Cornell University

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CAM Colloquium: Steve Marschner (CS, Cornell University) - Subpixel surface detail in realistic rendering

Friday, March 16, 2018 at 3:30pm

Frank H. T. Rhodes Hall, 655

Abstract:
In computer graphics, detail is an important part of the big picture.  The eye uses fine detail in images to learn about materials, and leaving this structure out lends surfaces a too-smooth appearance that makes them look synthetic. This talk looks at at an ongoing series of projects that focus on getting the details right and find that surprisingly small features matter.  We start from the straightforward problem of rendering rough surfaces—surfaces that are covered with geometric detail much smaller than pixels.  Techniques for filtering out the too-small details are good at getting the right average color, but we show that they lose glittery, glinty effects that are important to the appearance. I'll start with two ray-optics based methods that make it practical to render these materials accurately, modeling the surface detail either explicitly or as a random process. I'll finish with current work that drops the wave optics assumption, enabling renderings that display the smoother reflections and iridescent colors that result from diffraction on such surfaces. This is collaborative work with students and colleagues at Cornell, UCSD, Berkeley, and Autodesk.

Bio:  
Steve Marschner is Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University, where he is conducting research in computer graphics and vision, centered around how optics and mechanics determine the appearance of materials.  He obtained his Sc.B. from Brown University in 1993 and his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1998. He held research positions at Microsoft Research and Stanford University before joining Cornell in 2002. In 2010-11 he was a visiting professor at ETH Zürich. He is recipient of the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award in 2015, a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2006, and co-recipient of a 2003 Technical Academy Award.

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Event Type

Lecture

Departments

Cornell Engineering, Center for Applied Mathematics

Website

http://cam.cornell.edu

Speaker

Steve Marschner

Speaker Affiliation

Computer Science, Cornell University

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