Path-space Exploration for Light Transport and Appearance Modelling

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My research models and simulates the physics behind visual phenomena that shape our understanding of the world whether it's the awe-inspiring colours of a sunset sky, the glistening of brushed metallic plates, the focussed light on a sunny pool floor, or the rays of light bouncing off your wall from that disco ball in your living room.By building mathematical formulations rooted firmly in the physics of these and other phenomena, my lab is able to develop novel computer algorithms for solving the equations of light transport and generating synthetic images that are indistinguishable from real photos. This requires developing software tools to help digital artists more easily author compelling 3D content for our simulators, as well as improving the capabilities of these simulators to handle more complex and realistic lighting effects.My proposed research program will make progress on three fronts: new, more accurate mathematical analyses of light transport in real-world scenes; more efficient lighting simulators built atop these models; and, artist-friendly digital content creation tools that use these simulators to design more realistic 3D content.Specifically for this proposed research program, we will perform a unique, first-principles analysis of path-space: an abstract mathematical space of energy-carrying paths that contribute to an image's formation (whether in the real or virtual world). In doing so, we will build new theoretical insights about the form and structure of this space, and these insights will drive us to design new powerful numerical algorithms to solve lighting equations more efficiently and more accurately. Lastly, in gaining a better sense of how the dynamics of lighting operates in this space, we will devise unique content creation tools capable of exposing these intuitions to digital artists and facilitating their artistic designs.Academically, this work is of interest most immediately to the computer graphics and rendering communities, where efficient lighting simulation and digital content creation remain two of the most important challenges. More broadly, the mathematical models and numerical techniques my lab will develop during the course of this research will contribute to problems in the areas of computational physics, statistics, applied mathematics, and high-performance computing.As the digital media industry is one of the largest economic drivers in Canada, this research will be the first to solve important open challenges that have immediate applications in video gaming, visual effects, architectural design, virtual and augmented reality, and product design industries.