Claude Puech

Conservative visibility preprocessing using extended projections

Visualization of very complex scenes can be significantly accelerated using occlusion culling. In this paper we present a visibility preprocessing method which efficiently computes potentially visible geometry for volumetric viewing cells. We introduce novel extended projection operators, which permits efficient and conservative occlusion culling with respect to all viewpoints within a cell, and takes into account the combined occlusion effect of multiple occluders. We use extended projection of occluders onto a set of projection planes to create extended occlusion maps; we show how to efficiently test occludees against these occlusion maps to determine occlusion with respect to the entire cell. We also present an improved projection operator for certain specific but important configurations. An important advantage of our approach is that we can re-project extended projections onto a series of projection planes (via an occlusion sweep), and accumulate occlusion information from multiple blockers. This new approach allows the creation of effective occlusion maps for previously hard-to-treat scenes such as leaves of trees in a forest. Graphics hardware is used to accelerate both the extended projection and reprojection operations. We present a complete implementation demonstrating significant speedup with respect to view-frustum culling only, without the computational overhead of on-line occlusion culling.

The visibility skeleton: a powerful and efficient multi-purpose global visibility tool

Many problems in computer graphics and computer vision require accurate global visibility information. Previous approaches have typically been complicated to implement and numerically unstable, and often too expensive in storage or computation. The Visibility Skeleton is a new powerful utility which can efficiently and accurately answer visibility queries for the entire scene. The Visibility Skeleton is a multi-purpose tool, which can solve numerous different problems. A simple construction algorithm is presented which only requires the use of well known computer graphics algorithmic components such as ray-casting and line/plane intersections. We provide an exhaustive catalogue of visual events which completely encode all possible visibility changes of a polygonal scene into a graph structure. The nodes of the graph are extremal stabbing lines, and the arcs are critical line swaths. Our implementation demonstrates the construction of the Visibility Skeleton for scenes of over a thousand polygons. We also show its use to compute exact visible boundaries of a vertex with respect to any polygon in the scene, the computation of global or on-the-fly discontinuity meshes by considering any scene polygon as a source, as well as the extraction of the exact blocker list between any polygon pair. The algorithm is shown to be manageable for the scenes tested, both in storage and in computation time. To address the potential complexity problems for large scenes, on-demand or lazy contruction is presented, its implementation showing encouraging first results.

Partial match retrieval of multidimensional data

A precise analysis of partial match retrieval of multidimensional data is presented. The structures considered here are multidimensional search trees (<italic>k</italic>-d-trees) and digital tries (<italic>k</italic>-d-tries), as well as structures designed for efficient retrieval of information stored on external devices. The methods used include a detailed study of a differential system around a regular singular point in conjunction with suitable contour integration techniques for the analysis of <italic>k</italic>-d-trees, and properties of the Mellin integral transform for <italic>k</italic>-d-tries and extendible cell algorithms.

Analytic variations on quadtrees

Quadtrees constitute a hierarchical data structure which permits fast access to multidimensional data. This paper presents the analysis of the expected cost of various types of searches in quadtrees — fully specified and partial-match queries. The data model assumes random points with independently drawn coordinate values.The analysis leads to a class of “full-history” divide-and-conquer recurrences. These recurrences are solved using generating functions, either exactly for dimensiond=2, or asymptotically for higher dimensions. The exact solutions involve hypergeometric functions. The general asymptotic solutions rely on the classification of singularities of linear differential equations with analytic coefficients, and on singularity analysis techniques.These methods are applicable to the asymptotic solution of a wide range of linear recurrences, as may occur in particular in the analysis of multidimensional searching problems.

Filtering, Clustering and Hierarchy Construction: a New Solution for Ray-Tracing Complex Scenes

Data structures that handle very complex scenes (hundreds of thousands of objects) have in the past either been laboriously built by hand, or have required the determination of unintuitive parameter values by the user. It is often the case that an incorrect choice of these parameters can result in greedy memory requirements or severely degraded performance. As a remedy to this problem we propose a new data structure which is fully automatic since it does not require the user to determine any input parameters. The structure is built by first filtering the input objects by size, subsequently applying a clustering step to objects of the same size and finally building a hierarchy of uniform grids . We then show that this data structure can be efficiently constructed. The implementation of the shows that the new structure is stable since its memory requirements grow linearly with the size of the scene, and that it presents a satisfactory compromise between memory usage and computational efficiency. A detailed comparison with previous data structures is also presented in the results.

Physically-based model for simulating the human trunk respiration movements

We have developped a physically-based model where an object is represented by a set of mass points on its contour. Each object may be defined locally and physically using surface regions. Physical properties (such as elasticity, motor functioning, or rigidity) can be assigned to the regions. Physical constraints, like incompressibility (i.e. constant volume deformation), can be set. Moreover, additional constraints can be used to control the animation and the object behaviour (e.g. nailed point, pre-defined trajectory). Depending on this physical properties and constraints, forces and movements are deduced.

Physically-Based Deformations Constrained in Displacements and Volume

This paper presents a method of constraining physically‐based deformable objects. In this method, an object can be defined locally in terms of kinetic and dynamic (mass, position, speed), and physical parameters (compressibility, elasticity, motor functioning). Several problems are solved: constant volume deformation, displacement constraints (fixed or moving required positions), and real object modelling. An object is described by a set of mass points on its contour. The evolution algorithm runs in two phases dealing successively with forces and constraints (which are presented as reaction forces).

A modelling system for complex deformable bodies suited to animation and collision processing

We propose an integrated set of methods for designing and animating bodies whose deformable flesh coats an articulated skeleton. The proposed methods provide good automatic positioning of the ‘skin’ after movements, and automatic deformation after collisions with rigid or deformable objects (dynamic or static). The response to collisions includes a feedback from the flesh to the skeleton, whose movement is adequately modified. Moreover, coating the skeleton gives an easy solution to closed loop collisions and angle constraints control. Our model is modular and gives some high level control to the user.

On the effect of join operations on relation sizes

We propose a generating function approach to the problem of evaluating the sizes of derived relations in a relational database framework. We present a model of relations and show how to use it to deduce probabilistic estimations of derived relation sizes. These are found to asymptotically follow normal distributions under a variety of assumptions.

Fast and accurate hierarchical radiosity using global visibility

Recent hierarchical global illumination algorithms permit the generation of images with a high degree of realism. Nonetheless, appropriate refinement of light transfers, high quality meshing, and accurate visibility calculation can be challenging tasks. This is particularly true for scenes containing multiple light sources and scenes lit mainly by indirect light. We present solutions to these problems by extending a global visibility data structure, the Visibility Skeleton. This extension allows us to calculate exact point-to-polygon form-factors at vertices created by subdivision. The structures also provides visibility information for all light interactions, allowing intelligent refinement strategies. High-quality meshing is effected based on a perceptualy based ranking strategy which results in appropriate insertions of discontinuity curves into the meshes representing illumination. We introduce a hierarchy of triangulations that allows the generation of a hierarchical radiosity solution using accurate visibility and meshing. Results of our implementation show that our new algorithm produces high quality view-independent lighting solutions for direct illumination, for scenes with multiple lights and also scenes lit mainly by indirect illumination.