CS 348b Spring 2003 Rendering Competition

These images were created for the rendering competition in CS 348b: Image Synthesis Techniques, taught by Matt Pharr in the Spring quarter of 2003. Ian Buck was the TA for the class.

The judges for the competition were:

• Dan Goldman from ILM
• Pat Hanrahan from the Stanford Graphics Lab
• Eric Veach from Google

Grand Prize
	Nighttime Snow on Trees by Pramod Kumar Sharma and Guillaume Poncin Pramod and Guillaume rendered a spectarularly realistic image image of a snow-covered Christmas tree at dusk and won a trip to SIGGRAPH 2003 for their efforts. They modeled the snow with meta-balls, used an L-system to model the tree, added a glow effect to make the lights on the trees look better, wrote an improved photon mapping algorithm for global illumination, and implemented a subsurface scattering algorithm to render realistic snow.
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First Prize
	Jade Buddha by Huamin Wang Huamin implemented a fast subsurface scattering light transport algorithm to render the "Happy Buddha" model.
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Honorable Mentions (In no particular order)
	Image-Based Lighting by Eric Lee Eric woke up very early one morning to capture a light probe image of the Stanford quad. He then used the illumination from the light probe to render images of car models under that lighting and then composited the results into a background image of the quad.
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	Rendering Realistic Animal Fur by Michael Turitzin and Jared Jacobs Michael and Jared implemented Kajiya and Kay's texel-based algorithm for rendering fur and then used it to render a realistic image of a dog standing on a rug.
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	Rendering Realistic Night Skies by Patricia (Sha Sha) Chu and Darren Lewis Patricia and Darren used a reflection model for rendering the moon and an atmospheric scattering model to simulate the night-time atmosphere to create images of Stanford's Hoover Tower at night. To the delight of the judges from the film production world, they worked around last-minute bugs with clever image compositing.
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	Rendering Ice Sculptures by Rene Patnode and Evan Parker Rene and Evan rendered images of scenes with objects made out of ice, including one with a rose model inside a block of ice. They used a variety of light transport algorithms to simulate light traveling through ice and implemented a volume scattering model to account for the the effect of air bubbles suspended in ice.
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Other Cool Submissions (In no particular order)
	Furry Bunny by Augusto Roman Augusto grew hair on the Stanford Bunny model and rendered images of it covered in fur. Up to half a million hairs were necessary to get realistic images.
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	Jellyfish by Brendan Dixon and Walter Shen Brendan and Walter rendered images of a bioluminescent jellyfish by implementing volume rendering algorithms based on photon mapping.
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	Hybrid Haptic Rendering by Dan Morris and Neel Joshi Dan and Neel wrote a system that takes 3D information at each pixel from the rendering system and uses it to drive a haptic device, so that the viewer can feel the geometry in the scene. They then wrote an interactive OpenGL renderer that allowed them to render new objects into the scene, using the depth information from the image to correctly compute visibility with the original geometry.
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	Parametric Procedural Geometry by Jared Jackson Jared developed a shape description language for describing parametric geometry with s-expressions. At rendering-time, his code evaluates the given expressions to generate geometry for the scene.
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	Rendering Wax with Translucence by Jonathan Huang Jonathan rendered images of wax candles using subsurface scattering to accurately model their translucence.
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	Rendering Glare by Dale Neal Dale implemented algorithms that simulate the effect of the light scattering in the human eye that causes glare from bright lights.
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	In Search of the Perfect Grape by Philip Beatty and Joong Ho (Johann) Won Philip and Johann implemented volume scattering algorithms to simulate the effect of translucency in grapes. Not satisfied with procedurally-modeling the veins inside grapes, they used a MRI to accurately model this part of the grape.
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	Modeling the Formation of Sand Dunes by Ruwen Hess Ruwen implemented a complex physically-based model of sand dune formation to generate realistic heightfield models of sand dunes.
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	Tissue Study by Anthony Sherbondy Tony rendered images of CT data of the aorta using a subsurface light transport algorithm, in order to investigate realistic rendering of medical datasets for visualization.
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	Spectral Wavelength Dependent Rendering by Stace Peterson Stace implemented algorithms that simulate thin-film interference and wrote a procedural geometry generation creation program to generate models of bows.
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	Volumetric Texturing by Andreas Edlund and Tim Chao Andreas and Tim implemented a volumetric texturing technique and rendered images of a teddy bear sitting on a field of grass.
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	Alternative Sampling Patterns by Xiaohu Zhang Xiaohu implemented two new methods for generating high-quality sampling patterns for image sampling and compared their performance to jittered, low discrepancy, and best candidate techniques.
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