Since the introduction of programmable Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and procedural shaders, hardware vendors have each developed their own individual real-time shading language standard. None of these shading languages is fully platform independent. Although this real-time programmable shader technology could be developed into 3D application on a single system, this platform dependent limitation keeps the shader technology away from 3D Internet applications. The primary purpose of this dissertation is to design a framework for translating different shader formats to platform independent shaders and embed them into the eXtensible 3D (X3D) scene for 3D web applications. This framework includes a back-end core shader converter, which translates shaders among different shading languages with a middle XML layer. Also included is a shader library containing a basic set of shaders that developers can load and add shaders to. This framework will then be applied to some applications in Biomolecular Visualization.

The use of computer animated interactive faces in film, TV, games is ever growing, with new application areas emerging also on the Internet and mobile environments. Morph targets are one of the most popular methods to animate the face. Up until now 3D artists had to design each morph target defined by the MPEG-4 standard by hand. This is a very monotonous and tedious task. With the newly developed method of Facial Motion Cloning [11]the heavy work is relieved from the artists. From an already animated face model the morph targets can now be copied onto a new static face model. For the Facial Motion Cloning process there must be a subset of the feature points specified by the MPEG-4 standard defined. The purpose of this is to correlate the facial features of the two faces. The goal of this project is to develop a graphical editor in which the artists can define the feature points for a face model. The feature points will be saved in a file format that can be used in a Facial Motion Cloning software.

<p>The use of computer animated interactive faces in film, TV, games is ever growing, with new application areas emerging also on the Internet and mobile environments. Morph targets are one of the most popular methods to animate the face. Up until now 3D artists had to design each morph target defined by the MPEG-4 standard by hand. This is a very monotonous and tedious task. With the newly developed method of Facial Motion Cloning [11]the heavy work is relieved from the artists. From an already animated face model the morph targets can now be copied onto a new static face model. </p><p>For the Facial Motion Cloning process there must be a subset of the feature points specified by the MPEG-4 standard defined. The purpose of this is to correlate the facial features of the two faces. The goal of this project is to develop a graphical editor in which the artists can define the feature points for a face model. The feature points will be saved in a file format that can be used in a Facial Motion Cloning software.</p>

A software application called Public News Network (PNN) is created in this thesis, which functions to produce an aesthetic experience in the viewer. The application engenders this experience by presenting a three-dimensional virtual world that the viewer can navigate using the computer mouse and keyboard. As the viewer navigates the environment she sees irregularly shaped objects resting on an infinite ground plane, and hears an ethereal wind. As the viewer nears the objects, the sound transforms into the sound of television static and text is displayed which identifies this object as representative of an episode of the evening news. The viewer "touches" the episode and a "disembodied" transcript of the broadcast begins to scroll across the screen. With further interaction, video of the broadcast streams across the surfaces of the environment, distorted by the shapes upon which it flows. The viewer can further manipulate and repurpose the broadcast by searching for words contained within the transcript. The results of this search are reassembled into a new, re-contextualized display of video containing the search terms stripped from their original, pre-packaged context. It is this willful manipulation that completes the opportunity for true meaning to appear.

Volume rendering is one of the branches of scientific visualization. Its popularity has grown in the recent years, and due to the increase in the computation speed of the graphics hardware of the desktop systems, became more and more accessible. Visualizing volumetric datasets using volume rendering technique requires a large amount of trilinear interpolation operations that are computationally expensive. This situation used to restrict volume rendering methods to be used only in high-end graphics workstations or with special-purpose hardware. In this thesis, an application tool has been developed using hardware accelerated volume rendering techniques on commercial graphics processing devices. This implementation has been developed with a 3D texture based approach using bump mapping for building an illumination model with OpenGL API. The aim of this work is to propose visualization methods and tools for rendering medical image datasets at interactive rates. The methods and tool are validated and compared with a commercially available software.

Virtual reality headsets, like the Oculus Rift, uses visual tricks to enhance the feeling of immersion in virtual reality applications. This thesis explores the possibilities of creating an immersive sound experience to go along with the visuals. A sound propagation model designed for real-time simulations is presented along with techniques to implement binaural synthesis. The thesis includes an implementation of a 3D cube world written in C# using OpenGL for graphics and FMOD for sound. The implementation is evaluated in the context of realism and possible improvements and optimizations are suggested.

The project has been carried out at, and in association with, Micronic Laser Systems AB in Täby, Sweden. Micronic Laser Systems, manufacture laser pattern generators for the semiconductor and display markets. Laser pattern generators are used to create photomasks, which are a key component in the microlithographic process of manufacturing microchips and displays. An essential problem to all modern semiconductor manufacturing is the constantly decreasing sizes of features and increasing use of resolution enhancement techniques (RET), leading to ever growing sizes of datasets describing the semiconductors. When sizes of datasets reach magnitudes of hundreds of gigabytes, visualisation, navigation and editing of any such dataset becomes extremely difficult. As of today this problem has no satisfying solution. The project aims at the proposal of a geometry engine that effectively can deal with the evergrowing sizes of modern semiconductor lithography. This involves a new approach to handling data, a new format for spatial description of the datasets, hardware accelerated rendering and support for multiprocessor and distributed systems. The project has been executed without implying changes to existing data formats and the resulting application is executable on Micronics currently existing hardware platforms. The performance of the new viewer system surpasses any old implementation by a varying factor. If rendering speed is the comparative factor, the new system is about 10-20 times faster than its old counterparts. In some cases, when hard disk access speed is the limiting factor, the new implementation is only slightly faster or as fast. And finally, spatial indexing allow some operations that previously lasted several hours, to complete in a few seconds, by eliminating all unnecessary disk-reading operations.

Vi började vårt projekt med grunderna till verktyg för att utveckla spel i 2d. Dessa ämnade vi färdigställa under projektet och med dem utveckla en speldemo. Eftersom vi hade gemensamma visioner om spelutveckling så bestämde vi oss för att samarbeta, och fokusera på våra respektive områden. Med att utveckla egna verktyg ville vi få en större förståelse för de grundläggande mekanismerna av en spelmotor och möjligheten att påverka dessa efter våra specifika behov. Det var också för att hålla koden fri från licensierade komponenter för att i framtiden kunna underlätta distribution. / Detta är en reflektionsdel till en digital medieproduktion.

O presente trabalho apresenta um benchmark para avaliar o desempenho de uma plataforma embarcada WandBoard Quad no processamento de imagens, considerando o uso da sua GPU Vivante GC2000 na execução de rotinas usando OpenGL ES 2.0. Para esse fim, foi tomado por base a execução de filtros de imagem em CPU e GPU. Os filtros são as aplicações mais comumente utilizadas em processamento de imagens, que por sua vez operam por meio de convoluções, técnica esta que faz uso de sucessivas multiplicações matriciais, o que justifica um alto custo computacional dos algoritmos de filtros de imagem em processamento de imagens. Dessa forma, o emprego da GPU em sistemas embarcados é uma interessante alternativa que torna viável a realização de processamento de imagem nestes sistemas, pois além de fazer uso de um recurso presente em uma grande gama de dispositivos presentes no mercado, é capaz de acelerar a execução de algoritmos de processamento de imagem, que por sua vez são a base para aplicações de visão computacional tais como reconhecimento facial, reconhecimento de gestos, dentre outras. Tais aplicações tornam-se cada vez mais requisitadas em um cenário de uso e consumo em aplicações modernas de sistemas embarcados. Para embasar esse objetivo foram realizados estudos comparativos de desempenho entre sistemas e entre bibliotecas capazes de auxiliar no aproveitamento de recursos de processadores multicore. Para comprovar o potencial do assunto abordado e fundamentar a proposta do presente trabalho, foi realizado um benchmark na forma de uma sequência de testes, tendo como alvo uma aplicação modelo que executa o algoritmo do Filtro de Sobel sobre um fluxo de imagens capturadas de uma webcam. A aplicação foi executada diretamente na CPU e também na GPU embarcada. Como resultado, a execução em GPU por meio de OpenGL ES 2.0 alcançou desempenho quase 10 vezes maior com relação à execução em CPU, e considerando tempos de readback, obteve ganho de desempenho total de até 4 vezes. / This work presents a benchmark for evaluating the performance of an embedded WandBoard Quad platform in image processing, considering the use of its GPU Vivante GC2000 in executing routines using OpenGL ES 2.0. To this goal, it has relied upon the execution of image filters in CPU and GPU. The filters are the most commonly applications used in image processing, which in turn operate through convolutions, a technique which makes use of successive matrix multiplications, which justifies a high computational cost of image filters algorithms for image processing. Thus, the use of the GPU for embedded systems is an interesting alternative that makes it feasible to image processing performing in these systems, as well as make use of a present feature in a wide range of devices on the market, it is able to accelerate image processing algorithms, which in turn are the basis for computer vision applications such as facial recognition, gesture recognition, among others. Such applications become increasingly required in a consumption and usage scenario in modern applications of embedded systems. To support this goal were carried out a comparative studies of performance between systems and between libraries capable of assisting in the use of multicore processors resources. To prove the potential of the subject matter and explain the purpose of this study, it was performed a benchmark in the form of a sequence of tests, targeting a model application that runs Sobel filter algorithm on a stream of images captured from a webcam. The application was performed directly on the embbedded CPU and GPU. As a result, running on GPU via OpenGL ES 2.0 performance achieved nearly 10 times higher with respect to the running CPU, and considering readback times, achieved total performance gain of up to 4 times.

This thesis is focused on design and implementation of procedural generator of galaxy for games or simulations. Second goal is implementation of demonstration application which is showing possible usage of generator. Generator is able to create galaxy by predefined types or by user created map.