Scattering

Saturday, 19 December | 5:30 AM - 9:15 AM | Room 511/512

Most computer-generated imagery represents scenes with clear atmospheres, neglecting light scattering effects. But scattering is a fundamental aspect of light transport in a wide range of applications, whether one is simulating it or interpreting it, from medical imaging to driving simulators or underwater imagery. This course addresses the challenges associated with light scattering in a computer-graphics context. The field has seen great advances over the past few years, but most of the existing algorithms still assume that light emitted by a source or reflected off a surface reaches the sensor unaltered. This is due mainly to the complex interactions that occur and the high computational costs of simulating them. Scattering effects are one fundamental hurdle that must be overcome to significantly extend and enhance current state-of-the-art graphics techniques and achieve successful effects in a wide range of domains. This course is designed to increase awareness about this area and reveal new research directions. 

Level

Intermediate

Presentation Language

Presented in English

Prerequisites

No specific knowledge of scattering is required, although basic knowledge of general 3D computer graphics and vision terms and techniques is assumed. A corresponding mathematical background is also helpful.

Instructor(s)

Diego Gutierrez 
Universidad de Zaragoza

Henrik Wann Jensen 
University of California, San Diego

Wojciech Jarosz
Disney Research Zürich

Craig Donner 
Columbia University

Instructor Bio(s)

Diego Gutierrez
Diego Gutierrez is an associate professor at Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain, where he received his PhD in computer science. His areas of expertise include physically based global illumination (specializing in participating media), perception, and novel image-processing techniques. He has recently chaired the SIGGRAPH Asia Sketches & Posters program (2008), is currently on the Technical Papers Committee for SIGGRAPH 2009, and was Papers Chair for ACM Graphite in 2006. He has served on many other international conference committees, including SIGGRAPH (Sketches), Eurographics (Papers), and SIGGRAPH Asia (Courses).
Henrik Wann Jensen
Henrik Wann Jensen is an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego. His contributions to computer graphics include the photon-mapping algorithm for global illumination and the first technique for efficiently simulating subsurface scattering in translucent materials. In 2004, he received an Academy Award (Technical  Achievement Award) from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for pioneering research in rendering translucent materials. He also became a Sloan Fellow and was selected as one of the top 10 scientists in 2004 by Popular Science magazine.

Wojciech Jarosz
Wojciech Jarosz's main research interest is production-quality global illumination techniques, specifically for participating media, and his current list of publications includes three SIGGRAPH papers on those topics. He received his BS in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his MS in computer science from the University of California, San Diego 

Craig Donner
Craig Donner is currently a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University. His core research interests are appearance modeling and global illumination in the context of photorealistic image synthesis, as well as acquisition and modeling of light transport in complex materials. He has served on the international papers committee for the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering for the past two years and has many publications concerning light scattering, including five SIGGRAPH papers and three journal articles.