3,789 research outputs found
The Iray Light Transport Simulation and Rendering System
While ray tracing has become increasingly common and path tracing is well
understood by now, a major challenge lies in crafting an easy-to-use and
efficient system implementing these technologies. Following a purely
physically-based paradigm while still allowing for artistic workflows, the Iray
light transport simulation and rendering system allows for rendering complex
scenes by the push of a button and thus makes accurate light transport
simulation widely available. In this document we discuss the challenges and
implementation choices that follow from our primary design decisions,
demonstrating that such a rendering system can be made a practical, scalable,
and efficient real-world application that has been adopted by various companies
across many fields and is in use by many industry professionals today
Proper motions of Local Group dwarf spheroidal galaxies I: First ground-based results for Fornax
In this paper we present in detail the methodology and the first results of a
ground-based program to determine the absolute proper motion of the Fornax
dwarf spheroidal galaxy.
The proper motion was determined using bona-fide Fornax star members measured
with respect to a fiducial at-rest background spectroscopically confirmed
Quasar, \qso. Our homogeneous measurements, based on this one Quasar gives a
value of (\mua,\mud) \masy. There are only
two other (astrometric) determinations for the transverse motion of Fornax: one
based on a combination of plates and HST data, and another (of higher internal
precision) based on HST data. We show that our proper motion errors are similar
to those derived from HST measurements on individual QSOs. We provide evidence
that, as far as we can determine it, our motion is not affected by magnitude,
color, or other potential systematic effects. Last epoch measurements and
reductions are underway for other four Quasar fields of this galaxy, which,
when combined, should yield proper motions with a weighted mean error of
as y, allowing us to place important constraints on the
orbit of Fornax.Comment: Accepted for publication in Publications of the Astronomical Society
of the Pacific, PASP. To appear in July issue. 64 pages, 18 figure
3D Spectrophotometry of Planetary Nebulae in the Bulge of M31
We introduce crowded field integral field (3D) spectrophotometry as a useful
technique for the study of resolved stellar populations in nearby galaxies. As
a methodological test, we present a pilot study with selected extragalactic
planetary nebulae (XPN) in the bulge of M31, demonstrating how 3D spectroscopy
is able to improve the limited accuracy of background subtraction which one
would normally obtain with classical slit spectroscopy. It is shown that due to
the absence of slit effects, 3D is a most suitable technique for
spectrophometry. We present spectra and line intensities for 5 XPN in M31,
obtained with the MPFS instrument at the Russian 6m BTA, INTEGRAL at the WHT,
and with PMAS at the Calar Alto 3.5m Telescope. Using 3D spectra of bright
standard stars, we demonstrate that the PSF is sampled with high accuracy,
providing a centroiding precision at the milli-arcsec level. Crowded field 3D
spectrophotometry and the use of PSF fitting techniques is suggested as the
method of choice for a number of similar observational problems, including
luminous stars in nearby galaxies, supernovae, QSO host galaxies,
gravitationally lensed QSOs, and others.Comment: (1) Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, (2) University of Durham.
18 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
Doctor of Philosophy
dissertationRay tracing presents an efficient rendering algorithm for scientific visualization using common visualization tools and scales with increasingly large geometry counts while allowing for accurate physically-based visualization and analysis, which enables enhanced rendering and new visualization techniques. Interactivity is of great importance for data exploration and analysis in order to gain insight into large-scale data. Increasingly large data sizes are pushing the limits of brute-force rasterization algorithms present in the most widely-used visualization software. Interactive ray tracing presents an alternative rendering solution which scales well on multicore shared memory machines and multinode distributed systems while scaling with increasing geometry counts through logarithmic acceleration structure traversals. Ray tracing within existing tools also provides enhanced rendering options over current implementations, giving users additional insight from better depth cues while also enabling publication-quality rendering and new models of visualization such as replicating photographic visualization techniques
Astrometry of mutual approximations between natural satellites. Application to the Galilean moons
Typically we can deliver astrometric positions of natural satellites with
errors in the 50-150 mas range. Apparent distances from mutual phenomena, have
much smaller errors, less than 10 mas. However, this method can only be applied
during the equinox of the planets. We developed a method that can provide
accurate astrometric data for natural satellites -- the mutual approximations.
The method can be applied when any two satellites pass close by each other in
the apparent sky plane. The fundamental parameter is the central instant
of the passage when the distances reach a minimum.
We applied the method for the Galilean moons. All observations were made with
a 0.6 m telescope with a narrow-band filter centred at 889 nm with width of 15
nm which attenuated Jupiter's scattered light. We obtained central instants for
14 mutual approximations observed in 2014-2015. We determined with an
average precision of 3.42 mas (10.43 km). For comparison, we also applied the
method for 5 occultations in the 2009 mutual phenomena campaign and for 22
occultations in the 2014-2015 campaign. The comparisons of determined by
our method with the results from mutual phenomena show an agreement by less
than 1-sigma error in , typically less than 10 mas. This new method is
particularly suitable for observations by small telescopes.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures and 8 tables. Based on observations made at the
Laborat\'orio Nacional de Astrof\'isica (LNA), Itajub\'a-MG, Brazi
The Hierarchical Ray Engine
Due to the success of texture based approaches, ray casting has lately been confined to performing
preprocessing in realtime applications. Though GPU based ray casting implementations outperform the CPU now, they either do not scale well for higher primitive counts, or require the costly
construction of spatial hierarchies. We present an improved algorithm based on the Ray Engine
approach, which builds a hierarchy of rays instead of objects, completely on the graphics card.
Exploiting the coherence between rays when displaying refractive objects or computing caustics,
realtime frame rates are achieved without preprocessing. Thus, the method fills a gap in the
realtime rendering repertoire
The Hierarchical Ray Engine
Due to the success of texture based approaches, ray casting has lately been confined to performing
preprocessing in realtime applications. Though GPU based ray casting implementations outperform the CPU now, they either do not scale well for higher primitive counts, or require the costly
construction of spatial hierarchies. We present an improved algorithm based on the Ray Engine
approach, which builds a hierarchy of rays instead of objects, completely on the graphics card.
Exploiting the coherence between rays when displaying refractive objects or computing caustics,
realtime frame rates are achieved without preprocessing. Thus, the method fills a gap in the
realtime rendering repertoire
Efficient Many-Light Rendering of Scenes with Participating Media
We present several approaches based on virtual lights that aim at capturing the light transport without compromising quality, and while preserving the elegance and efficiency of many-light rendering. By reformulating the integration scheme, we obtain two numerically efficient techniques; one tailored specifically for interactive, high-quality lighting on surfaces, and one for handling scenes with participating media
Analytical Method for Reflection and Refraction
In computer graphics, ray tracing is very simple and powerful method to present physical phenomena especially light-related things such as reflection and refraction since it traces the ray from the eye to the light source; however, we cannot understand how the result image is generated. Then, this chapter describes the mechanism of reflection and refraction. It is very time-consuming to render the target object considering reflection and refraction. If the object distorted by reflection and refraction is previously obtained, it is very fast to generate the result image since all we have to do is to render the distorted object without considering reflection and refraction. In the proposed method, firstly, a virtual object, which is constructed with vertices translated from original ones by considering reflection and refraction, is generated. Then, the image with reflection and refraction is generated by rendering the virtual object. In the analysis, total reflection and attenuation of light power are also considered. At last, the proposed method is applied to two types of transparent objects: cubed glass and cylindrical glass, and the comparison between the simulation results and the real photos is performed to demonstrate that the generated images are the same as the real ones
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