Broad Area Colloquium For AI-Geometry-Graphics-Robotics-Vision
(CS 528)
Modeling by Drawing
Adam Finkelstein
Computer Science Department
Princeton University
Monday, Nov. 10, 2003, 4:15PM
TCSeq 200
http://graphics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
Abstract
Today's desktop graphics technology can soundly outperform the million dollar
3D graphics workstation of a decade ago. However, this revolution in 3D
performance has had only a modest impact on people's lives. One reason is that
the average person does not create 3D content -- it's too difficult with
existing tools. This might explain why the most noticeable impact of 3D
graphics is entertainment: the game and movie industries can afford to hire
trained experts to painstakingly create beautifully-detailed scenes.
Why should it be so hard to create 3D content? After all, many of us find it
easy to sketch out a rough illustration of using a pencil or chalk board. As
palmtop and tablet-PC devices are beginning to proliferate, we should be able
to use such devices to sketch out our ideas at a coffee shop, the way we might
use a napkin today. School teachers, architects, clothing and industrial
designers, and story tellers should be able to easily create illustrations
involving 3D shapes by somehow sketching with a computer.
In this talk I will describe our own efforts and those of others to make such
applications possible. I will argue that a key enabling technology is
"non-photorealistic rendering" (NPR). This relatively new field of computer
graphics seeks to leverage principles that artists and illustrators have
developed over many centuries for conveying information. I will survey NPR
research, and describe some of the challenges and new directions for the field.
About the Speaker
Adam Finkelstein is an associate professor of computer science at Princeton
University. His research interests in computer graphics include
non-photorealistic rendering, multiresolution techniques, animation, and
applications of computer graphics in art. He received his Ph.D. from the
University of Washington in 1996. From 1987 to 1990, he was a software
engineer at Tibco where he wrote software for people who trade stock. He was an
undergraduate student at Swarthmore College (class of 1987) where he studied
(occasionally) physics and computer science.
Contact: bac-coordinators@cs.stanford.edu
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