<p>The aim with this thesis is to develop a plugin; Lovefish, for the purpose of allowing non-realistic renderings (NPR) for visualisation in Newtek Lightwave3D. The main purpose with Lovefish is to offer textured tones, something that has not been offered before by any previously existing shader for Lightwav3D. The textured tones are a substantially widening of what is possible to imitate in the field of classical art techniques. Among others has a number of SIGGRAPH papers has been the foundation and a source of inspiration for what has been achieve in this project. Further has this thesis treated a number of questions: what is non-photorealistic rendering is and how it works; an overview of the Lightwave3Ds software development kit (SDK).</p>

<p>Fluid simulation is today a hot topic in computer graphics. New highly optimized algorithms have allowed complex systems to be simulated in high speed. This master thesis describes how the graphics processing unit, found in most computer workstations, can be used to optimize the rendering of volumetric fluids. The main aim of the work has been to develop a software that is capable of rendering fluids in high quality and with high performance using OpenGL. The software was developed at Filmgate, a digital effects company in Göteborg, and much time was spent making the interface and the workflow easy to use for people familiar with Autodesk Maya. The project resulted in a standalone rendering application, together with a set of plugins to exchange data between Maya and our renderer.</p><p>Most of the goals have been reached when it comes to rendering features. The performance bottleneck turned out to be reading data from disc and this is an area suitable for future development of the software.</p>

<p>This report summarizes the work done to develop a 3D teleconferencing system, which enables remote participants anywhere in the world to be scanned in 3D, transmitted and displayed on a constructed 3D display with correct vertical and horizontal parallax, correct eye contact and eye gaze. The main focus of this report is the development of this system and especially how to in an efficient and general manner render to the novel 3D display. The 3D display is built out of modified commodity hardware and show a 3D scene for observers in up to 360 degrees around it and all heights. The result is a fully working 3D Teleconferencing system, resembling communication envisioned in movies such as holograms from Star Wars. The system transmits over the internet, at similar bandwidth requirements as concurrent 2D videoconferencing systems.</p> / Project done at USC Institute for Creative Technologies, LA, USA. Presented at SIGGRAPH09.

<p>This thesis explores efficient techniques for high quality real-time rendering of large architectural environments using affordable graphics hardware, as applied to illumination, including window reflections, shadows, and "bump mapping". For each of these fields, the thesis investigates existing methods and intends to provide adequate solutions. The focus lies on the use of new features found in current graphics hardware, making use of new OpenGL extensions and functionality found in Shader Model 3.0 vertex and pixel shaders and the OpenGL 2.0 core. The thesis strives to achieve maximum image quality, while maintaining acceptable performance at an affordable cost.</p><p>The thesis shows the feasibility of using deferred shading on current hardware and applies high dynamic range rendering with the intent to increase realism. Furthermore, the thesis explains how to use environment mapping to simulate true planar reflections as well as incorporates relevant image post-processing effects. Finally, a shadow mapping solution is provided for the future integration of dynamic geometry.</p>

<p>Simulation of modern battlefield scenarios on consumer PC:s deal with a number of limitations, many of them related to the limited performance of a normal PC compared to workstations and servers. Specifically, the visualization of realistic large scale outdoor environments is problematic because of the large amount of data required to describe its contents. This becomes especially problematic in simulations of fast moving vehicles such as aircrafts, where one needs to maintain high frame rates while having high visual detail for orientation and targeting. This thesis proposes a method of generating realistic outdoor environments from actual geological data and then rendering it efficiently using an improved level of detail algorithm within a proprietary battle simulation framework. We also show how to integrate an open source Flight Dynamics Model (FDM) into the simulation framework for future hybrid simulations involving aircrafts.</p>

<p>Volume rendering (VRT) has been used with great success in studies of patients using computed tomography (CT), much because of the possibility of standardizing the rendering protocols. When using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), this procedure is considerably more difficult, since the signal from a given tissue can vary dramatically, even for the same patient. This thesis work focuses on how to improve the presentation of MRI data by using VRT protocols including standardized transfer functions. The study is limited to exclusively examining data from patients with suspected renal artery stenosis. A total number of 11 patients are examined.</p><p>A statistical approach is used to standardize the volume rendering protocols. The histogram of the image volume is modeled as the sum of two gamma distributions, corresponding to vessel and background voxels. Parameters describing the gamma distributions are estimated with a Maximum-likelihood technique, so that expectation (E1 and E2) and standard deviation of the two voxel distributions can be calculated from the histogram. These values are used to generate the transfer function.</p><p>Different combinations of the values from the expectation and standard deviation were studied in a material of 11 MR angiography datasets, and the visual result was graded by a radiologist. By comparing the grades, it turned out that using only the expectation of the background distribution (E1) and vessel distribution (E2) gave the best result. The opacity is then defined with a value of 0 up to a signal threshold of E1, then increasing linearly up to 50 % at a second threshold E2, and after that a constant opacity of 50 %. The brightness curve follows the opacity curve to E2, after which it continues to increase linearly up to 100%.</p><p>A graphical user interface was created to facilitate the user-control of the volumes and transfer functions. The result from the statistical calculations is displayed in the interface and is used to view and manipulate the transfer function directly in the volume histogram.</p><p>A transfer function generated with the Maximum-likelihood VRT method (ML-VRT) gave a better visual result in 10 of the 11 cases than when using a transfer function not adapting to signal intensity variations.</p>

<p>Implement a high-level model of computationally intensive part of 3D graphics pipe-line. Increasing popularity of handheld devices along with developments in hardware technology, 3D graphics on mobile devices is fast becoming a reality. Graphics processing is essentially complex and computationally demanding. In order to achieve scene realism and perception of motion, identifying and accelerating bottle necks is crucial. This thesis is about Open-GL graphics pipe-line in general. Software which implements computationally intensive part of graphics pipe-line is built. In essence a rasterization unit that gets triangles with 2D screen, texture co-ordinates and color. Triangles go through scan conversion, texturing and a set of other per-fragment operations before getting displayed on screen.</p>

<p>Technologies in image acquisition have developed and often provide image volumes in more than two dimensions. Computer tomography and magnet resonance imaging provide image volumes in three spatial dimensions. The image enhancement methods have developed as well and in this thesis work 3D image enhancement with filter networks is evaluated.</p><p>The aims of this work are; to find a method which makes the initial parameter settings in the 3D image enhancement processing easier, to compare 2D and 3D processed image volumes visualized with different visualization techniques and to give an illustration of the benefits with 3D image enhancement processing visualized using these techniques.</p><p>The results of this work are;</p><p>1. a parameter setting tool that makes the initial parameter setting much easier and</p><p>2. an evaluation of 3D image enhancement with filter networks that shows a significant enhanced image quality in 3D processed image volumes with a high noise level compared to the 2D processed volumes. These results are shown in slices, MIP and volume rendering. The differences are even more pronounced if the volume is presented in a different projection than the volume is 2D processed in.</p>

<p>I den här rapporten så visas hur realtidsrendering av fågelfjäder kan implementaras. Ett lindenmayersystem (L-system) används för att skapa geometri med hjälp av ett fåtal bézierkurvor. Naturliga variationer hos fjädrar modelleras genom att introducera externa krafter som ackumuleras slumpmässigt när L-systemet genererar geometrin. Bidirectional texture functions (BTF) används för färgsättning och effektiv modellering av fjäderns finstruktur. BTF är en sexdimensionell struktur som kan representera verkliga material genom att innehålla, förutom de två vanliga texturkoordinaterna, koordinater för betraktnings- och belysningsvinklar. För att kunna använda BTF-texturer på grafikhårdvara så kompakteras dess representation så att den ryms i en tredimensionell textur. Anpassningar görs också för att stödja texturfiltrering och mip-mappning. För att ta fram informationen som BTF-texturen innehåller så modelleras finstrukturen i ett externt animationsverktyg, där ljuskälla och kamera animeras över de samplingspunkter som definierats. Strålföljning används sedan för att generera hur materialet ser ut vid dessa olika vinklar.</p>

We present methods for incorporating bubbles into a photorealistc fluid simulation. Previous methods of fluid simulation in computer graphics do not include bubbles. Our system automatically creates bubbles, which are simulated on top of the fluid simulation. These bubbles are approximated by spheres and are rendered with the fluid to appear as one continuous surface. This enhances the overall realism of the appearance of a splashing fluid for computer graphics. Our methods leverage the particle level set representation of the fluid surface. We create bubbles from escaped marker particles from the outside to the inside. These marker particles might represent air that has been trapped within the fluid surface. Further, we detect when air is trapped in the fluid and create bubbles within this space. This gives the impression that the air pocket has become bubbles and is an inexpensive way to simulate the air trapped in air pockets. The results of the simulation are rendered with a raytracer that includes caustics. This allows the creation of photorealistic images. These images support our position that the simple addition of bubbles included in a fluid simulation creates results that are much more true to life.