Painterly rendering techniques: A state-of-the-art review of current approaches

In this publication we will look at the different methods presented over the past few decades which attempt to recreate digital paintings. While previous surveys concentrate on the broader subject of non-photorealistic rendering, the focus of this paper is firmly placed on painterly rendering techniques. We compare different methods used to produce different output painting styles such as abstract, colour pencil, watercolour, oriental, oil and pastel. Whereas some methods demand a high level of interaction using a skilled artist, others require simple parameters provided by a user with little or no artistic experience. Many methods attempt to provide more automation with the use of varying forms of reference data. This reference data can range from still photographs, video, 3D polygonal meshes or even 3D point clouds. The techniques presented here endeavour to provide tools and styles that are not traditionally available to an artist. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

An Investigation into Usability and First Time User Experiences within Mobile Games

With scientific research regarding usability and guidance plus First-Time User Experiences (FTUEs) in video games currently sparse, it is imperative to assist existing and future developers in the field build usable games and effective guidance systems. For the work presented in this publication, research was conducted to investigate the effects of guidance on mobile game us-ability using two independent groups; featuring two commercial games with and without the presence of a FTUE. The results show, with significance, that guidance via a FTUE increases one element of usability, ‘information quality’. However, overall usability is not increased by the presence of a FTUE. The above highlights the importance of a coherently designed interface, interaction and control systems plus the advantages of increased information quality through the delivery of guidance via a FTUE

Procedural feature generation for volumetric terrains

© 2017 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). In this work we present separate procedural methods to generate features that are found in natural terrains which are difficult to reproduce with heightmap-based methods. We approximate overhangs, arches and caves using procedural functions and a reduced set of parameters. This produces visually plausible terrain feature topologies as well as a high degree of artistic control. Our approach is more intuitive and art-directable than other existing volumetric methods that are more complex to integrate into existing voxel engines, due to the framework changes necessary, or rely on automatic procedural generation, thus reducing the ability to provide creative input

Computer graphics simulation of natural mummification by desiccation

© 2020 The Authors. Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Organic bodies are subject to internal processes after death, causing significant structural, and optical changes. Mummification by desiccation leads to volume shrinkage, skin wrinkling, and discoloration. We propose a method to simulate the process of mummification by desiccation and its effects on the corpse's morphology and appearance. The mummifying body is represented by a layered model consisting of a tetrahedral mesh, representing the volume, plus a high resolution triangle surface mesh representing the skin. The finite element method is used to solve the moisture diffusion and the resulting volume deformations. Skin wrinkling is achieved using position based dynamics. In order to model a visually believable reproduction of the skin coloration changes due to mummification, a skin shading approach is used that considers moisture content, hemoglobin content, and oxygen saturation. The main focus of the work in this article is to recreate the appearance changes of mummification by desiccation, which, to the best of our knowledge, has not been attempted before in computer graphics to this level of realism. The suggested approach is able to model changes in the internal structure and the surface appearance of the body which resemble the postmortem processes of natural mummification by desiccation

OpenGL|D - A Multi-user Single State Architecture for Multiplayer Game Development

Multi-user applications can be complex to develop due to their large or intricate nature. Many of the issues encountered are related to performance and security. These issues are exacerbated when the scale of the application increases. This paper introduces a novel distributed architecture called OpenGL|D (OpenGL Distributed). This technology enables an application to pass through the graphical calls between a Virtual Machine (VM) and the graphics processing unit (GPU) on the native host across a network. This ability allows applications to run inside a virtual machine (VM), whilst still benefiting from hardware accelerated performance from the GPU for the computationally intensive graphical processing. This allows for the development of 3D software requiring no dependencies on specific hardware or technology other than ANSI C and a network stack, demonstrating our approach to platform agnostic development and digital preservation

Human Aspects in Digital Rights Management: the Perspective of Content Developers.

Legal norms and social behaviours are some of the human aspects surrounding the effectiveness and future of DRM security. Further exploration of these aspects would help unravel the complexities of the interaction between rights protection security and law. Most importantly, understanding the perspectives behind the circumvention of content security may have a significant impact on DRM effectiveness and acceptance at the same time. While there has been valuable research on consumer acceptability, (The INDICARE project, Bohle 2008, Akester 2009) there is hardly any work on the human perspective of content creators. Taking video games as a case study, this paper employs qualitative socio-legal analysis and an interdisciplinary approach to explore this particular aspect of content protection

Human aspects of digital rights management: the perspective of content developers. [Conference Paper]

Legal norms and social behaviours are some of the human aspects surrounding the effectiveness and future of DRM security. Further exploration of these aspects would help unravel the complexities of the interaction between rights protection security and law. Most importantly, understanding the perspectives behind the circumvention of content security may have a significant impact on DRM effectiveness and acceptance at the same time. While there has been valuable research on consumer acceptability (The INDICARE project, Bohle 2008, Akester 2009), there is hardly any work on the human perspective of content creators. Taking video games as a case study, this paper employs qualitative socio-legal analysis and an interdisciplinary approach to explore this particular aspect of content protection

OpenGL|D - An Alternative Approach to Multi-user Architecture

© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018. Synchronising state between multiple connected clients can be a challenging task. However, the need to carry this out is becoming much greater as a larger number of software packages are becoming collaborative across a network. Online multiplayer games in particular are already extremely popular but the synchronisation methods and architecture have largely remained the same. OpenGL|Distributed, presented here, aims to provide not only an alternative to this architecture allowing for a greatly simplified development pipeline, but also the opportunity for a number of additional features and design patterns. The architecture provided by OpenGL|D is such that no state information needs to be transferred between clients. Instead, the OpenGL API has been utilised as a platform agnostic protocol. This means that graphical calls can be streamed to each client rather than relying on manual synchronisation of application domain specific data. Initial test results are discussed, including performance evaluation using data from a number of small prototypes developed within a constrained 48-h timeframe. These results are compared and evaluated against a more traditional approach to network multiplayer by id Software’s QuakeWorld client. It should be noted that this article is an extended version of the work we published in the proceedings of the Cyberworlds 2017 conference [1]