Previous Project (Honours)

Honours Page for Holger Winnemoeller - Rhodes University
My Honours Webpage and all the relevant links can be found here. Write-ups of the Thesis can be found in Word document format or on the web in HTML format.

Rendering Techniques

GENERAL

CS 224 - Brown University
Lecture slides and related material to NPR and other techniques

Adobe PDF Document - Rendering Techniques Past, Present and Future ALAN WATT  - PDF Search Result
Rendering Techniques: Past, Present and Future ALAN WATT Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, England ^a. watt@ dcs. sheffield. ac. uk Rendering is the process of converting three- dimensional geometric descrip-tions of graphical objects into two- di-mensional image plane representations that look real. Three methods of doing this are now firmly established: empiri-cal simulation, ray tracing, and radios-ity

VOLUMETRIC

VolVis Project Home Page - University of New York at Stony Brook
The visualization of volumetric data has aided many scientific disciplines ranging from geophysics to the biomedical sciences. The diversity of these fields coupled with a growing reliance on visualization has spawned the creation of a number of specialized visualization systems. These systems are usually limited by machine and data dependencies and are typically not flexible or extensible. A few visualization systems have attempted to overcome these dependencies by taking a data-flow approach. However, the added computational costs associated with data-flow systems results in poor performance

Volumetric Rendering - Cornell University
Volumetric rendering is the process of visualizing three dimensional data sets. Data Explorer (DX) provides a basic volumetric rendering capability, however, it is limited to orthographic cameras and ambient shading. The goal of this project was to create a more advanced volumetric rendering module for Data Explorer that provides realistic shading and perspective camera views. Due to the large amount of data that must be processed when volume rendering, secondary goals of the project were to conserve memory resources and keep the processing time to a minimum

IMAGE BASED

Modeling and Rendering from Photographs - University of Berkley
FACADE Modeling and Rendering Architecture from Photographs
In this work we present a new method of modeling and rendering architecture photorealistically from a small number of photographs. The work consists of: Photogrammetric Modeling: A method for interactively recovering 3D models and camera positions from photographs View-Dependent Texture Mapping: A method for turning a 3D model and a set of photographs from known positions into renderings Model-Based Stereo: A method of refining an approximate geometric model of a scene to conform to its actual appearance in a set of photographs

GEOMETRIC

Viewing & Rendering - Brown University
A description in slides of a standard rendering architecture / pipeline

Non-Photorealistic (NPR)

 Intel (R) 3D Software Technologies - Intel Technology Labs
"Non-Photorealistic Rendering technology (Toon) provides the ability to modify lighting and rendering parameters of 3-D models and transform them into 2-D cartoon images and pencil sketches."

 Real-Time Nonphotorealistic Rendering - Brown University
"The Nonphotorealistic Rendering Project's purpose is to use computers to produce images that appear to have been drawn by hand. Computers are often used for precise rendering, computer-aided-design, and three-dimensional rendering, but, as evidenced in the art world, high precision isn't always the best way to convey ideas"

Stylized Depiction Non-Photorealistic, Painterly and 'Toon Rendering - Red 3D dot com
!!Lots of links to related pages!!
In computer graphics, photorealistic rendering attempts to make artificial images of simulated 3d environments that look "just like the real world." So non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) is any technique that produces images of simulated 3d world in a style other than realism. Often these styles are reminiscent of paintings (painterly rendering), or of various other styles of artistic illustration (sketch, pen and ink, etching, lithograph, ...)

Non-Photorealistic Rendering - University of Sheffield (I think)
This one is by Watt - gotta be good! (Some links included as well)
However, recently some poeple have started to question the thinking behind this aim. Whilst many images produced by "photo-realistic rendering" are very impressive, or even "realistic", they tend to have a rather cold, sterile signature. "NonPhotorealistic Rendering" is the label given to the move away from the pursuit of photorealistic realism.

Adobe PDF Document - Adobe Search Result
CS224 February 5, 1999 1/ 15 Nonphotorealistic Rendering Art- based rendering Lots of artists ---> Lots of styles 'illustration' techniques 'Cartoon' techniques 'high art' techniques Many can be mimicked by computer CS224 February 5, 1999 2/ 15 Why?

Programming Resources - NVIDIA Coorp
Customisable T&L Operations that can effectively implement a Comic-shader in Semi-Hardware (By programming the GPU)
Through a simple instruction set specified as GLubyte strings and managed in a fashion similar to texture objects, applications can define their own T&L operations. This includes, but is not limited to, matrix pallette skinning, keyframe interpolation, custom lighting/texgen, and per-fragment shading setup.

Object Animation, Skinning and Skeletons (non-surgical)

3DS MAX Modelling Tutorial by Scarecrow - Planet Halflife dot com
    Tutorial on making 3DS animated models (with bones and skins) to use in the Halflife Valve SDK.
"How does skeleton animation work?
As you will know by now, a model is made up of a series of several hundred triangles joined at their corners. Where they join, is a point called a vertex. During the Physique stage of model creation, each of those vertexes is assigned to a specific bone in the biped (see 'Attaching the Biped'). The skeleton is then animated and each vertex moves with it's assigned bone and the mesh is deformed accordingly."

Delphi3D - Rapid OpenGL Development - Delphi 3D dot com
"A long time ago, when animals could speak, Quake had the best 3D engine on the market. It was the first popular engine that had true 3D polygonal characters. To animate the characters, Quake used simple deformable mesh animation: a single base model was manipulated at the vertex level to create animation. Today, this system is on the verge of extinction"

Personal Links: