Realistic rendering of clouds involves solving the complex interaction of light within the cloud and with its environment. Interactive methods achieve efficient cloud rendering by ignoring several lighting effects. However, these effects are visually important, and removing them strongly reduces realism. We present a novel approach for capturing the important effects of multiple anisotropic Mie...

This paper introduces the notion of “tangible business model sketches” – interactive sculpture-like mechanisms – to stimulate discussions concerning how businesses create and capture value. We outline the need for opening up discussions around innovation that these models address and their proposed utility for designers. We present three examples that model aspects of lighting design, audiology...

Shadows and complex lighting are an essential part of realistic rendering, however they can be computationally expensive (such as path tracing shadows). Therefore image-based methods, Shadow and Environment Mapping (See figure 1), are used to accelerate and approximate these effects in interactive real-time rendering. Shadow mapping is an old technique [Williams 78], but very widely used and de...

Global illumination algorithms are regarded as computationally intensive. This cost is a practical problem when producing animations or when interactions with complex models are required. Several algorithms have been proposed to address this issue. Roughly, two families of methods can be distinguished. The first one aims at providing interactive feedback for lighting design applications. The se...

In lighting design and architectural illumination planning simulations of luminance and illuminance distributions within scenes are performed using rendering tools such as RADIANCE. In this paper we focus on the evaluation by two action spectra other than the luminous efficiency function – the circadian action function describing the melatonin suppression and the photosynthesis action function....

There are many different approaches to real-time rendering of smoke. In this work, three different methods were tested and evaluated. Soft particles proved to be a reliable method to render smoke as particles doesn't have visible intersections with the scene. Smoke with volumetric lighting resulted in thick white convincing smoke, but it's too unstable to be used commercially. The soft particle...

Obscurances, from which ambient occlusion is a particular case, is a technology that produces natural-looking lighting effects in a faster way than global illumination. Its application in volume visualization is of special interest since it permits us to generate a high quality rendering at a low cost. In this paper, we propose an obscurancebased framework that allows us to obtain realistic and...

A high precision interactive planetary rendering system provides an important platform for many GIS applications. This paper presents a novel full-scale planetary rendering solution with a workload that is efficient and balanced on integrated CPU/GPU platforms. Our system generates highly accurate geometry on the fly on CPU and graphics lighting and shading on integrated GPU, while incorporatin...

Programming is a process of formalizing and codifying knowledge, and, as a result, programming languages are designed for generalists trained in this process of formalization. Artists, whose training focuses on skill and tacit knowledge, are marginalized by existing tools. By designing visual languages that take advantage of an artist’s skills in visual perception and expression, we can allow t...