CAREER: Light: A Fundamental Primitive for Computer Graphics

在计算机图形学中创建虚拟环境或对象的过程通常开始于对环境中的对象以及任何灯光的几何和表面属性进行建模。已经花费了巨大的努力来开发计算机辅助设计系统，该系统允许对复杂的几何和材料属性进行规范。同样，已经进行了大量的工作来生产模拟光在虚拟环境中的传播的系统，以创建逼真的图像。尽管做出了这些努力，但要再现现实世界中复杂的几何图形和微妙的灯光效果仍然是困难或不可能的。通过使用相机、结构光、测距仪和机械传感设备的某种组合直接从真实世界捕获对象的几何和材质属性，可以潜在地绕过建模问题。成功后，可以将结果输入渲染程序，以创建真实对象和场景的图像。不幸的是，这些系统仍然无法完全捕获几何和材料属性中的小细节。现有的渲染方法在忠实地再现真实世界照明的能力方面也继续受到限制，即使给出了准确的几何模型。该项目将开发使用光(辐射度)表示作为计算机图形学的基本基元的技术。该基元将增强计算机图形学中使用的传统的基于几何的基元。该框架将为复杂模型的完整外观提供统一的编码方法，并允许以独立于其几何或照明复杂性的速度重新渲染对象。此外，这个框架将允许人们使用摄像机来采样真实世界场景或环境的辐射信息。然后，可以适当地组织该采样信息，以允许从任何视点处的任何虚拟摄像机以交互方式重新显示场景。这项研究是基础的，因为它探索了一种全新的计算机图形学基元。该基元是表示场景中存在的复杂视觉信息的最自然的方式之一。这项研究将促进对捕获的真实世界场景的交互查看。没有其他已知的方法能够直接表示由摄像机捕获的信息，并使用该信息来交互生成新的逼真图像。该项目的成功将在仿真、交互式虚拟环境、计算机教育、物体的可视存档以及物体在3D星表中的外观的透射率等多个领域产生影响。

The process of creating a virtual environment or object in computer graphics typically begins with modeling the geometric and surface attributes of the objects in the environment along with any lights. Great effort has been expended to develop computer aided design systems that allow the specification of complex geometry and material attributes. Similarly, a great deal of work has been undertaken to produce systems that simulate the propagation of light through virtual environments to create realistic images. Despite these efforts, it has remained difficult or impossible to recreate much of the complex geometry and subtle lighting effects found in the real world. The modeling problem can potentially be bypassed by capturing the geometry and material properties of objects directly from the real world using some combination of cameras, structured light, range finders, and mechanical sensing devices. When successful, the results can be fed into a rendering program to create images of real objects and scenes. Unfortunately, these systems are still unable to completely capture small details in geometry and material properties. Existing rendering methods also continue to be limited in their capability to faithfully reproduce real world illumination, even if given accurate geometric models. This project will develop techniques for using a representation of light (radiance) as a basic primitive for computer graphics. This primitive will augment the traditional geometry-based primitives used in computer graphics. This framework will provide a unified method for encoding the complete appearance of a complex model, and allow the rerendering of an object at speeds independent of the its geometric or lighting complexity. Moreover, this framework will allow one to use a video camera to sample the radiance information of a real world scene or environment. This sampled information can then be organized properly to allow for redisplay of the scene interactively from any virtual camera at any viewpoint. The research is fundamental in that it explores an entirely novel primitive for computer graphics. This primitive is one of the most natural ways to represent the complicated visual information present in a scene. The research will facilitate the interactive viewing of captured real world scenes. No other known method has the ability to directly represent the information captured by a video camera, and use this information for interactive generation of new realistic images. The success of this project will have impact in such diverse fields as simulation, interactive virtual environments computer education, the visual archival of objects, and the transmittance of the appearance of objects in 3D catalogs.