The material image: Artists’ approaches to reproducing texture in art

Since the introduction of computers, there has been a desire to improve the appearance of computer-generated objects in virtual spaces and to display the objects within complex scenes exactly as they appear in reality. This is a straightforward process for artists who through the medium of paint or silver halide are able to directly observe from nature and interpret and capture the world in a highly convincing way. However for computer generated images, the process is more complex, computers have no capability to compare whether the rendering looks right or wrong—only humans can make the final subjective decision. The evolving question is: what are the elements of paintings and drawings produced by artists that capture the qualities, texture, grain, reflection, translucency and absorption of a material, that through the application of coloured brush marks, demonstrate a convincing likeness of the material qualities of e.g.wood, metal, glass and fabric? This paper considers the relationship between texture, objects and artists’ approaches to reproducing texture in art. However texture is problematic as our visual system is able to discriminate the difference between natural and patterned texture, and incorrectly rendered surfaces can hinder understanding. Furthermore to render surfaces with no discernible pattern structure that comprises unlimited variations can result, as demonstrated by the computer generated rendering, in exceptionally large file sizes. The paper explores the relationship between imaging, artists’ approaches to reproducing representations of the attributes of material qualities, the fluid dynamics of a painterly mark, and 2.5D relief in printing. The objective is not to reproduce existing paintings or prints, but to build the surface using a deposition of pigments, paints and inks that explores the relationship between image and surface

GENERATION OF FORESTS ON TERRAIN WITH DYNAMIC LIGHTING AND SHADOWING

The purpose of this research project is to exhibit an efficient method of creating dynamic lighting and shadowing for the generation of forests on terrain. In this research project, I use textures which contain images of trees from a bird’s eye view in order to create a high scale forest. Furthermore, by manipulating the transparency and color of the textures according to the algorithmic calculations of light and shadow on terrain, I provide the functionality of dynamic lighting and shadowing. Finally, by analyzing the OpenGL pipeline, I design my code in order to allow efficient rendering of the forest

Design principles of hardware-based phong shading and bump-mapping

The VISA+ hardware architecture is the first of a new generation of graphics accelerators designed primarily to render bump-, texture-, environment- and environment-bump-mapped polygons. This paper presents examples of the main graphical capabilities and discusses methods and simplifications used to create high quality images. One of the key concepts in the VISA+ design, the use of reflectance cubes, is predestined for environment mapping. In combination with bump- and texture-mapping it shows the strength of our new architecture. Furthermore it justifies some of the decisions made during simulation and development of the complex VISA+ architecture