This creative project explores engaging patrons of art by exploiting some of the postmodern methods employed in contemporary society. The methods discussed include appropriation, pastiche, and the negation of history. These techniques are used to engage viewers in conversation by their use in Motion Graphics; the medium in which the creative project artwork was produced. Topics also include: why it is important for an artist to engage viewers, how to do so, and a short history of postmodern philosophy. / Department of Art

Ray tracing is a very powerful yet simple approach to image synthesis. It has generated some of the most realistic scenes to date. A comparative study of classical ray tracing, ray tracing with cones, and distributed ray tracing is made.The ray tracing techniques, classical ray tracing, ray tracing with cones, and distributed ray tracing, are explained, their differences are emphasized, and their approaches to modeling various lighting effects are explained and compared. / Department of Computer Science

This dissertation describes ESCAPE (Expert Systems in Computer Animation Production Environments), a multi-agent animation system for building domain-oriented, rule-based visual programming environments. Much recent work in computer graphics has been concerned with producing behavioural animations of artificial life-forms mainly based on algorithmic approaches. This research indicates how, by adding an inference engine and rules that describe such behaviour, traditional computer animation environments can be enhanced. The comparison between using algorithmic approaches and using a rule-based approach for representing multi-agent worlds is not based upon their respective claims to completeness, but rather on the ease with which end users may express their knowledge and control their animations with a minimum of technical knowledge. An environment for the design of computer animations incorporating an expert system approach is described. In addition to direct manipulation of objects on the screen, the environment allows users to describe behavioural rules based upon both the physical and non-physical attributes of objects. These rules can be interpreted to suggest the transition from stage to stage or to automatically produce a longer animation. The output from the system can be integrated into a commercially available 3D modelling and rendering package. Experience indicates that a hybrid environment, mixing algorithmic and rule-based approaches, would be very promising and offer benefits in application areas such as creating realistic background scenes and modelling human beings or animals either singly or in groups. A prototype evaluation system and three different domains are described and illustrated with preliminary animated images.

No description available.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-57).

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1990. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 38-39).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1990. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf [63]).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1993. / At head of title: Masters thesis. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [16]-[17]).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1987. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 18).