Efficient Rendering of Local Subsurface Scattering

A novel approach is presented to efficiently render local subsurface scattering effects. We introduce an importance sampling scheme for a practical subsurface scattering model. It leads to a simple and efficient rendering algorithm, which operates in image space, and which is even amenable for implementation on graphics hardware. We demonstrate the applicability of our technique to the problem of skin rendering, for which the subsurface transport of light typically remains local. Our implementation shows that plausible images can be rendered interactively using hardware acceleration.     

分布式虚拟仿真场景生成方法研究及性能评析

在分布式虚拟仿真系统中,有三种方法生成虚拟场景：基于几何式的、基于图像的和混合式的,几何式的方法和基于图像的方法各有优缺点,混合式的方法试图结合前两种方法的优点来创建虚拟场景。分别介绍了这三种生成分布式虚拟场景的方法及步骤,并重点介绍了一种混合式方法——IBRAC技术,分析了它的两个关键技术：图像绘制加速技术、压缩技术。接着对三种虚拟场景生成方法的性能进行了评析,并给出厂性能比较的实验结果,最后对它们的应用背景进行了总结。     

飞行仿真中真实感三维云的快速绘制方法

近年来提出的云的真实感绘制算法大多采用纹理操作进行绘制,绘制算法复杂,渲染过程较长,对计算机硬件的要求高,不能完全满足飞行仿真的实时性要求。为解决上述问题,从光的单一散射出发,考虑云和大气粒子引起的光衰减率,采用阴影切片的方法分割体数据,在太阳照射方向上和视点观察方向上对切片数据进行分析,从而快速绘制出真实感三维云。仿真结果表示,生成的三维云效果真实,具有良好的实时性,能够满足飞行仿真及其他领域的要求。     

Object‐order template‐based approach for stereoscopic volume rendering

Stereoscopic volume rendering provides powerful depth information, but it takes a long time to render two‐eye images. Previous algorithms based on reprojection methods project the result of one view of a stereo pair into the other instead of rendering a new one completely. Because of inaccurate mapping between the two images, the quality of the reprojected image is not satisfactory. This paper presents a new algorithm to preserve the accuracy of both images with very little increase in computation time. The efficiency of the new algorithm comes from the use of ray templates and object‐order processing. This algorithm makes two different templates for each eye and renders two images simultaneously, tracing the volume only once in object order. We also extend the algorithm to support image‐space supersampling by using more ray templates. Experimental results show that the image quality of the new algorithm is not only comparable with that of ray casting but also the rendering speed is near that of the interactive shear–warp algorithm employing object‐order processing and spatial data coherency. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Separable Subsurface Scattering

In this paper, we propose two real‐time models for simulating subsurface scattering for a large variety of translucent materials, which need under 0.5 ms per frame to execute. This makes them a practical option for real‐time production scenarios. Current state‐of‐the‐art, real‐time approaches simulate subsurface light transport by approximating the radially symmetric non‐separable diffusion kernel with a sum of separable Gaussians, which requires multiple (up to 12) 1D convolutions. In this work we relax the requirement of radial symmetry to approximate a 2D diffuse reflectance profile by a single separable kernel. We first show that low‐rank approximations based on matrix factorization outperform previous approaches, but they still need several passes to get good results. To solve this, we present two different separable models: the first one yields a high‐quality diffusion simulation, while the second one offers an attractive trade‐off between physical accuracy and artistic control. Both allow rendering of subsurface scattering using only two 1D convolutions, reducing both execution time and memory consumption, while delivering results comparable to techniques with higher cost. Using our importance‐sampling and jittering strategies, only seven samples per pixel are required. Our methods can be implemented as simple post‐processing steps without intrusive changes to existing rendering pipelines.     

Interactive Rendering with Coherent Ray Tracing

For almost two decades researchers have argued that ray tracing will eventually become faster than the rasterization technique that completely dominates todays graphics hardware. However, this has not happened yet. Ray tracing is still exclusively being used for off-line rendering of photorealistic images and it is commonly believed that ray tracing is simply too costly to ever challenge rasterization-based algorithms for interactive use. However, there is hardly any scientific analysis that supports either point of view. In particular there is no evidence of where the crossover point might be, at which ray tracing would eventually become faster, or if such a point does exist at all.
This paper provides several contributions to this discussion: We first present a highly optimized implementation of a ray tracer that improves performance by more than an order of magnitude compared to currently available ray tracers. The new algorithm make better use of computational resources such as caches and SIMD instructions and better exploits image and object space coherence. Secondly, we show that this software implementation can challenge and even outperform high-end graphics hardware in interactive rendering performance for complex environments. We also provide an brief overview of the benefits of ray tracing over rasterization algorithms and point out the potential of interactive ray tracing both in hardware and software.     

Real-Time Watercolor for Animation

We present algorithms that allow for real-time rendering of 3D-scenes with a watercolor painting appearance. Our approach provides an appropriate simplification of the visual complexity, imitates characteristic natural effects of watercolor, and provides two essential painting techniques: the wet-on-wet and the wet-on-dry painting. We concentrate on efficient algorithms based on image space processing rather than on an exact simulation. This allows for the real-time rendering of 3D-scenes. During an animation a high frame-to-frame coherence can be achieved due to a stable segmentation scheme. Finally, we seamlessly integrate a smooth illumination into the watercolor renderings using information from the 3D-scene.     

数字人切片数据的硬件加速体绘制

实现了一个PC平台下的体绘制硬件加速算法,并对中国数字人、美国可视化人数据集进行可视化．预处理去除图像背景时,将图像从RGB颜色空间转换到YCbCr颜色空间,然后对Cb分量进行Otsu阈值化处理,用生成的二值图像作为掩码图像去除背景．为支持任意大小的体数据,采取了分块策略,并使用BSP树组织数据块,以生成正确的绘制顺序．此外还设计了一种基于图像的CIELUV颜色空间L分量的梯度向量场的传输函数,并取得了良好的绘制效果．     

Stereo for Image-Based Rendering using Image Over-Segmentation

In this paper, we propose a stereo method specifically designed for image-based rendering. For effective image-based rendering, the interpolated views need only be visually plausible. The implication is that the extracted depths do not need to be correct, as long as the recovered views appear to be correct. Our stereo algorithm relies on over-segmenting the source images. Computing match values over entire segments rather than single pixels provides robustness to noise and intensity bias. Color-based segmentation also helps to more precisely delineate object boundaries, which is important for reducing boundary artifacts in synthesized views. The depths of the segments for each image are computed using loopy belief propagation within a Markov Random Field framework. Neighboring MRFs are used for occlusion reasoning and ensuring that neighboring depth maps are consistent. We tested our stereo algorithm on several stereo pairs from the Middlebury data set, and show rendering results based on two of these data sets. We also show results for video-based rendering.     

几种变换域体绘制算法的比较研究

医学图像三维重建技术具有重要的学术意义和应用价值。变换域体绘制是该重建技术的一个新兴的重要分类,目前它已成为一个热点研究方向。综述了变换域体绘制下的傅里叶体绘制、哈特里体绘制、小波域射线投射法、小波足迹法典型算法的算法思想和优缺点,而且通过列表与其它三维医学图像可视化算法的特点及性能进行了分析比较,从而得出变换域体绘制具有绘制速度快、图像品质高等其它绘制算法不可比拟的优点及其相应的改进之处。     

Rendering of Surface and Volume Details in Volume Data*

Aiming at the detail rendering in volume data, a new volume illumination model, called Composed Scattering Model (CSM), is presented. In order to enhance different details in volume data, scattering intensity is decomposed into volume scattering intensity and surface scattering intensity with different weight functions. According to the Gauss probability distribution of gray and gradient of data, we propose an accurate method to detect the materials in a voxel, called composed segmentation. In addition, we discuss the principle of constructing these weight functions based on the operators defined in composed segmentation. CSM can generate images containing more details than most popular volume rendering models. This model has been applied to the direct volume rendering of 3D data sets obtained by CT and MRI. The resultant images show not only rich details but also clear boundary surfaces. CSM is demonstrated as an accurate volume rendering model suited for detail enhancement in volume data sets.     

Photon Beam Diffusion: A Hybrid Monte Carlo Method for Subsurface Scattering

We present photon beam diffusion, an efficient numerical method for accurately rendering translucent materials. Our approach interprets incident light as a continuous beam of photons inside the material. Numerically integrating diffusion from such extended sources has long been assumed computationally prohibitive, leading to the ubiquitous single‐depth dipole approximation and the recent analytic sum‐of‐Gaussians approach employed by Quantized Diffusion. In this paper, we show that numerical integration of the extended beam is not only feasible, but provides increased speed, flexibility, numerical stability, and ease of implementation, while retaining the benefits of previous approaches. We leverage the improved diffusion model, but propose an efficient and numerically stable Monte Carlo integration scheme that gives equivalent results using only 3–5 samples instead of 20–60 Gaussians as in previous work. Our method can account for finite and multi‐layer materials, and additionally supports directional incident effects at surfaces. We also propose a novel diffuse exact single‐scattering term which can be integrated in tandem with the multi‐scattering approximation. Our numerical approach furthermore allows us to easily correct inaccuracies of the diffusion model and even combine it with more general Monte Carlo rendering algorithms. We provide practical details necessary for efficient implementation, and demonstrate the versatility of our technique by incorporating it on top of several rendering algorithms in both research and production rendering systems.     

Discrete shading of three-dimensional objects from medial axis transform

In this paper, we present a discrete shading technique using medial axis transform (MAT) of 3D binary image data based on digital generalized octagonal distances. Our method is computationally attractive as it does not require the explicit computation of surface normals. We have compared our results with images rendered from voxel and octree representations while using analytical surface rendered images as bench marks. The quality of rendering by our method is certainly superior to those obtained from voxel and octree representations.     

Template-based rendering of run-length- encoded volumes

Template-based volume rendering is a technique to accelerate volume ray casting. It does not trade off image quality for rendering speed. However, it still falls short of interactive manipulation of volume data, mainly owing to the ray-by-ray volume access pattern and the long ray path in the transparent regions. In this paper we present an object-order template-based volume rendering method that uses run-length encoding to enable skipping highly transparent regions. We present three algorithms, one for each principal axis direction. By combining the advantages of object-order volume traversal and run-length encoded volumes, the algorithms achieve high quality rendering in a much shorter time than the original template-based volume rendering. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

体绘制技术在医学可视化中的新发展

科学计算可视化体绘制算法能反映出体数据的内部信息，在医学，它已经从辅诊断发展成为辅助治疗的重要手段，体可视化技术是医学可视化的重要研究内容，其处理过程包括体数据的获取，模型的建立，数据的映射，绘制等操作，该文介绍了医学可视化中常使用的几种光照模型，针对基于图象空间和对象空间两种体绘制算法，介绍了它们的基本思想方法，并详细阐述了在近期的主要加速技术和提高图象质量方法的新进展，最后给出了实验数据和结论。     

逆向投影点绘制算法

现有的点绘制算法局限于采用高斯滤波对三维空间中的点模型进行重构,而且在某些视点下绘制结果会出现“洞”．文中算法通过精确的逆向透视投影计算点模型中的每一个顶点在屏幕空间上的形状和影响因子．该算法不仅解决了绘制结果中存在“洞”的问题,而且可以将多种不同的重构滤波器统一在一个绘制框架内,在采用圆锥滤波时可以得到比高斯滤波更好的绘制质量．     

同心拼图中深度的计算

提出一种新的基于图像绘制的方法：多同心拼图法。该方法将摄像机限制在同一平面绕不同中心的同心圆上旋转,产生多个同心拼图。新的图像由已获得的图像插值产生。多同心拼图法是对Shum提出的单同心拼图法的一种有效改进,其主要特点是能消除单同心拼图法中存在的深度畸变现象。多同心拼图法不需要三维重建过程,具有实现方便、计算简单、能实时产生具有真实感的场景图的优点,在虚拟现实和动画生成方面具有比较重要的应用价值。     

Efficient Compositing Methods for the Sort-Last-Sparse Parallel Volume Rendering System on Distributed Memory Multicomputers

In the sort-last-sparse parallel volume rendering system on distributed memory multicomputers, one can achieve a very good performance improvement in the rendering phase by increasing the number of processors. This is because each processor can render images locally without communicating with other processors. However, in the compositing phase, a processor has to exchange local images with other processors. When the number of processors exceeds a threshold, the image compositing time becomes a bottleneck. In this paper, we propose three compositing methods to efficiently reduce the compositing time in parallel volume rendering. They are the binary-swap with bounding rectangle (BSBR) method, the binary-swap with run-length encoding and static load-balancing (BSLC) method, and the binary-swap with bounding rectangle and run-length encoding (BSBRC) method. The proposed methods were implemented on an SP2 parallel machine along with the binary-swap compositing method. The experimental results show that the BSBRC method has the best performance among these four methods.     

日光照射场景真实感图形的混合绘制方法

由于日光模型的复杂性,逼真地绘制日光照射下户外场景的真实感图像是一个困难的问题。目前的绘制方法或者因为采用的模型过于简单而真实感程度差,或者绘制过程过于复杂耗时而影响其应用。应用图像相似度理论,提出了一种综合使用基于几何和基于图像的混合绘制方法。绘制过程分为两步,首先,使用简单的光照模型近似绘制场景,然后,采用基于图像的绘制和处理方法补充第一步无法表现的效果。由于采用了基于图像相似度理论的方法,能够克服基于图像绘制技术需要处理巨大数据量的缺点。用这种两步法绘制自然光照下的户外景物,只需要简单的光照模型和物体材质属性以及很少的数据存储量。该方法在真实感程度、绘制速度和数据存储量三者间取得了比较好的平衡,绘制建筑物的实验证明了方法的有效性。     

结合图像识别的移动增强现实系统设计与应用

目的 在移动互联网时代下,移动增强现实应用得到越来越快的发展。然而户外场景中存在许多相似结构的建筑,且手机的存储和计算能力有限,因此应用多集中于室内小范围环境,对于室外大规模复杂场景的适应性较弱。对此,建立一套基于云端图像识别的移动增强现实系统。方法 为解决相似特征的误匹配问题,算法中将重力信息加入到SURF和BRISK特征描述中去,构建Gravity-SURF和Gravity-BRISK特征描述。云端系统对增强信息进行有效管理,采用基于Gravity-SURF特征的VLAD方法对大规模图像进行识别;在智能终端上的应用中呈现识别图像的增强信息,并利用识别图像的Gravity-BRISK特征和光流结合的方法对相机进行跟踪,采用Unity3D渲染引擎实时绘制3维模型。结果 在包含重力信息的4 000幅户外图像的数据库中进行实验。采用结合重力信息的特征描述算法,能够增强具有相似特征的描述符的区分性,并提高匹配正确率。图像识别算法的识别率能达到88%以上,识别时间在420 ms左右;光流跟踪的RMS误差小于1.2像素,帧率能达到23 帧/s。结论 本文针对室外大规模复杂场景建立的基于图像识别的移动增强现实系统,能方便对不同应用的增强现实数据进行管理。系统被应用到谷歌眼镜和新闻领域上,不局限于单一的应用领域。结果表明,识别算法和跟踪注册算法能够满足系统的精度和实时性要求。