Acquisition, Modeling, and Augmentation of Reflectance for Synthetic Optical Flow Reference Data

This thesis is concerned with the acquisition, modeling, and augmentation of material reflectance to simulate high-fidelity synthetic data for computer vision tasks. The topic is covered in three chapters: I commence with exploring the upper limits of reflectance acquisition. I analyze state-of-the-art BTF reflectance field renderings and show that they can be applied to optical flow performance analysis with closely matching performance to real-world images. Next, I present two methods for fitting efficient BRDF reflectance models to measured BTF data. Both methods combined retain all relevant reflectance information as well as the surface normal details on a pixel level. I further show that the resulting synthesized images are suited for optical flow performance analysis, with a virtually identical performance for all material types. Finally, I present a novel method for augmenting real-world datasets with physically plausible precipitation effects, including ground surface wetting, water droplets on the windshield, and water spray and mists. This is achieved by projecting the realworld image data onto a reconstructed virtual scene, manipulating the scene and the surface reflectance, and performing unbiased light transport simulation of the precipitation effects

Image based surface reflectance remapping for consistent and tool independent material appearence

Physically-based rendering in Computer Graphics requires the knowledge of material properties other than 3D shapes, textures and colors, in order to solve the rendering equation. A number of material models have been developed, since no model is currently able to reproduce the full range of available materials. Although only few material models have been widely adopted in current rendering systems, the lack of standardisation causes several issues in the 3D modelling workflow, leading to a heavy tool dependency of material appearance. In industry, final decisions about products are often based on a virtual prototype, a crucial step for the production pipeline, usually developed by a collaborations among several departments, which exchange data. Unfortunately, exchanged data often tends to differ from the original, when imported into a different application. As a result, delivering consistent visual results requires time, labour and computational cost. This thesis begins with an examination of the current state of the art in material appearance representation and capture, in order to identify a suitable strategy to tackle material appearance consistency. Automatic solutions to this problem are suggested in this work, accounting for the constraints of real-world scenarios, where the only available information is a reference rendering and the renderer used to obtain it, with no access to the implementation of the shaders. In particular, two image-based frameworks are proposed, working under these constraints. The first one, validated by means of perceptual studies, is aimed to the remapping of BRDF parameters and useful when the parameters used for the reference rendering are available. The second one provides consistent material appearance across different renderers, even when the parameters used for the reference are unknown. It allows the selection of an arbitrary reference rendering tool, and manipulates the output of other renderers in order to be consistent with the reference

Practical acquisition and rendering of diffraction effects in surface reflectance

We propose two novel contributions for measurement based rendering of diffraction effects in surface reflectance of planar homogeneous diffractive materials. As a general solution for commonly manufactured materials, we propose a practical data-driven rendering technique and a measurement approach to efficiently render complex diffraction effects in real-time. Our measurement step simply involves photographing a planar diffractive sam- ple illuminated with an LED flash. Here, we directly record the resultant diffraction pattern on the sample surface due to a narrow band point source illumination. Furthermore, we propose an efficient rendering method that exploits the measurement in conjunction with the Huygens-Fresnel principle to fit relevant diffraction parameters based on a first order approximation. Our proposed data-driven rendering method requires the precomputation of a single diffraction look up table for accurate spectral rendering of com- plex diffraction effects. Secondly, for sharp specular samples, we propose a novel method for practical measurement of the underlying diffraction grating using out-of-focus “bokeh” photography of the specular highlight. We demonstrate how the measured bokeh can be employed as a height field to drive a diffraction shader based on a first order approximation for efficient real-time rendering. Finally, we also drive analytic solutions for a few special cases of diffraction from our measurements and demonstrate realistic rendering results under complex light sources and environments

Slope-space integrals for specular next event estimation

International audienceMonte Carlo light transport simulations often lack robustness in scenes containing specular or near-specular materials. Widely used uni- and bidirectional sampling strategies tend to find light paths involving such materials with insufficient probability, producing unusable images that are contaminated by significant variance.This article addresses the problem of sampling a light path connecting two given scene points via a single specular reflection or refraction, extending the range of scenes that can be robustly handled by unbiased path sampling techniques. Our technique enables efficient rendering of challenging transport phenomena caused by such paths, such as underwater caustics or caustics involving glossy metallic objects.We derive analytic expressions that predict the total radiance due to a single reflective or refractive triangle with a microfacet BSDF and we show that this reduces to the well known Lambert boundary integral for irradiance. We subsequently show how this can be leveraged to efficiently sample connections on meshes comprised of vast numbers of triangles.Our derivation builds on the theory of off-center microfacets and involves integrals in the space of surface slopes.Our approach straightforwardly applies to the related problem of rendering glints with high-resolution normal maps describing specular microstructure. Our formulation alleviates problems raised by singularities in filtering integrals and enables a generalization of previous work to perfectly specular materials. We also extend previous work to the case of GGX distributions and introduce new techniques to improve accuracy and performance

Efektivní a expresivní mikrofasetové modely

Název: Efektivní a expresivní mikrofasetové modely Autor: Asen Atanasov Katedra: Katedra softwaru a výuky informatiky Vedoucí: doc. Dr. Alexander Wilkie, Katedra softwaru a výuky informatiky Abstrakt: V realistickém modelování vzhledu jsou drsné povrchy, které mají mikroskopické detaily, popsány pomocí tzv. mikrofazetových modelů. Mezi tyto modely patří analytické modely, které statisticky definují fyzikálně založený mikropovrch. Takové modely jsou široce používány v praxi, protože jsou nenáročné na výpočet a nabízejí značnou flexibilitu ve vzhledu, který s nimi lze docílit. Tyto modely mohou být rozšířené o viditelné povrchové prvky prostřednictvím normálové mapy. Stále však existují oblasti, ve kterých lze tento obecný typ modelu vylepšit: důležité funkce, jako je řízení anizotropie, někdy postrádají analytická řešení a účinné vykreslování normálových map vyžaduje přesné a obecné filtrovací algoritmy. Posunujeme předchozí práci v následujících oblastech: odvodíme analytické anizotropní modely, přeformulujeme problém filtrování a navrhneme efektivní filtrační algoritmus založený na nové datové struktuře filtračních dat. Konkrétně odvodíme obecný výsledek v mikrofazetové teorii: na základě libovolného mikropovrchu definovaného pomocí standardní mikrofazetové statistiky ukážeme, jak konstruovat statistiku...Title: Efficient and Expressive Microfacet Models Author: Asen Atanasov Department: Department of Software and Computer Science Education Supervisor: doc. Dr. Alexander Wilkie, Department of Software and Computer Science Education Abstract: In realistic appearance modeling, rough surfaces that have micro- scopic details are described using so-called microfacet models. These include analytical models that statistically define a physically-based microsurface. Such models are extensively used in practice because they are inexpensive to compute and offer considerable flexibility in terms of appearance control. Also, small but visible surface features can easily be added to them through the use of a normal map. However, there are still areas in which this general type of model can be improved: important features like anisotropy control sometimes lack analytic solutions, and the efficient rendering of normal maps requires accurate and general filtering algorithms. We advance the state of the art with regard to such models in these areas: we derive analytic anisotropic models, reformulate the filtering problem and propose an efficient filtering algorithm based on a novel filtering data structure. Specifically, we derive a general result in microfacet theory: given an arbitrary microsurface defined via standard...Katedra softwaru a výuky informatikyDepartment of Software and Computer Science EducationMatematicko-fyzikální fakultaFaculty of Mathematics and Physic

Computational Light Transport for Forward and Inverse Problems.

El transporte de luz computacional comprende todas las técnicas usadas para calcular el flujo de luz en una escena virtual. Su uso es ubicuo en distintas aplicaciones, desde entretenimiento y publicidad, hasta diseño de producto, ingeniería y arquitectura, incluyendo el generar datos validados para técnicas basadas en imagen por ordenador. Sin embargo, simular el transporte de luz de manera precisa es un proceso costoso. Como consecuencia, hay que establecer un balance entre la fidelidad de la simulación física y su coste computacional. Por ejemplo, es común asumir óptica geométrica o una velocidad de propagación de la luz infinita, o simplificar los modelos de reflectancia ignorando ciertos fenómenos. En esta tesis introducimos varias contribuciones a la simulación del transporte de luz, dirigidas tanto a mejorar la eficiencia del cálculo de la misma, como a expandir el rango de sus aplicaciones prácticas. Prestamos especial atención a remover la asunción de una velocidad de propagación infinita, generalizando el transporte de luz a su estado transitorio. Respecto a la mejora de eficiencia, presentamos un método para calcular el flujo de luz que incide directamente desde luminarias en un sistema de generación de imágenes por Monte Carlo, reduciendo significativamente la variancia de las imágenes resultantes usando el mismo tiempo de ejecución. Asimismo, introducimos una técnica basada en estimación de densidad en el estado transitorio, que permite reusar mejor las muestras temporales en un medio parcipativo. En el dominio de las aplicaciones, también introducimos dos nuevos usos del transporte de luz: Un modelo para simular un tipo especial de pigmentos gonicromáticos que exhiben apariencia perlescente, con el objetivo de proveer una forma de edición intuitiva para manufactura, y una técnica de imagen sin línea de visión directa usando información del tiempo de vuelo de la luz, construida sobre un modelo de propagación de la luz basado en ondas.<br /

Toward a Perceptually-relevant Theory of Appearance

Two approaches are commonly employed in Computer Graphics to design and adjust the appearance of objects in a scene. A full 3D environment may be created, through geometrical, material and lighting modeling, then rendered using a simulation of light transport; appearance is then controlled in ways similar to photography. A radically different approach consists in providing 2D digital drawing tools to an artist, whom with enough talent and time will be able to create images of objects having the desired appearance; this is obviously strongly similar to what traditional artists do, with the computer being a mere modern drawing tool.In this document, I present research projects that have investigated a third approach, whereby pictorial elements of appearance are explicitly manipulated by an artist. On the one side, such an alternative approach offers a direct control over appearance, with novel applications in vector drawing, scientific illustration, special effects and video games. On the other side, it provides an modern method for putting our current knowledge of the perception of appearance to the test, as well as to suggest new models for human vision along the way

ACM Transactions on Graphics

Additive manufacturing has recently seen drastic improvements in resolution, making it now possible to fabricate features at scales of hundreds or even dozens of nanometers, which previously required very expensive lithographic methods. As a result, additive manufacturing now seems poised for optical applications, including those relevant to computer graphics, such as material design, as well as display and imaging applications. In this work, we explore the use of additive manufacturing for generating structural colors, where the structures are designed using a fabrication-aware optimization process. This requires a combination of full-wave simulation, a feasible parameterization of the design space, and a tailored optimization procedure. Many of these components should be re-usable for the design of other optical structures at this scale. We show initial results of material samples fabricated based on our designs. While these suffer from the prototype character of state-of-the-art fabrication hardware, we believe they clearly demonstrate the potential of additive nanofabrication for structural colors and other graphics applications

Material aging for game environments

We propose a software and work-flow to create 3D model imperfections and aging effects while adding very little overhead to the rendering time of the models. Specifically, we implement a tool that adds all these effects into the physically based rendering (PBR) textures of the input model