The rad Executive Program

Greg Ward, Anyhere Software

 

Global illumination researchers tend to think in terms of mesh density and sampling frequency, and their software reflects this in its user interface. Advanced rendering systems are rife with long command lines and parameters for tuning the sample densities, thresholds and other algorithm-specific variables, and the novice user is quickly lost in a sea of possibilities. This paper details a successful effort of making one such global illumination system usable by people who understand their problems, even if they do not understand the methods needed to solve them, through an assisted oracle approach. A single program is introduced to map a small set of intuitive control variables to the rendering commands and parameter settings needed to produce the desired output in a reasonable time. This new executive program then serves as the basis for a graphical user interface that is both friendly in its appearance and reliable in its performance. Finally, we conclude with some future directions for improving this interface.

 

PDF of Presentation (35 Kbytes)

 

PDF of ’95 Eurographics Workshop on Rendering paper (96 Kbytes)

 

PowerPoint Slides (160 Kbytes)

Real Numbers, Real Images

Greg Ward, Anyhere Software

 

This was an abbreviated version of the all-day tutorial given at Eurographics 2003 in Granada, Spain. The abstract for this tutorial is given below.

 

This tutorial develops the thesis that the real world is best represented by real numbers, which are approximated by floating point values in the computer. As the floating point unit (FPU) continues to accelerate, outpacing the arithmetic logic unit (ALU), it makes more and more sense to do our graphics calculations entirely with real numbers. We even see the mainstream changing in this direction with the introduction of floating point frame buffers in a new generation of graphics cards, such as NVidia’s GeForce FX.

 

We cover several diverse topics in this tutorial, though all are relevant to the thesis of realism through real numbers. The first topic is measurement – how to obtain reasonable input values for computer graphics renderings. The second topic is lighting simulation – local and global illumination approximations and how to get a perceptually accurate result, most of the time. The third topic is image representation – how can we store our results without compromising them or taking up our entire disk drive? The fourth topic is image display – how can we take a high dynamic-range image and display it on a standard CRT – and are there better display technologies around the corner? Fifth and finally, we discuss high dynamic-range photography – how we can short-cut parts of our simulation through the use of image-based rendering and "image-based lighting".

 

PowerPoint Presentation (35 Mbytes)

 

PDF of Slide Text (248 Kbytes)

Link to John Mardaljevic Tutorial

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