Speakers
Course Description
Course Schedule
Speakers
- Dr. David S. Ebert (Chair)
University of Maryland Baltimore County - Dr. John C. Hart
Washington State University - Dr. F. Kenton Musgrave
George Washington University - Dr. Ken Perlin
New York University - Karl Sims
Independent Consultant - Dr. Brian Wyvill
University of Calrgary
Course Description
Summary Statement
This course imparts a working knowledge of procedural approaches in modeling, shading, rendering, and animation. Procedural approaches include solid texturing, hypertextures, volume density functions, fractals, artificial evolution, L-systems, and implicit surfaces. The course provides participants with details often omitted from technical papers and explores how the speakers design procedures.
Course Objectives
Attendees gain insight into design approaches in developing procedures. The course offers a toolbox of specific procedures and basic primitive functions (noise, turbulence, fBm, etc.) to produce realistic images and animations, an understanding of advanced solid texturing techniques, several advanced procedural approaches for modeling object geometry (hypertextures, gases, fractals, L-systems, fBm, implicit surfaces), and an introduction to animating these procedural objects and textures.
Course Prerequisites
The participants should have a working knowledge of rendering, shading, and solid texturing techniques. Some knowledge of fractals and volume rendering will be useful (not required).
Intended Audience
Individuals interested in procedural modeling, shading, and texturing techniques, the procedural design approaches of several researchers, and a toolbox of procedures for producing realistic images.
Course Overview
This course is intended to give the participant a working knowledge of several procedural approaches in shading, modeling, rendering, and animation. The procedural approaches presented will include solid textures, hypertextures, volume density functions, fractal and genetic algorithms, L-systems, implicit surfaces, and procedural animation. The participant will see the details of these techniques that are normally omitted from technical papers, including useful and practical guidelines for selecting parameter values. The course will start with an overview of different procedural techniques and how they interrelate. An in-depth description of basic primitive functions used will be presented, including noise and turbulence functions and their implementation. After the introduction, the course will follow a progression in the use of procedural techniques from solid texturing to hypertextures. Extensions of hypertextures including gas, liquid, and fire volume density functions will be presented. Animations using these techniques will also be presented. Procedural animation techniques for creating real-time responsive animated characters will be explored and demonstrated. Procedural modeling techniques will be explored further with presentations on modeling with implicit surfaces, fBm, IFS, L-systems, and procedural geometric instancing. The course will then describe fractal applications and their relationship to the other procedural techniques. An ``automated'' procedural approach, artificial evolution, will be presented, in contrast to the manual techniques described earlier in the course. The usefulness of this approach for texturing and object modeling will be explored. The course will conclude with a panel session for discussing tricks of the trade, common pitfalls, and future directions.
Each speaker will give a detailed explanation of the design of at least one example procedure, from its early beginnings to the final version that can be used by the participant to create realistic images. This process will exemplify the design approach taken by each speaker.
The course will also show the interapplicability of the techniques presented. This will be illustrated by the discussion of common primitive functions and their use in the procedural approaches presented.
Changes from the 1994 Procedural Modeling, Texturing, and Rendering Techniques Course
The course is similar in nature to the course offered at SIGGRAPH '94 on Procedural Modeling, Texturing, and Rendering Techniques with a focus on more recent and varied uses of procedural techniques. The course will dedicate more time to procedural modeling and animation than the previous course. John Hart and Karl Sims are new speakers who will add interesting and innovative material on procedural modeling and artificial evolution.
Course Schedule
8:30 am to 5pm8:30-8:45 Introduction -Speaker: Ebert
- Welcome and introduction
- What we plan to accomplish
- Flexibility of procedural methods
- Why proceduralism?
- Procedural modeling and the scientific method
8:45- 10:00 Procedural Texturing and Modeling -Speaker: Perlin
- Irregular stochastic patterns
- Perlin's Noise function
- Turbulence functions
- Solid texturing examples - marble, water, wood, etc.
- Painting with procedural textures
- Interesting shapes
- Useful procedures and their development
- Lifeforms
- Woven Cloth
- Architexture
10:15-11:05 Gas and Fluid Modeling and Animation -Speaker: Ebert
- Introduction and development
- Gases and Fluids
- Useful procedures and their development
- Introduction and development of the animation techniques
- Animating solid textures
- Animating fluids
- Animating gases
11:05-12:00 Procedural Models of Geometric Detail -Speaker: Hart
- An implicit representation of rough surfaces
- Noise as a deformation (range vs. domain)
- Blending rough surfaces
- Rendering rough surfaces
- Recurrent iterated function systems
- Definition
- Modeling and the inverse problem
- Rendering using instancing
- Procedural geometric instancing
- L-systems, turtle graphics, problems
- A procedural definition of geometry using instancing
- Rendering (ray tracing vs. z-buffering)
1:30-2:30 Building and Animating Implicit Surface Models -Speaker: Wyvill
- Parametric and implicit surface definition.
- Implicit surfaces based on skeletons
- Interactive modeling techniques
- Blending (continuity, hard and soft blending)
- Polygonization techniques (uniform voxel, adaptive octree, shrinkwrap)
- Ray tracing implicit surfaces.
- Solid texturing implicit surfaces
- Animating implicit surfaces (curve following, warping, blending, negative fields, metamorphosis, examples, videos).
2:30-4:00 Procedural Models of Natural Phenomena -Speaker: Musgrave
- Introduction
- Fractals in nature
- Fractals and procedural modeling
- Procedural Models of Natural Phenomena
- Examples: clouds, fire, smoke, water
- Terrain models
- Textures for terrains
- Planets
- Procedural terrain models w/adaptive level of detail
- Development of a Procedural Texture: An Example
- Ontogenetic vs. teleological modeling
- Incremental implementation of a complex model
- What lies ahead: procedural universes
4:00-4:45 Artificial Evolution - Speaker: Sims
- Genotype and phenotype
- Mutation and mating
- The ``fitness'' function
- Genetic programming
- Generating the parameter space
- Searching the parameter space
4:45-5:00 Conclusion - Speakers: All
- Tying it all together
- Hot tips \& pitfalls
- Functions gone awry - disasters \& serendipity
- What's next?
David S. Ebert, ebert@cs.umbc.edu
