Spatial Transfiguration: Anamorphic Mixed-Reality in the Virtual Reality Panorama

Spatial illusion and immersion was achieved in Renaissance painting through the manipulation of linear perspective’s pictorial conventions and painterly technique. The perceptual success of a painted trompe l’œil, its ability to fool the observer into believing they were viewing a real three-dimensional scene, was constrained by the limited immersive capacity of the two-dimensional painted canvas. During the baroque period however, artists began to experiment with the amalgamation of the ‘real’ space occupied by the observer together with the pictorial space enveloped by the painting’s picture plane: real and pictorial space combined into one pictorial composition resulting in a hybridised ‘mixed-reality’. Today, the way architects, and designers generally, use the QuickTime Virtual Reality panorama to represent spaces of increasing visual density have much to learn from the way in which Renaissance and baroque artists manipulated the three-dimensional characteristics of the picture plane in order to offer more convincing spatial illusions. This paper outlines the conceptual development of the QuickTime VR panorama by Ken Turkowski and the Apple Advanced Technology Group during the late 1980s. Further, it charts the technical methods of the Virtual Reality panorama’s creation in order to reflect upon the VR panorama’s geometric construction and range and effectiveness of spatial illusion. Finally, through a brief analysis of Hans Holbein’s Ambassadors [1533] and Andrea Pozzo’s nave painting in Sant ‘Ignazio [1691-94] this paper proposes an alternative conceptual model for the pictorial construction of the VR panorama that is innovatively based upon an anamorphic ‘mixed-reality’

Stroke Based Painterly Rendering

International audienceMany traditional art forms are produced by an artist sequentially placing a set of marks, such as brush strokes, on a canvas. Stroke based Rendering (SBR) is inspired by this process, and underpins many early and contemporary Artistic Stylization algorithms. This Chapter outlines the origins of SBR, and describes key algorithms for placement of brush strokes to create painterly renderings from source images. The chapter explores both local greedy, and global optimization based approaches to stroke placement. The issue of creative control in SBR is also briefly discussed

Photography as a tool of Alienation: Aura

Regular photographical imaging record volumetric planes with smooth surfaces. The reason is the camera’s deficiency in perceiving and documenting the visual richness of “persuasive” details in life. HDR imaging methods used in creating this artwork series titled “Aura” helped making invisible organism-like textures emerge and point to the notions of decay and symbiosis. One of the main objectives in this series of artworks is to facilitate the emergence of the experiential visual complexity between the animate and inanimate, that is otherwise not possible to record. The latent aura of textural presences around us is not always noticeable easily since we tend to consume things too fast. With the rich textures achieved after high-dynamic-range-imaging (HDRI) procedures, a new symbiotic painterly visual relationship between biological (humans) and non-biological (space) was intended. In addition, the paper will focus on photography rather as a tool of personal world making, instead of photography as witnessing. During the process of unfolding this practice; notions of superimposition, palimpsest, painting vs. photography, truth, photography as an apparatus to provoke de-familiarization will be covered. The final aim is to confirm photography as a visual language that enriches and transforms human perception

Expressive Animated Character Sequences Using Knowledge-Based Painterly Rendering

We propose a technique to enhance emotionalexpressiveness in games and animations. Artists have usedcolors and painting techniques to convey emotions in theirpaintings for many years. Moreover, researchers have foundthat colors and line properties affect users\u27 emotions. Wepropose using painterly rendering for character sequencesin games and animations with a knowledge-based approach. This technique is especially useful for parametric facial sequences. We introduce two parametric authoring tools foranimation and painterly rendering and a method to integrate them into a knowledge-based painterly rendering system. Furthermore, we present the results of a preliminarystudy on using this technique for facial expressions in stillimages. The results of the study show the effect of different color palettes on the intensity perceived for an emotionby users. The proposed technique can provide the animatorwith a depiction tool to enhance the emotional content of acharacter sequence in games and animations

Exploring a Parameterized Portrait Painting Space

We overview our interdisciplinary work building parameterized knowledge domains and their authoring tools that allow for expression systems which move through a space of painterly portraiture. With new computational systems it is possible to conceptually dance, compose and paint in higher level conceptual spaces. We are interested in building art systems that support exploring these spaces and in particular report on our software-based artistic toolkit and resulting experiments using parameter spaces in face based new media portraiture. This system allows us to parameterize the open cognitive and vision-based methodology that human artists have intuitively evolved over centuries into a domain toolkit to explore aesthetic realizations and interdisciplinary questions about the act of portrait painting as well as the general creative process. These experiments and questions can be explored by traditional and new media artists, art historians, cognitive scientists and other scholars

Shading with Painterly Filtered Layers: A Process to Obtain Painterly Portraits

In this thesis, I study how color data from different styles of paintings can be extracted from photography with the end result maintaining the artistic integrity of the art style and having the look and feel of skin. My inspiration for this work came from the impasto style portraitures of painters such as Rembrandt and Greg Cartmell. I analyzed and studied the important visual characteristics of both Rembrandt’s and Cartmell’s styles of painting.These include how the artist develops shadow and shading, creates the illusion of subsurface scattering, and applies color to the canvas, which will be used as references to help develop the final renders in computer graphics. I also examined how color information can be extracted from portrait photography in order to gather accurate dark, medium, and light skin shades. Based on this analysis, I have developed a process for creating portrait paintings from 3D facial models. My process consists of four stages: (1) Modeling a 3D portrait of the subject, (2) data collection by photographing the subjects, (3) Barycentric shader development using photographs, and (4) Compositing with filtered layers. My contributions has been in stages (3) and (4) as follows: Development of an impasto-style Barycentric shader by extracting color information from gathered photographic images. This shader can result in realistic looking skin rendering. Development of a compositing technique that involves filtering layers of images that correspond to different effects such as diffuse, specular and ambient. To demonstrate proof-of-concept, I have created a few animations of the impasto style portrait painting for a single subject. For these animations, I have also sculpted high polygon count 3D model of the torso and head of my subject. Using my shading and compositing techniques, I have created rigid body animations that demonstrate the power of my techniques to obtain impasto style portraiture during animation under different lighting conditions

A Process to Create Dynamic Landscape Paintings Using Barycentric Shading with Control Paintings

In this work, we present a process that uses a Barycentric shading method to create dynamic landscape paintings that change based on the time of day. Our process allows for the creation of dynamic paintings for any time of the day using simply a limited number of control paintings. To create a proof of concept, we have used landscape paintings of Edgar Payne, one of the leading landscape painters of the American West. His specific style of painting that blends Impressionism with the style of other painters of the AmericanWest is particularly appropriate for the demonstration of the power of our Barycentric shading method

Perceptual 3D rendering based on principles of analytical cubism

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Cubism, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, was a breakthrough in art, influencing artists to abandon existing traditions. In this paper, we present a novel approach for cubist rendering of 3D synthetic environments. Rather than merely imitating cubist paintings, we apply the main principles of analytical cubism to 3D graphics rendering. In this respect, we develop a new cubist camera providing an extended view, and a perceptually based spatial imprecision technique that keeps the important regions of the scene within a certain area of the output. Additionally, several methods to provide a painterly style are applied. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our extending view method by comparing the visible face counts in the images rendered by the cubist camera model and the traditional perspective camera. Besides, we give an overall discussion of final results and apply user tests in which users compare our results very well with analytical cubist paintings but not synthetic cubist paintings. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved