo la producción virtual de El Rey León (2019) influye en su presentación formal y estilística.Disney’s The Lion King (2019), directed by Jon Favreau, was produced using virtual production technologies such as filming within a virtual space. While the virtual production of The Lion King (2019) has been described in journalistic articles, as well as in a few academic papers, there was hardly any discussion on the impact that the technology had on the film itself. Using the neoformalist film analysis, this study critically examines how the virtual production of The Lion King (2019) influences its formal and stylistic presentation

Visual Aesthetics in Digital Games: A Comparative Analysis Between Photorealism and Stylized Graphicsgraphics

This dissertation starts from the assumption that every digital game has some kind of visual display. Based on that, it investigates photorealistic and stylized graphics, two popular visual styles in digital games, in order to comprehend the process of creating a prototype that incorporates those styles, as well as the technological artistic challenges of implementing each style in a solo development scenario, with the goal of assisting in the practice of designing this type of content. A literature review on digital game appearance and the development of both photorealistic and stylized styles was conducted to ground the development of a prototype. The result of the prototype creation is documented, so its findings can lead to the expansion of knowledge that can be used in practice and can inform practitioners and other designers

Deer: Creating a Realistic 3D Animal Using Photogrammetry

Creating a 3D animal using the process of photogrammetry can bring more realism to a user’s game experience. In the 3D world, there are various ways for creating animals in video games. Specifically, quadrupeds are known to be very challenging. Since technology is evolving every day, there are always newer ways of creating video game assets. It is challenging to have complex model details and also have smooth real-time rendering in a game engine. Photogrammetry can capture exact details of a real world animal and incorporate them into a 3D asset. The purpose for using this process is to create a realistic 3D animal for use in a game. Animals are often secondary characters in video games, but adding details to such characters adds to the overall experience for the user. The purpose of the project is to find a way to utilize photogrammetry so as to meet the wants of the target audience (gamers). To many, realism is important for not only the primary character in a game, but also the secondary characters