Deep Precomputed Radiance Transfer for Deformable Objects

We propose, DeepPRT, a deep convolutional neural network to compactly encapsulate the radiance transfer of a freely deformable object for rasterization in real-time. With pre-computation of radiance transfer (PRT) we can store complex light interactions appropriate to the shape of a given object at each surface point for subsequent real-time rendering via fast linear algebra evaluation against the viewing direction and distant light environment. However, performing light transport projection into an efficient basis representation, such as Spherical Harmonics (SH), requires a numerical Monte Carlo integration computation, limiting usage to rigid only objects or highly constrained deformation sequences. The bottleneck, when considering freely deformable objects, is the heavy memory requirement to wield all pre-computations in rendering with global illumination results.We present a compact representation of PRT for deformable objects with fixed memory consumption, which solves diverse non-linear deformations and is shown to be effective beyond the input training set. Specifically, a U-Net is trained to predict the coefficients of the transfer function (SH coefficients in this case), for a given animation's shape query each frame in real-time.We contribute deep learning of PRT within a parametric surface space representation via geometry images using harmonic mapping with a texture space filling energy minimization variant. This surface representation facilitates the learning procedure, removing irrelevant, deformation invariant information; and supports standard convolution operations. Finally, comparisons with ground truth and a recent linear morphable-model method is provided

Ray tracing techniques for computer games and isosurface visualization

Ray tracing is a powerful image synthesis technique, that has been used for high-quality offline rendering since decades. In recent years, this technique has become more important for realtime applications, but still plays only a minor role in many areas. Some of the reasons are that ray tracing is compute intensive and has to rely on preprocessed data structures to achieve fast performance. This dissertation investigates methods to broaden the applicability of ray tracing and is divided into two parts. The first part explores the opportunities offered by ray tracing based game technology in the context of current and expected future performance levels. In this regard, novel methods are developed to efficiently support certain kinds of dynamic scenes, while avoiding the burden to fully recompute the required data structures. Furthermore, todays ray tracing performance levels are below what is needed for 3D games. Therefore, the multi-core CPU of the Playstation 3 is investigated, and an optimized ray tracing architecture presented to take steps towards the required performance. In part two, the focus shifts to isosurface raytracing. Isosurfaces are particularly important to understand the distribution of certain values in volumetric data. Since the structure of volumetric data sets is diverse, op- timized algorithms and data structures are developed for rectilinear as well as unstructured data sets which allow for realtime rendering of isosurfaces including advanced shading and visualization effects. This also includes tech- niques for out-of-core and time-varying data sets.Ray-tracing ist ein flexibles Bildgebungsverfahren, das schon seit Jahrzehnten für hoch qualitative, aber langsame Bilderzeugung genutzt wird. In den letzten Jahren wurde Ray-tracing auch für Echtzeitanwendungen immer interessanter, spielt aber in vielen Anwendungsbereichen noch immer eine untergeordnete Rolle. Einige der Gründe sind die Rechenintensität von Ray-tracing sowie die Abhängigkeit von vorberechneten Datenstrukturen um hohe Geschwindigkeiten zu erreichen. Diese Dissertation untersucht Methoden um die Anwendbarkeit von Ray-tracing in zwei verschiedenen Bereichen zu erhöhen. Im ersten Teil dieser Dissertation werden die Möglichkeiten, die Ray- tracing basierte Spieletechnologie bietet, im Kontext mit aktueller sowie zukünftig erwarteten Geschwindigkeiten untersucht. Darüber hinaus werden in diesem Zusammenhang Methoden entwickelt um bestimmte zeitveränderliche Szenen darstellen zu können ohne die dafür benötigen Datenstrukturen von Grund auf neu erstellen zu müssen. Da die Geschwindigkeit von Ray-tracing für Spiele bisher nicht ausreichend ist, wird die Mehrkern- CPU der Playstation 3 untersucht, und ein optimiertes Ray-tracing System beschrieben, das Ray-tracing näher an die benötigte Geschwindigkeit heranbringt. Der zweite Teil beschäftigt sich mit der Darstellung von Isoflächen mittels Ray-tracing. Isoflächen sind insbesonders wichtig um die Verteilung einzelner Werte in volumetrischen Datensätzen zu verstehen. Da diese Datensätze verschieden strukturiert sein können, werden für gitterförmige und unstrukturierte Datensätze optimierte Algorithmen und Datenstrukturen entwickelt, die die Echtzeitdarstellung von Isoflächen erlauben. Dies beinhaltet auch Erweiterungen für extrem große und zeitveränderliche Datensätze

Advanced methods for relightable scene representations in image space

The realistic reproduction of visual appearance of real-world objects requires accurate computer graphics models that describe the optical interaction of a scene with its surroundings. Data-driven approaches that model the scene globally as a reflectance field function in eight parameters deliver high quality and work for most material combinations, but are costly to acquire and store. Image-space relighting, which constrains the application to create photos with a virtual, fix camera in freely chosen illumination, requires only a 4D data structure to provide full fidelity. This thesis contributes to image-space relighting on four accounts: (1) We investigate the acquisition of 4D reflectance fields in the context of sampling and propose a practical setup for pre-filtering of reflectance data during recording, and apply it in an adaptive sampling scheme. (2) We introduce a feature-driven image synthesis algorithm for the interpolation of coarsely sampled reflectance data in software to achieve highly realistic images. (3) We propose an implicit reflectance data representation, which uses a Bayesian approach to relight complex scenes from the example of much simpler reference objects. (4) Finally, we construct novel, passive devices out of optical components that render reflectance field data in real-time, shaping the incident illumination into the desired imageDie realistische Wiedergabe der visuellen Erscheinung einer realen Szene setzt genaue Modelle aus der Computergraphik für die Interaktion der Szene mit ihrer Umgebung voraus. Globale Ansätze, die das Verhalten der Szene insgesamt als Reflektanzfeldfunktion in acht Parametern modellieren, liefern hohe Qualität für viele Materialtypen, sind aber teuer aufzuzeichnen und zu speichern. Verfahren zur Neubeleuchtung im Bildraum schränken die Anwendbarkeit auf fest gewählte Kameras ein, ermöglichen aber die freie Wahl der Beleuchtung, und erfordern dadurch lediglich eine 4D - Datenstruktur für volle Wiedergabetreue. Diese Arbeit enthält vier Beiträge zu diesem Thema: (1) wir untersuchen die Aufzeichnung von 4D Reflektanzfeldern im Kontext der Abtasttheorie und schlagen einen praktischen Aufbau vor, der Reflektanzdaten bereits während der Messung vorfiltert. Wir verwenden ihn in einem adaptiven Abtastschema. (2) Wir führen einen merkmalgesteuerten Bildsynthesealgorithmus für die Interpolation von grob abgetasteten Reflektanzdaten ein. (3) Wir schlagen eine implizite Beschreibung von Reflektanzdaten vor, die mit einem Bayesschen Ansatz komplexe Szenen anhand des Beispiels eines viel einfacheren Referenzobjektes neu beleuchtet. (4) Unter der Verwendung optischer Komponenten schaffen wir passive Aufbauten zur Darstellung von Reflektanzfeldern in Echtzeit, indem wir einfallende Beleuchtung direkt in das gewünschte Bild umwandeln

Aeronautical engineering: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 267)

This bibliography lists 661 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in June, 1991. Subject coverage includes design, construction and testing of aircraft and aircraft engines; aircraft components, equipment and systems; ground support systems; theoretical and applied aspects of aerodynamics and general fluid dynamics; electrical engineering; aircraft control; remote sensing; computer sciences; nuclear physics; and social sciences

Strategic Latency Unleashed: The Role of Technology in a Revisionist Global Order and the Implications for Special Operations Forces

The article of record may be found at https://cgsr.llnl.govThis work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in part under Contract W-7405-Eng-48 and in part under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. The views and opinions of the author expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States government or Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. ISBN-978-1-952565-07-6 LCCN-2021901137 LLNL-BOOK-818513 TID-59693This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in part under Contract W-7405-Eng-48 and in part under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. The views and opinions of the author expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States government or Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. ISBN-978-1-952565-07-6 LCCN-2021901137 LLNL-BOOK-818513 TID-5969

Subaltern Cosmopolitanisms: Place-making and Translocal Space in Sikh Diaspora Across Hong Kong, Vancouver and Toronto

How does one see what one cannot see? With the objective to move past the orientalizing visual gaze of exotic temples, food and turbans this study instead draws attention to the itinerant and elusive place-making which are often overlooked in geographical and urban inquiries of othered religions. Multicultural frames of cosmopolitanism have centered on a visual and consumerist approach to order diverse places and peoples while reproducing binaries of public-private and secular-religious. Vinay Gidwani differently imagines a subaltern cosmopolitanism of dynamic practices of migrants that are transgressive of state and capitalist urban configurations. Similarly, AbdouMaliq Simone's notion of a worlding from below brings out the seemingly disparate activities of migrants in the Global South that characterize a lesser seen circuit of urbanity overlooked from top-down snapshots of urban infrastructure and financial capital. This study explores sensuous geographies of Sikhs to contribute to a conceptualization of worlding and cosmopolitanism. The theoretical framework considers the intertwining of religion and race at the source of the making of the problematic figure of Man and its secular-religious dichotomy. In this, the study aims to destabilize the world religion and liberal humanist paradigms which shape the modern episteme and the productions of worlds. The work of decolonial and transnational feminists further a poetic intervention to consider subaltern knowledge practices, particularly of women of colour, that go unrecognized in their embodied resistance. Following M. Jacqui Alexander's call for re-wiring the senses and a sacred feminist praxis, and Trinh T. Minh-has tuning to the musical storytelling, this study brings attention to sensuous poetics and topologies of Sikhs that escape representable cartographies. In that, Sikh spaces, epistemologies, and itineraries are conceptualized to give depth to a Sikh geographical imagination. Utilizing multi-sited ethnographies, qualitative interviews, and community mapping, the research followed diaspora Sikhs in Hong Kong, Greater Vancouver, and Greater Toronto. I argue that an everyday horizontal spatiality of relation emerges in Sikh processes of worlding and translocal space, which give insights to a subaltern cosmopolitanism, different from state and secular discourses of multiculturalism

Subaltern Cosmopolitanisms: Place-making and Translocal Space in Sikh Diaspora Across Hong Kong, Vancouver and Toronto

How does one see what one cannot see? With the objective to move past the orientalizing visual gaze – of exotic temples, food and turbans – this study instead draws attention to the itinerant and elusive place-making which are often overlooked in geographical and urban inquiries of othered religions. Multicultural frames of cosmopolitanism have centered on a visual and consumerist approach to order diverse places and peoples while reproducing binaries of public-private and secular-religious. Vinay Gidwani differently imagines a subaltern cosmopolitanism of dynamic practices of migrants that are transgressive of state and capitalist urban configurations. Similarly, AbdouMaliq Simone's notion of a worlding from below brings out the seemingly disparate activities of migrants in the Global South that characterize a lesser seen circuit of urbanity overlooked from top-down snapshots of urban infrastructure and financial capital. This study explores sensuous geographies of Sikhs to contribute to a conceptualization of worlding and cosmopolitanism. The theoretical framework considers the intertwining of religion and race at the source of the making of the problematic figure of Man and its secular-religious dichotomy. In this, the study aims to destabilize the world religion and liberal humanist paradigms which shape the modern episteme and the productions of worlds. The work of decolonial and transnational feminists further a poetic intervention to consider subaltern knowledge practices, particularly of women of colour, that go unrecognized in their embodied resistance. Following M. Jacqui Alexander's call for re-wiring the senses and a sacred feminist praxis, and Trinh T. Minh-ha’s tuning to the musical storytelling, this study brings attention to sensuous poetics and topologies of Sikhs that escape representable cartographies. In that, Sikh spaces, epistemologies, and itineraries are conceptualized to give depth to a Sikh geographical imagination. Utilizing multi-sited ethnographies, qualitative interviews, and community mapping, the research followed diaspora Sikhs in Hong Kong, Greater Vancouver, and Greater Toronto. I argue that an everyday horizontal spatiality of relation emerges in Sikh processes of worlding and translocal space, which give insights to a subaltern cosmopolitanism, different from state and secular discourses of multiculturalism

Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World

The book contains essays on current issues in arts and humanities in which peoples and cultures compete as well as collaborate in globalizing the world while maintaining their uniqueness as viewed from cross- and inter-disciplinary perspectives. The book covers areas such as literature, cultural studies, archaeology, philosophy, history, language studies, information and literacy studies, and area studies. Asia and the Pacific are the particular regions that the conference focuses on as they have become new centers of knowledge production in arts and humanities and, in the future, seem to be able to grow significantly as a major contributor of culture, science and arts to the globalized world. The book will help shed light on what arts and humanities scholars in Asia and the Pacific have done in terms of research and knowledge development, as well as the new frontiers of research that have been explored and opening up, which can connect the two regions with the rest of the globe

The Northern Cape frontier zone, 1700 - c.1815

This thesis is a history of the northern Cape frontier zone between the years 1700 and c.1815. It describes and analyses the interactions which occurred between the principal peoples of this spatio-temporal area as the Cape colony expanded into the arid heartland of South Africa. The study's geographical focus of attention moves, with the frontier zone itself, from the banks of the Berg River in the south-western Cape of 1700 to beyond the northern banks of the Orange River in the early nineteenth century. The western and eastern limits of this area are formed by the Atlantic Ocean on the one hand and the eastern frontier district of Graaff-Reinet on the other. Within the frontier zone of this vast and hitherto neglected region, it is argued, there emerged, during the course of the eighteenth century, a set of practices and attitudes which, precisely because they were prototypical, exerted a profound influence on the subsequent colonial history of South Africa. Although developments within the northern Cape frontier zone are not seen as being more important than those which were taking place elsewhere in the colony (such as the south-western Cape or the eastern Cape frontier zone) they are seen as being equally important. Our picture of eighteenth century colonial society in South Africa has, until now, been a lopsided one in that the archival evidence for the largest part of the colony - the northern Cape frontier zone - has been underutilised. This thesis, based on extensive archival research, attempts to rectify this imbalance by discussing key themes in northern frontier history as they emerged and developed over a period of more than one hundred and ten years. A primary concern of this study is to provide an account of the dynamics of colonial expansion which is based on a consideration of both the principal productive activity of the frontier zone - pastoral production - and the most important political and military institution of the frontier zone - the commando. In the course of this account the focus of attention falls on those colonists who took up the life of semi-nomadic pastoralists (trekboers) in the Cape interior. Related to this, and of equal importance, is an examination of the impact which colonial expansion had on the Khoisan societies of the Cape interior. The processes by which these societies were either conquered, annihilated or incorporated into colonial society are discussed. So too are the ways in which the Khoisan resisted colonial domination. Thus, a large part of this thesis deals with the various forms or practices which shaped intergroup relationships on the frontier, ranging from genocidal warfare, at one extreme, to symbiotic co-operation and collaboration at the other Particular attention is paid to the conditions under which many Khoisan became unfree labourers within the colonial economy. The many instances of primary resistance, guerrilla warfare, rebellion, flight and protest which are discussed in these pages serve as testimony to the fact that the subjugation of the Khoisan was neither quick nor easy. Indeed, the pervasive violence arising from the protracted struggle for dominance in the northern Cape frontier zone is, in itself, an important thematic concern of this study. Although the major protagonists of the frontier zone were the colonists and Khoisan there were other important frontier societies which are discussed here. New groups emerged as a result of the processes of interaction and acculturation taking place within the frontier zone. People of mixed racial or cultural origin (known in the parlance of the day as "Bastaards" or "Bastaard- Hottentots") gradually acquired a new cultural and political identity. Some of them, in an attempt to escape the increasing discrimination which they experienced in the colony, removed themselves beyond the limits of colonial settlement altogether. These Oorlam groups, as they became known, played an important part in the history of the frontier zone and their contribution is given due consideration. Also important were a variety of other colonial fugitives - runaway slaves, Company deserters, bandits, murderers and assorted criminals - whose impact on both Khoisan societies and colonial fanners was frequently immense. The significance of such drosters (deserters) is acknowledged here. The thesis concludes with a consideration of those forces which tended towards promoting the social, economic and political closure of the frontier zone. In this respect the exertions of missionaries become particularly important since they first appear in the northern Cape in the last years of the eighteenth century and herald the arrival of a new era in frontier history. Missionary activity was, amongst other things, a symptom of the desire for greater state control over the turbulent regions of the colony's northern limits. The state-approved conversion of the leader of the most powerful Oorlam bandit group ( 1815) marked an important symbolic moment in the closure of the frontier zone. Even more important, however, was the promulgation of the Hottentot Proclamation of 1809 for this signalled that the new British government of the Cape intended to recognise and entrench the colonists' subjugation of their Khoisan and "Bastaard- Hottentot" labourers. For the first time there was a government at the Cape powerful enough to impose its will on the frontier regions. Unfortunately, by backing the colonists, this government endorsed and ensured the outcome of the long process of struggle, decided in the northern frontier zone, for the land, labour and livestock resources of the Khoisan of the Cape interior