19 research outputs found

    Matrix-based Parameterizations of Skeletal Animated Appearance

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    Alors que le rendu réaliste gagne de l’ampleur dans l’industrie, les techniques à la fois photoréalistes et basées sur la physique, complexes en terme de temps de calcul, requièrent souvent une étape de précalcul hors-ligne. Les applications en temps réel, comme les jeux vidéo et la réalité virtuelle, se basent sur des techniques d’approximation et de précalcul pour atteindre des résultats réalistes. L’objectif de ce mémoire est l’investigation de différentes paramétrisations animées pour concevoir une technique d’approximation de rendu réaliste en temps réel. Notre investigation se concentre sur le rendu d’effets visuels appliqués à des personnages animés par modèle d’armature squelettique. Des paramétrisations combinant des données de mouvement et d’apparence nous permettent l’extraction de paramètres pour le processus en temps réel. Établir une dépendance linéaire entre le mouvement et l’apparence est ainsi au coeur de notre méthode. Nous nous concentrons sur l’occultation ambiante, où la simulation de l’occultation est causée par des objets à proximité bloquant la lumière environnante, jugée uniforme. L’occultation ambiante est une technique indépendante du point de vue, et elle est désormais essentielle pour le réalisme en temps réel. Nous examinons plusieurs paramétrisations qui traitent l’espace du maillage en fonction de l’information d’animation par squelette et/ou du maillage géométrique. Nous sommes capables d’approximer la réalité pour l’occultation ambiante avec une faible erreur. Notre technique pourrait également être étendue à d’autres effets visuels tels le rendu de la peau humaine (diffusion sous-surface), les changements de couleur dépendant du point de vue, les déformations musculaires, la fourrure ou encore les vêtements.While realistic rendering gains more popularity in industry, photorealistic and physically- based techniques often necessitate offline processing due to their computational complexity. Real-time applications, such as video games and virtual reality, rely mostly on approximation and precomputation techniques to achieve realistic results. The objective of this thesis is to investigate different animated parameterizations in order to devise a technique that can approximate realistic rendering results in real time. Our investigation focuses on rendering visual effects applied to skinned skeletonbased characters. Combined parameterizations of motion and appearance data are used to extract parameters that can be used in a real-time approximation. Trying to establish a linear dependency between motion and appearance is the basis of our method. We focus on ambient occlusion, a simulation of shadowing caused by objects that block ambient light. Ambient occlusion is a view-independent technique important for realism. We consider different parameterization techniques that treat the mesh space depending on skeletal animation information and/or mesh geometry. We are able to approximate ground-truth ambient occlusion with low error. Our technique can also be extended to different visual effects, such as rendering human skin (subsurface scattering), changes in color due to the view orientation, deformation of muscles, fur, or clothe

    Doctor of Philosophy

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    dissertationReal-time global illumination is the next frontier in real-time rendering. In an attempt to generate realistic images, games have followed the film industry into physically based shading and will soon begin integrating global illumination techniques. Traditional methods require too much memory and too much time to compute for real-time use. With Modular and Delta Radiance Transfer we precompute a scene-independent, low-frequency basis that allows us to calculate complex indirect lighting calculations in a much lower dimensional subspace with a reduced memory footprint and real-time execution. The results are then applied as a light map on many different scenes. To improve the low frequency results, we also introduce a novel screen space ambient occlusion technique that allows us to generate a smoother result with fewer samples. These three techniques, low and high frequency used together, provide a viable indirect lighting solution that can be run in milliseconds on today's hardware, providing a useful new technique for indirect lighting in real-time graphics

    Example-based wrinkle synthesis for clothing animation

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    This paper describes a method for animating the appearance of clothing, such as pants or a shirt, that fits closely to a figure's body. Compared to flowing cloth, such as loose dresses or capes, these types of garments involve nearly continuous collision contact and small wrinkles, that can be troublesome for traditional cloth simulation methods. Based on the observation that the wrinkles in closefitting clothing behave in a predominantly kinematic fashion, we have developed an example-based wrinkle synthesis technique. Our method drives wrinkle generation from the pose of the figure's kinematic skeleton. This approach allows high quality clothing wrinkles to be combined with a coarse cloth simulation that computes the global and dynamic aspects of the clothing motion. While the combined results do not exactly match a high-resolution reference simulation, they do capture many of the characteristic fine-scale features and wrinkles. Further, the combined system runs at interactive rates, making it suitable for applications where high-resolution offline simulations would not be a viable option. The wrinkle synthesis method uses a precomputed database built by simulating the high-resolution clothing as the articulated figure is moved over a range of poses. In principle, the space of poses is exponential in the total number of degrees of freedom; however clothing wrinkles are primarily affected by the nearest joints, allowing each joint to be processed independently. During synthesis, mesh interpolation is used to consider the influence of multiple joints, and combined with a coarse simulation to produce the final results at interactive rates

    Example-based wrinkle synthesis for clothing animation

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    This paper describes a method for animating the appearance of clothing, such as pants or a shirt, that fits closely to a figure's body. Compared to flowing cloth, such as loose dresses or capes, these types of garments involve nearly continuous collision contact and small wrinkles, that can be troublesome for traditional cloth simulation methods. Based on the observation that the wrinkles in closefitting clothing behave in a predominantly kinematic fashion, we have developed an example-based wrinkle synthesis technique. Our method drives wrinkle generation from the pose of the figure's kinematic skeleton. This approach allows high quality clothing wrinkles to be combined with a coarse cloth simulation that computes the global and dynamic aspects of the clothing motion. While the combined results do not exactly match a high-resolution reference simulation, they do capture many of the characteristic fine-scale features and wrinkles. Further, the combined system runs at interactive rates, making it suitable for applications where high-resolution offline simulations would not be a viable option. The wrinkle synthesis method uses a precomputed database built by simulating the high-resolution clothing as the articulated figure is moved over a range of poses. In principle, the space of poses is exponential in the total number of degrees of freedom; however clothing wrinkles are primarily affected by the nearest joints, allowing each joint to be processed independently. During synthesis, mesh interpolation is used to consider the influence of multiple joints, and combined with a coarse simulation to produce the final results at interactive rates

    Fast photorealistic techniques to simulate global illumination in videogames and virtual environments

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    Per al càlcul de la il·luminació global per a la síntesi d'imatges d'escenaris virtuals s'usen mètodes físicament acurats com a radiositat o el ray-tracing. Aquests mètodes són molt potents i capaços de generar imatges de gran realisme, però són molt costosos. A aquesta tesi presenta algunes tècniques per simular i/o accelerar el càlcul de la il·luminació global. La tècnica de les obscurances es basa en la suposició que com més amagat és un punt a l'escena, més fosc s'ha de veure. Es calcula analitzant l'entorn geomètric del punt i ens dóna un valor per a la seva il·luminació indirecta, que no és físicament acurat, però sí aparentment realista.Aquesta tècnica es millora per a entorns en temps real com els videojocs. S'aplica també a entorns de ray-tracing per a la generació d'imatges realistes. En aquest context, el càlcul de seqüències de frames per a l'animació de llums i càmeres s'accelera enormement reusant informació entre frames.Les obscurances serveixen per a simular la il·luminació indirecta d'una escena. La llum directa es calcula apart i de manera independent. El desacoblament de la llum directa i la indirecta és una gran avantatge, i en treurem profit. Podem afegir fàcilment l'efecte de coloració entre objectes sense afegir temps de càlcul. Una altra avantatge és que per calcular les obscurances només hem d'analitzar un entorn limitat al voltant del punt.Per escenes virtuals difuses, la radiositat es pot precalcular i l'escena es pot navegar amb apariència realista, però si un objecte de l'escena es mou en un entorn dinàmic en temps real, com un videojoc, el recàlcul de la il·luminació global de l'escena és prohibitiu. Com les obscurances es calculen en un entorn limitat, es poden recalcular en temps real per a l'entorn de l'objecte que es mou a cada frame i encara aconseguir temps real.A més, podem fer servir les obscurances per a calcular imatges de gran qualitat, o per seqüències d'imatges per una animació, com en el ray-tracing. Això ens permet tractar materials no difusos i investigar l'ús de tècniques normalment difuses com les obscurances en entorns generals. Quan la càmera està estàtica, l'ús d'animació de llum només afecta la il·luminació directa, i si usem obscurances per a la llum indirecta, gràcies al seu desacoblament, el càlcul de sèries de frames per a una animació és molt ràpid. El següent pas és afegir animació de càmera, reusant els valors de les obscurances entre frames. Aquesta última tècnica de reús d'informació de la il·luminació del punt d'impacte entre frames la podem usar per a tècniques acurades d'il·luminació global com el path-tracing, i nosaltres estudiem com reusar aquesta informació de manera no esbiaixada. A més, estudiem diferents tècniques de mostreig per a la semi-esfera, i les obscurances es calculen amb una nova tècnica, aplicant depth peeling amb GPU.To compute global illumination solutions for rendering virtual scenes, physically accurate methods based on radiosity or ray-tracing are usually employed. These methods, though powerful and capable of generating images with high realism, are very costly. In this thesis, some techniques to simulate and/or accelerate the computation of global illumination are studied. The obscurances technique is based on the supposition that the more occluded is a point in the scene, the darker it will appear. It is computed by analyzing the geometric environment of the point and gives a value for the indirect illumination for the point that is, though not physically accurate, visually realistic. This technique is enhanced and improved in real-time environments as videogames. It is also applied to ray-tracing frameworks to generate realistic images. In this last context, sequences of frames for animation of lights and cameras are dramatically accelerated by reusing information between frames.The obscurances are computed to simulate the indirect illumination of a scene. The direct lighting is computed apart and in an independent way. The decoupling of direct and indirect lighting is a big advantage, and we will take profit from this. We can easily add color bleeding effects without adding computation time. Another advantage is that to compute the obscurances we only need to analyze a limited environment around the point. For diffuse virtual scenes, the radiosity can be precomputed and we can navigate the scene with a realistic appearance. But when a small object moves in a dynamic real-time virtual environment, as a videogame, the recomputation of the global illumination of the scene is prohibitive. Thanks to the limited reach of the obscurance computation, we can recompute the obscurances only for the limited environment of the moving object for every frame and still have real-time frame rates. Obscurances can also be used to compute high quality images, or sequences of images for an animation, in a ray-tracing-like. This allows us to deal with non-diffuse materials and to research the use of a commonly diffuse technique as obscurances in general environments. For static cameras, using light animation only affects to direct lighting, and if we use obscurances for the indirect lighting, thanks to the decoupling of direct and indirect illumination, the computation of a series of frames for the animation is very fast. The next step is to add camera animation, reusing the obscurances results between frames. Using this last technique of reusing the illumination of the hit points between frames for a true global illumination technique as path tracing, we study how we can reuse this information in an unbiased way. Besides, a study of different sampling techniques for the hemisphere is made, obscurances are computed with the depth-peeling technique and using GPU

    Perceptually-motivated, interactive rendering and editing of global illumination

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    This thesis proposes several new perceptually-motivated techniques to synthesize, edit and enhance depiction of three-dimensional virtual scenes. Finding algorithms that fit the perceptually economic middle ground between artistic depiction and full physical simulation is the challenge taken in this work. First, we will present three interactive global illumination rendering approaches that are inspired by perception to efficiently depict important light transport. Those methods have in common to compute global illumination in large and fully dynamic scenes allowing for light, geometry, and material changes at interactive or real-time rates. Further, this thesis proposes a tool to edit reflections, that allows to bend physical laws to match artistic goals by exploiting perception. Finally, this work contributes a post-processing operator that depicts high contrast scenes in the same way as artists do, by simulating it "seen'; through a dynamic virtual human eye in real-time.Diese Arbeit stellt eine Anzahl von Algorithmen zur Synthese, Bearbeitung und verbesserten Darstellung von virtuellen drei-dimensionalen Szenen vor. Die Herausforderung liegt dabei in der Suche nach Ausgewogenheit zwischen korrekter physikalischer Berechnung und der künstlerischen, durch die Gesetze der menschlichen Wahrnehmung motivierten Praxis. Zunächst werden drei Verfahren zur Bild-Synthese mit globaler Beleuchtung vorgestellt, deren Gemeinsamkeit in der effizienten Handhabung großer und dynamischer virtueller Szenen liegt, in denen sich Geometrie, Materialen und Licht frei verändern lassen. Darauffolgend wird ein Werkzeug zum Editieren von Reflektionen in virtuellen Szenen das die menschliche Wahrnehmung ausnutzt um künstlerische Vorgaben umzusetzen, vorgestellt. Die Arbeit schließt mit einem Filter am Ende der Verarbeitungskette, der den wahrgenommen Kontrast in einem Bild erhöht, indem er die Entstehung von Glanzeffekten im menschlichen Auge nachbildet

    Shadow Techniques for Interactive and Real-Time Applications

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    Shadows provide important visual cues for the relative position of objects in threedimensional space. For interactive and real-time applications, e.g. in virtual reality systems or games, the shadow computation needs to be extremely fast, usually synchronized with the displays refresh rate. Using dynamic scenes with many, movable light sources, shadow computation is therefore often the main bottleneck in a rendering system. In this thesis we will discuss this problem in detail: Originating from Williams shadow maps and Crows shadow volumes, we will present hardware accelerated shadow techniques that are able to generate shadows of high-quality while still being fast enough to be used in real-time or interactive applications. We will show algorithms for the computation of hard shadows as well as for the more complex problem of approximating soft shadows caused by area light sources.Schatten sind wichtige visuelle Merkmale die über die relative Position eines Objektes in einem drei-dimensionalen Raum Aufschluss geben. Die Schattenberechnung muss für interaktive und Echtzeit-Anwendungen, wie z.B. Virtual Reality Systeme oder in Spielen, extrem schnell erfolgen, idealerweise synchronisiert mit der Bildwiederholfrequenz. Im Fall von dynamischen Szenen mit vielen, beweglichen Lichtquellen, ist die Berechnung von Schatten oftmals der zeitkritischste Teil innerhalb eines Rendering-Systems. In dieser Dissertation behandeln wir genau dieses Problem im Detail. Ausgehend vonWilliams\u27; Shadow Maps und Crow\u27;s Shadow Volumes werden Hardwarebeschleunigte Schattentechniken vorgestellt, die Schatten von hoher Qualität erzeugen können, aber trotzdem so effizient sind, dass sie für Echtzeit- und interaktive Anwendungen eingesetzt werden können. Wir werden sowohl Algorithmen zur Berechnung harter Schatten beschreiben, als auch das schwierigere Problem der Approximation von sanften Schatten, wie sie z.B. bei Flächenlichtquellen entstehen, behandeln

    Human Shape Estimation using Statistical Body Models

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    Human body estimation methods transform real-world observations into predictions about human body state. These estimation methods benefit a variety of health, entertainment, clothing, and ergonomics applications. State may include pose, overall body shape, and appearance. Body state estimation is underconstrained by observations; ambiguity presents itself both in the form of missing data within observations, and also in the form of unknown correspondences between observations. We address this challenge with the use of a statistical body model: a data-driven virtual human. This helps resolve ambiguity in two ways. First, it fills in missing data, meaning that incomplete observations still result in complete shape estimates. Second, the model provides a statistically-motivated penalty for unlikely states, which enables more plausible body shape estimates. Body state inference requires more than a body model; we therefore build obser- vation models whose output is compared with real observations. In this thesis, body state is estimated from three types of observations: 3D motion capture markers, depth and color images, and high-resolution 3D scans. In each case, a forward process is proposed which simulates observations. By comparing observations to the results of the forward process, state can be adjusted to minimize the difference between simulated and observed data. We use gradient-based methods because they are critical to the precise estimation of state with a large number of parameters. The contributions of this work include three parts. First, we propose a method for the estimation of body shape, nonrigid deformation, and pose from 3D markers. Second, we present a concise approach to differentiating through the rendering process, with application to body shape estimation. And finally, we present a statistical body model trained from human body scans, with state-of-the-art fidelity, good runtime performance, and compatibility with existing animation packages

    Merging the Real and the Virtual: An Exploration of Interaction Methods to Blend Realities

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    We investigate, build, and design interaction methods to merge the real with the virtual. An initial investigation looks at spatial augmented reality (SAR) and its effects on pointing with a real mobile phone. A study reveals a set of trade-offs between the raycast, viewport, and direct pointing techniques. To further investigate the manipulation of virtual content within a SAR environment, we design an interaction technique that utilizes the distance that a user holds mobile phone away from their body. Our technique enables pushing virtual content from a mobile phone to an external SAR environment, interact with that content, rotate-scale-translate it, and pull the content back into the mobile phone. This is all done in a way that ensures seamless transitions between the real environment of the mobile phone and the virtual SAR environment. To investigate the issues that occur when the physical environment is hidden by a fully immersive virtual reality (VR) HMD, we design and investigate a system that merges a realtime 3D reconstruction of the real world with a virtual environment. This allows users to freely move, manipulate, observe, and communicate with people and objects situated in their physical reality without losing their sense of immersion or presence inside a virtual world. A study with VR users demonstrates the affordances provided by the system and how it can be used to enhance current VR experiences. We then move to AR, to investigate the limitations of optical see-through HMDs and the problem of communicating the internal state of the virtual world with unaugmented users. To address these issues and enable new ways to visualize, manipulate, and share virtual content, we propose a system that combines a wearable SAR projector. Demonstrations showcase ways to utilize the projected and head-mounted displays together, such as expanding field of view, distributing content across depth surfaces, and enabling bystander collaboration. We then turn to videogames to investigate how spectatorship of these virtual environments can be enhanced through expanded video rendering techniques. We extract and combine additional data to form a cumulative 3D representation of the live game environment for spectators, which enables each spectator to individually control a personal view into the stream while in VR. A study shows that users prefer spectating in VR when compared with a comparable desktop rendering
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