Perception-driven black-and-white drawings and caricatures

technical reportIn this paper, we present a method for automatically creating black-and-white drawings of human faces from photographs. We then demonstrate new techniques for deforming these drawings to create caricatures intended to highlight and exaggerate facial features. A number of psychophysical studies were performed that show that both the black-and-white drawings and the caricatures generated using our techniques have similar effectiveness as photographs in recognition tasks, and perform better than photos in learning tasks. Our methods are useful for a number of potential applications, ranging from forensics to telecommunications and from cartoons to education and psychology research

Artistic composition for image creation

technical reportAltering the viewing parameters of a 3D object results in computer graphics images of varying quality. One aspect of image quality is the composition of the image. While the esthetic properties of an image are subjective, some heuristics used by artists to create images can be approximated quantitatively. We present an algorithm based on heuristic compositional rules for finding the format, viewpoint, and layout for an image of a 3D object. Our system computes viewing parameters automatically or allows a user to explicitly manipulate them

Automatic image creation via artistic composition principles

Journal ArticleMethods for choosing image parameters in both art and computer graphics are currently subjective. The choice of parameters results in images of varying quality. One aspect of image quality is the composition of the image. While the principles underlying composition are somewhat subjective, a portion of the compositional rules can be approximated quantitatively. We use this quantification to design an objective function and use numerical optimization to automatically arrive at images with acceptable composition. For a given subject or scene, the optimization procedure chooses format, view point, layout, and lighting parameters. The resulting image is determined by characteristics the objective function rewards. We show several images generated using such optimization, and argue that these images have good composition

A painterly approach to human skin

technical reportRendering convincing human figures is one of the unsolved goals of computer graphics. Previous work has concentrated on modeling physics of human skin. We have taken a different approach. We are exploring techniques used by artists, specifically artists who paint air-brushed portraits. Our goal is to give the impression of skin without extraneous physical details such as pores, veins, and blemishes. In this paper, we provide rendering algorithms which are easy to incorporate into existing shaders, making rendering skin for medical illustration, computer animations, and other applications fast and simple. We accomplish this by using algorithms for real time drawing and shading of silhouette curves. We also build upon current non-photorealistic lighting methods using complementary colors to convey 3D shape information. Users select areas from a scanned art work and manipulate these areas to create shading models. The flexibility of this method of generating a shading model allows users to portray individuals with different skin tones or to capture the look and feel of a work of art

06221 Abstracts Collection -- Computational Aestethics in Graphics, Visualization and Imaging

From 28.05.06 to 02.06.06, the Dagstuhl Seminar 06221 ``Computational Aesthetics in Graphics, Visualization and Imaging\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

The Pathology of War Plans: The Lessons of 1914

The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.The major European powers, Austria-Hungary , Britain , France , Germany , Italy , and Russia , developed war plans in the years prior to the August 1914 outbreak. These plans, all of them, proved to be seriously flawed. Six experts will present their analyses of the planning processes and the pathologies involved.Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent webpage, streaming audio, phot

White Paper: Measuring Research Outputs Through Bibliometrics

The suggested citation for this white paper is: University of Waterloo Working Group on Bibliometrics, Winter 2016. White Paper: Measuring Research Outputs through Bibliometrics, Waterloo, Ontario: University of Waterloo.This White Paper provides a high-level review of issues relevant to understanding bibliometrics, and practical recommendations for how to appropriately use these measures. This is not a policy paper; instead, it defines and summarizes evidence that addresses appropriate use of bibliometric analysis at the University of Waterloo. Issues identified and recommendations will generally apply to other academic institutions. Understanding the types of bibliometric measures and their limitations makes it possible to identify both appropriate uses and crucial limitations of bibliometric analysis. Recommendations offered at the end of this paper provide a range of opportunities for how researchers and administrators at Waterloo and beyond can integrate bibliometric analysis into their practice

Artistic minimal rendering with lines and blocks

Many non-photorealistic rendering techniques exist to produce artistic effects from given images. Inspired by various artists, interesting effects can be produced by using a minimal rendering, where the minimum refers to the number of tones as well as the number and complexity of the primitives used for rendering. Our method is based on various computer vision techniques, and uses a combination of refined lines and blocks (potentially simplified), as well as a small number of tones, to produce abstracted artistic rendering with sufficient elements from the original image. We also considered a variety of methods to produce different artistic styles, such as colour and 2-tone drawings, and use semantic information to improve renderings for faces. By changing some intuitive parameters a wide range of visually pleasing results can be produced. Our method is fully automatic. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method with extensive experiments and a user study

Feshbach resonances and mesoscopic phase separation near a quantum critical point in multiband FeAs-based superconductors

High Tc superconductivity in FeAs-based multilayers (pnictides), evading temperature decoherence effects in a quantum condensate, is assigned to a Feshbach resonance (called also shape resonance) in the exchange-like interband pairing. The resonance is switched on by tuning the chemical potential at an electronic topological transition (ETT) near a band edge, where the Fermi surface topology of one of the subbands changes from 1D to 2D topology. We show that the tuning is realized by changing i) the misfit strain between the superconducting planes and the spacers ii) the charge density and iii) the disorder. The system is at the verge of a catastrophe i.e. near a structural and magnetic phase transition associated with the stripes (analogous to the 1/8 stripe phase in cuprates) order to disorder phase transition. Fine tuning of both the chemical potential and the disorder pushes the critical temperature Ts of this phase transition to zero giving a quantum critical point. Here the quantum lattice and magnetic fluctuations promote the Feshbach resonance of the exchange-like anisotropic pairing. This superconducting phase that resists to the attacks of temperature is shown to be controlled by the interplay of the hopping energy between stripes and the quantum fluctuations. The superconducting gaps in the multiple Fermi surface spots reported by the recent ARPES experiment of D. V. Evtushinsky et al. arXiv:0809.4455 are shown to support the Feshbach scenario.Comment: 31 pages, 7 figure