A framework for digital sunken relief generation based on 3D geometric models

Sunken relief is a special art form of sculpture whereby the depicted shapes are sunk into a given surface. This is traditionally created by laboriously carving materials such as stone. Sunken reliefs often utilize the engraved lines or strokes to strengthen the impressions of a 3D presence and to highlight the features which otherwise are unrevealed. In other types of reliefs, smooth surfaces and their shadows convey such information in a coherent manner. Existing methods for relief generation are focused on forming a smooth surface with a shallow depth which provides the presence of 3D figures. Such methods unfortunately do not help the art form of sunken reliefs as they omit the presence of feature lines. We propose a framework to produce sunken reliefs from a known 3D geometry, which transforms the 3D objects into three layers of input to incorporate the contour lines seamlessly with the smooth surfaces. The three input layers take the advantages of the geometric information and the visual cues to assist the relief generation. This framework alters existing techniques in line drawings and relief generation, and then combines them organically for this particular purpose

Automated pebble mosaic stylization of images

Digital mosaics have usually used regular tiles, simulating the historical "tessellated" mosaics. In this paper, we present a method for synthesizing pebble mosaics, a historical mosaic style in which the tiles are rounded pebbles. We address both the tiling problem, where pebbles are distributed over the image plane so as to approximate the input image content, and the problem of geometry, creating a smooth rounded shape for each pebble. We adapt SLIC, simple linear iterative clustering, to obtain elongated tiles conforming to image content, and smooth the resulting irregular shapes into shapes resembling pebble cross-sections. Then, we create an interior and exterior contour for each pebble and solve a Laplace equation over the region between them to obtain height-field geometry. The resulting pebble set approximates the input image while presenting full geometry that can be rendered and textured for a highly detailed representation of a pebble mosaic

Text2Scene: Text-driven Indoor Scene Stylization with Part-aware Details

We propose Text2Scene, a method to automatically create realistic textures for virtual scenes composed of multiple objects. Guided by a reference image and text descriptions, our pipeline adds detailed texture on labeled 3D geometries in the room such that the generated colors respect the hierarchical structure or semantic parts that are often composed of similar materials. Instead of applying flat stylization on the entire scene at a single step, we obtain weak semantic cues from geometric segmentation, which are further clarified by assigning initial colors to segmented parts. Then we add texture details for individual objects such that their projections on image space exhibit feature embedding aligned with the embedding of the input. The decomposition makes the entire pipeline tractable to a moderate amount of computation resources and memory. As our framework utilizes the existing resources of image and text embedding, it does not require dedicated datasets with high-quality textures designed by skillful artists. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first practical and scalable approach that can create detailed and realistic textures of the desired style that maintain structural context for scenes with multiple objects.Comment: Accepted to CVPR 202

Next3D: Generative Neural Texture Rasterization for 3D-Aware Head Avatars

3D-aware generative adversarial networks (GANs) synthesize high-fidelity and multi-view-consistent facial images using only collections of single-view 2D imagery. Towards fine-grained control over facial attributes, recent efforts incorporate 3D Morphable Face Model (3DMM) to describe deformation in generative radiance fields either explicitly or implicitly. Explicit methods provide fine-grained expression control but cannot handle topological changes caused by hair and accessories, while implicit ones can model varied topologies but have limited generalization caused by the unconstrained deformation fields. We propose a novel 3D GAN framework for unsupervised learning of generative, high-quality and 3D-consistent facial avatars from unstructured 2D images. To achieve both deformation accuracy and topological flexibility, we propose a 3D representation called Generative Texture-Rasterized Tri-planes. The proposed representation learns Generative Neural Textures on top of parametric mesh templates and then projects them into three orthogonal-viewed feature planes through rasterization, forming a tri-plane feature representation for volume rendering. In this way, we combine both fine-grained expression control of mesh-guided explicit deformation and the flexibility of implicit volumetric representation. We further propose specific modules for modeling mouth interior which is not taken into account by 3DMM. Our method demonstrates state-of-the-art 3D-aware synthesis quality and animation ability through extensive experiments. Furthermore, serving as 3D prior, our animatable 3D representation boosts multiple applications including one-shot facial avatars and 3D-aware stylization.Comment: Project page: https://mrtornado24.github.io/Next3D

ColorSketch: A Drawing Assistant for Generating Color Sketches from Photos

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Figuring the Modern: The Objectified Present in Stéphane Mallarmé and T. S. Eliot

Contextualizing modern/modernist poetry as an artful objectification, this monograph aims to elucidate the significance of resourceful texts by Stéphane Mallarmé and T. S. Eliot in a symbolist productivity. The engaging texts represent the sublime in verbal extremity: Mallarmé's posthumous manuscript entitled Igitur in an endless circularity for the completion by an incompletion, his article "Ballets" as a printed synthesis of poetry and the performing art, ballet, and Eliot's poetic works in their entirety for a manifold development of the imagery of water that embodies a cosmic inclusion. Particularly, as a swan song for the poet Mallarmé facing a mental crisis, Igitur directs the reader to reconsider the testamentary letters written by the conscripted Japanese students in the Second World War. Representing literature as a holistic combination of the logical and the artistic, the two poets' creation leads the reader to fully recognize the importance of living this moment

Come, let's wrestle : language and the struggle for authority in online Persian social networking sites

This dissertation builds on prior scholarship in linguistic anthropological studies of performance to examine transnational spaces in online social networks where members of the Iranian diaspora use emerging technologies to interact with one another in ways that highlight the tensions between them. The focal point of this project will be the Facebook page Iranian Vines, which features short (5-15 second long) comedic videos that address issues unique to the experiences of Iranians living in diaspora. While many second-generation Iranians use online spaces to linguistically construct a hybridized identity, first-generation Iranians use these same spaces to evaluate the authenticity of these constructed identities by policing the language used by performers and deciding on the linguistic legitimacy of their performances. I argue that the performative nature of the Iranian Vines page creates a space for first-generation Iranians to respond to global sociolinguistic hierarchies that value English over Persian by acting as gatekeepers of Iranian authenticity through linguistic prescriptivism. Second-generation Iranians, on the other hand, use performance to decontextualize (and thus make visible) the moments of difference that define their particular vantage point and to acquire sociolinguistic capital through humor. These performers use “identity-switching,” a practice in which they juxtapose performances of non-Iranian and Iranian identity for comedic effect to challenge sociolinguistic hierarchies within the Iranian community that value monolingualism or parallel bilingualism. A core focus of this dissertation will be the ways that emerging technologies shape power relations between members of this community by making visible the processes by which members of ethnolinguistic communities negotiate the relationship between identity and language.Middle Eastern Studie

Importance-Driven Composition of Multiple Rendering Styles

International audienceWe introduce a non-uniform composition that integrates multiple rendering styles in a picture driven by an importance map. This map, either issued from saliency estimation or designed by a user, is introduced both in the creation of the multiple styles and in the final composition. Our approach accommodates a variety of stylization techniques, such as color desaturation, line drawing, blurring, edge-preserving smoothing and enhancement. We illustrate the versatility of the proposed approach and the variety of rendering styles on different applications such as images, videos, 3D scenes and even mixed reality. We also demonstrate that such an approach may help in directing user attention