Category: Publications

In this paper we introduce the curved ray camera to address the single viewpoint limitation. Rays are C1-continuous curves that bend to circumvent occluders, and our camera is designed to provide a fast 3-D point projection operations.

In geometric constraint solving, constructing circles with an indeterminate radius is an important sub-problem. We develop hardware-assisted techniques to solve the simultaneous construction problems of variable-radius circles.

In geometric constraint solving, constructing circles with an indeterminate radius is an important sub-problem. We investigate techniques to solve sequential construction problems of variable-radius circles, analyzing the case when at least one of the constraining entities is a Bezier curve.

This dissertation proposes a new paradigm of problem solving, dubbed Camera Model Design, which overcomes the limitations of the planar pinhole camera model to address many problems which still exist in computer graphics, visualization, and computer vision. The Camera Model Design paradigm stresses four important ideas. First, relax the constraints of the planar pinhole camera model allowing generalized camera rays which are no longer straight and no longer converge. Second, the choice of camera used for a particular application need not be limited to the planar pinhole camera. Third, camera models should no longer be static. Finally, in order to support interactive exploration, a high level of computational efficiency should be maintained.

We introduce the general pinhole camera (GPC), which allows dynamically allocating the distribution of pixels in an image place. We demonstrate the benefits of the approach in remote visualization, focus plus context visualization, and extreme antialiasing.

We introduce the graph camera, a non-pinhole with rays that circumvent occluders to create a single layer image that shows simultaneously several regions of interest in a 3-D scene. The graph camera image exhibits good continuity and little redundancy.

In this application paper we describe the efforts of a multi-disciplinary team towards producing a visualization of the September 11 Attack on the North Tower of New York’s World Trade Center. This was achieved by first designing and computing a finite element analysis (FEA) simulation of the impact between the aircraft and the top 20 stories of the building, and then by visualizing the FEA results with a state-of-the-art commercial animation system.

We introduce the epipolar occlusion camera, which is a non-pinhole which gathers samples of a 3D scene visible from a segment of viewpoints.