Real-time rendering and simulation of trees and snow

Tree models created by an industry used package are exported and the structure extracted in order to procedurally regenerate the geometric mesh, addressing the limitations of the application's standard output. The structure, once extracted, is used to fully generate a high quality skeleton for the tree, individually representing each section in every branch to give the greatest achievable level of freedom of deformation and animation. Around the generated skeleton, a new geometric mesh is wrapped using a single, continuous surface resulting in the removal of intersection based render artefacts. Surface smoothing and enhanced detail is added to the model dynamically using the GPU enhanced tessellation engine. A real-time snow accumulation system is developed to generate snow cover on a dynamic, animated scene. Occlusion techniques are used to project snow accumulating faces and map exposed areas to applied accumulation maps in the form of dynamic textures. Accumulation maps are xed to applied surfaces, allowing moving objects to maintain accumulated snow cover. Mesh generation is performed dynamically during the rendering pass using surface o�setting and tessellation to enhance required detail

Enhancing Mesh Deformation Realism: Dynamic Mesostructure Detailing and Procedural Microstructure Synthesis

Propomos uma solução para gerar dados de mapas de relevo dinâmicos para simular deformações em superfícies macias, com foco na pele humana. A solução incorpora a simulação de rugas ao nível mesoestrutural e utiliza texturas procedurais para adicionar detalhes de microestrutura estáticos. Oferece flexibilidade além da pele humana, permitindo a geração de padrões que imitam deformações em outros materiais macios, como couro, durante a animação. As soluções existentes para simular rugas e pistas de deformação frequentemente dependem de hardware especializado, que é dispendioso e de difícil acesso. Além disso, depender exclusivamente de dados capturados limita a direção artística e dificulta a adaptação a mudanças. Em contraste, a solução proposta permite a síntese dinâmica de texturas que se adaptam às deformações subjacentes da malha de forma fisicamente plausível. Vários métodos foram explorados para sintetizar rugas diretamente na geometria, mas sofrem de limitações como auto-interseções e maiores requisitos de armazenamento. A intervenção manual de artistas na criação de mapas de rugas e mapas de tensão permite controle, mas pode ser limitada em deformações complexas ou onde maior realismo seja necessário. O nosso trabalho destaca o potencial dos métodos procedimentais para aprimorar a geração de padrões de deformação dinâmica, incluindo rugas, com maior controle criativo e sem depender de dados capturados. A incorporação de padrões procedimentais estáticos melhora o realismo, e a abordagem pode ser estendida além da pele para outros materiais macios.We propose a solution for generating dynamic heightmap data to simulate deformations for soft surfaces, with a focus on human skin. The solution incorporates mesostructure-level wrinkles and utilizes procedural textures to add static microstructure details. It offers flexibility beyond human skin, enabling the generation of patterns mimicking deformations in other soft materials, such as leater, during animation. Existing solutions for simulating wrinkles and deformation cues often rely on specialized hardware, which is costly and not easily accessible. Moreover, relying solely on captured data limits artistic direction and hinders adaptability to changes. In contrast, our proposed solution provides dynamic texture synthesis that adapts to underlying mesh deformations. Various methods have been explored to synthesize wrinkles directly to the geometry, but they suffer from limitations such as self-intersections and increased storage requirements. Manual intervention by artists using wrinkle maps and tension maps provides control but may be limited to the physics-based simulations. Our research presents the potential of procedural methods to enhance the generation of dynamic deformation patterns, including wrinkles, with greater creative control and without reliance on captured data. Incorporating static procedural patterns improves realism, and the approach can be extended to other soft-materials beyond skin

Smart Cities: Inverse Design of 3D Urban Procedural Models with Traffic and Weather Simulation

Urbanization, the demographic transition from rural to urban, has changed how we envision and share the world. From just one-fourth of the population living in cities one hundred years ago, now more than half of the population does, and this ratio is expected to grow in the near future. Creating more sustainable, accessible, safe, and enjoyable cities has become an imperative

Iterative Solvers for Physics-based Simulations and Displays

La génération d’images et de simulations réalistes requiert des modèles complexes pour capturer tous les détails d’un phénomène physique. Les équations mathématiques qui composent ces modèles sont compliquées et ne peuvent pas être résolues analytiquement. Des procédures numériques doivent donc être employées pour obtenir des solutions approximatives à ces modèles. Ces procédures sont souvent des algorithmes itératifs, qui calculent une suite convergente vers la solution désirée à partir d’un essai initial. Ces méthodes sont une façon pratique et efficace de calculer des solutions à des systèmes complexes, et sont au coeur de la plupart des méthodes de simulation modernes. Dans cette thèse par article, nous présentons trois projets où les algorithmes itératifs jouent un rôle majeur dans une méthode de simulation ou de rendu. Premièrement, nous présentons une méthode pour améliorer la qualité visuelle de simulations fluides. En créant une surface de haute résolution autour d’une simulation existante, stabilisée par une méthode itérative, nous ajoutons des détails additionels à la simulation. Deuxièmement, nous décrivons une méthode de simulation fluide basée sur la réduction de modèle. En construisant une nouvelle base de champ de vecteurs pour représenter la vélocité d’un fluide, nous obtenons une méthode spécifiquement adaptée pour améliorer les composantes itératives de la simulation. Finalement, nous présentons un algorithme pour générer des images de haute qualité sur des écrans multicouches dans un contexte de réalité virtuelle. Présenter des images sur plusieurs couches demande des calculs additionels à coût élevé, mais nous formulons le problème de décomposition des images afin de le résoudre efficacement avec une méthode itérative simple.Realistic computer-generated images and simulations require complex models to properly capture the many subtle behaviors of each physical phenomenon. The mathematical equations underlying these models are complicated, and cannot be solved analytically. Numerical procedures must thus be used to obtain approximate solutions. These procedures are often iterative algorithms, where an initial guess is progressively improved to converge to a desired solution. Iterative methods are a convenient and efficient way to compute solutions to complex systems, and are at the core of most modern simulation methods. In this thesis by publication, we present three papers where iterative algorithms play a major role in a simulation or rendering method. First, we propose a method to improve the visual quality of fluid simulations. By creating a high-resolution surface representation around an input fluid simulation, stabilized with iterative methods, we introduce additional details atop of the simulation. Second, we describe a method to compute fluid simulations using model reduction. We design a novel vector field basis to represent fluid velocity, creating a method specifically tailored to improve all iterative components of the simulation. Finally, we present an algorithm to compute high-quality images for multifocal displays in a virtual reality context. Displaying images on multiple display layers incurs significant additional costs, but we formulate the image decomposition problem so as to allow an efficient solution using a simple iterative algorithm

An Approach To Painterly Rendering

An often overlooked key component of 3D animations is the rendering engine. However, some rendering techniques are hard to implement or are too restrictive in terms of the imagery they can produce. The goal of this thesis is to make easy-to-use software that artists can use to create stylistic animations and that also minimizes technical constraints placed on the art. For this project, I present a tool that allows artists to create temporally coherent, painterly animations using Autodesk Maya and Corel Painter. I then use that tool to create proof of concept animations. This new rendering technique offers artists a different avenue through which they can showcase their art and also offers certain freedoms that current computer graphics techniques lack. Accompanying this paper are some animations demonstrating possible outcomes, and they are located on the Texas A&M online library catalog system. The painting system used for this project expands upon an algorithm designed by Barbara Meier of the Disney Research Group that involves spreading particles across a surface and using those particles to define brush strokes. The first step is to infer the general syntax of Painter’s commands by using Painter and its ability to record a painting made by an artist. The next step is to use the commands and syntax that Painter uses in the automated creation of scripts to generate paintings used for the animation. As this thesis is designed to showcase a rendering technique, I found animations made by fellow candidates for the Master of Science and Master of Fine Arts degrees in Visualization bearing qualities accented by a painterly treatment and rendered them using this technique

Particle based modeling and simulation of natural phenomena

Ankara : The Department of Computer Engineering and the Institute of Engineering and Science of Bilkent University, 2010.Thesis (Ph. D.) -- Bilkent University, 2010.Includes bibliographical references leaves 92-108.This thesis is about modeling and simulation of fluids and cloth-like deformable objects by the physically-based simulation paradigm. Simulated objects are modeled with particles and their interaction with each other and the environment is defined by particle-to-particle forces. We propose several improvements over the existing particle simulation techniques. Neighbor search algorithms are crucial for the performance efficiency and robustness of a particle system. We present a sorting-based neighbor search method which operates on a uniform grid, and can be parallelizable. We improve upon the existing fluid surface generation methods so that our method captures surface details better since we consider the relative position of fluid particles to the fluid surface. We investigate several alternatives of particle interaction schema (i.e. Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics, the Discrete Element Method, and Lennard-Jones potential) for the purpose of defining fluid-fluid, fluid-cloth, fluid-boundary interaction forces. We also propose a practical way to simulate knitwear and its interaction with fluids. We employ capillary pressure–based forces to simulate the absorption of fluid particles by knitwear. We also propose a method to simulate the flow of miscible fluids. Our particle simulation system is implement to exploit parallel computing capabilities of the commodity computers. Specifically, we implemented the proposed methods on multicore CPUs and programmable graphics boards. The experiments show that our method is computationally efficient and produces realistic results.Bayraktar, SerkanPh.D

Designing sound : procedural audio research based on the book by Andy Farnell

In procedural media, data normally acquired by measuring something, commonly described as sampling, is replaced by a set of computational rules (procedure) that defines the typical structure and/or behaviour of that thing. Here, a general approach to sound as a definable process, rather than a recording, is developed. By analysis of their physical and perceptual qualities, natural objects or processes that produce sound are modelled by digital Sounding Objects for use in arts and entertainments. This Thesis discusses different aspects of Procedural Audio introducing several new approaches and solutions to this emerging field of Sound Design.Em Media Procedimental, os dados os dados normalmente adquiridos através da medição de algo habitualmente designado como amostragem, são substituídos por um conjunto de regras computacionais (procedimento) que definem a estrutura típica, ou comportamento, desse elemento. Neste caso é desenvolvida uma abordagem ao som definível como um procedimento em vez de uma gravação. Através da análise das suas características físicas e perceptuais , objetos naturais ou processos que produzem som, são modelados como objetos sonoros digitais para utilização nas Artes e Entretenimento. Nesta Tese são discutidos diferentes aspectos de Áudio Procedimental, sendo introduzidas várias novas abordagens e soluções para o campo emergente do Design Sonoro

Image-based procedural texture matching and transformation

In this thesis, we present an approach to finding a procedural representation of a texture to replicate a given texture image which we call image-based procedural texture matching. Procedural representations are frequently used for many aspects of computer generated imagery, however, the ability to use procedural textures is limited by the difficulty inherent in finding a suitable procedural representation to match a desired texture. More importantly, the process of determining an appropriate set of parameters necessary to approximate the sample texture is a difficult task for a graphic artist.The textural characteristics of many real world objects change over time, so we are therefore interested in how textured objects in a graphical animation could also be made to change automatically. We would like this automatic texture transformation to be based on different texture samples in a time-dependant manner. This notion, which is a natural extension of procedural texture matching, involves the creation of a smoothly varying sequence of texture images, while allowing the graphic artist to control various characteristics of the texture sequence.Given a library of procedural textures, our approach uses a perceptually motivated texture similarity measure to identify which procedural textures in the library may produce a suitable match. Our work assumes that at least one procedural texture in the library is capable of approximating the desired texture. Because exhaustive search of all of the parameter combinations for each procedural texture is not computationally feasible, we perform a two-stage search on the candidate procedural textures. First, a global search is performed over pre-computed samples from the given procedural texture to locate promising parameter settings. Secondly, these parameter settings are optimised using a local search method to refine the match to the desired texture.The characteristics of a procedural texture generally do not vary uniformly for uniform parameter changes. That is, in some areas of the parameter domain of a procedural texture (the set of all valid parameter settings for the given procedural texture) small changes may produce large variations in the resulting texture, while in other areas the same changes may produce no variation at all. In this thesis, we present an adaptive random sampling algorithm which captures the texture range (the set of all images a procedural texture can produce) of a procedural texture by maintaining a sampling density which is consistent with the amount of change occurring in that region of the parameter domain.Texture transformations may not always be contained to a single procedural texture, and we therefore describe an approach to finding transitional points from one procedural texture to another. We present an algorithm for finding a path through the texture space formed from combining the texture range of the relevant procedural textures and their transitional points.Several examples of image-based texture matching, and texture transformations are shown. Finally, potential limitations of this work as well as future directions are discussed

Optical flow estimation via steered-L1 norm

Global variational methods for estimating optical flow are among the best performing methods due to the subpixel accuracy and the ‘fill-in’ effect they provide. The fill-in effect allows optical flow displacements to be estimated even in low and untextured areas of the image. The estimation of such displacements are induced by the smoothness term. The L1 norm provides a robust regularisation term for the optical flow energy function with a very good performance for edge-preserving. However this norm suffers from several issues, among these is the isotropic nature of this norm which reduces the fill-in effect and eventually the accuracy of estimation in areas near motion boundaries. In this paper we propose an enhancement to the L1 norm that improves the fill-in effect for this smoothness term. In order to do this we analyse the structure tensor matrix and use its eigenvectors to steer the smoothness term into components that are ‘orthogonal to’ and ‘aligned with’ image structures. This is done in primal-dual formulation. Results show a reduced end-point error and improved accuracy compared to the conventional L1 norm