Category: Publications

This paper shows that images constructed with non-pinhole cameras improve approximation quality at little additional cost provided that the non-pinhole camera offers fast projection. We demonstrate the advantages of non-pinhole depth images in the context of reflections, refractions, relief texture mapping, and ambient occlusion.

We present a system for visualizing memory reference traces, the records of the memory transactions performed by a program at runtime. The visualization consists of a structured layout representing the levels of a cache and a set of data glyphs representing the pieces of data in memory being operated on during application runtime.

Multiperspective images (MPIs) show more than what is visible from a single viewpoint and are a promising approach for alleviating the problem of occlusions. We present a comprehensive user study that investigates the effectiveness of MPIs for 3-D scene exploration. The results of our experiments show that MPIs can greatly outperform conventional images.

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.