Creating and Navigating Virtual Worlds
In this 3-part talk, I described a novel "constructive
path planning" approach to creating natural scenery,
I outlined an
acceleration to path planning based on a precomputed
hierarchical representation of the graph,
and I discussed some preliminary results from a project on
assisting game players to understand the barrage of
information relating to game events and game state.
Download the talk
Pareidolia
Pareidolia is the false recognition of a familiar object, such as
a face being seen in a cloud. In this talk, I discuss possibilities
for deliberately crafting images and models which contain hidden
images, evoking the sensation of pareidolia in the viewer.
Download the talk
Stippling
Stipples are small dots of ink used to create images. I describe an
automatic method for converting arbitrary input images into stippled images.
Unlike previous methods, this one places stipples preferentially on
image edges, as artists do.
Download the talk
Dendritic Modeling
Dendrites are branching structures commonly found in nature,
including trees, coral, lightning, and river systems. This talk
describes an approach to creating dendritic structures that depends
on least-cost paths through a weighted graph.
Download the talk
Improving Targeting with Visual Feedback
In cluttered environments with moving targets, such as those found
in many real-time strategy computer games, target selection using
the mouse is difficult. This talk describes the outcome of a
user study on the power of visual feedback to improve performance
in target selection tasks. While visual feedback does not improve
the time it takes to complete a task, it does reduce the error rate.
Download the talk
Image-Guided Cracks
This talk describes a method for visually embedding line drawings or text
in crack networks. The main algorithm is multi-source breadth-first
search through a weighted graph; by adjusting the weights both spatially
and temporally, image-guided images and image sequences can be created.
Download the talk
Wax Crayons
This talk describes a method for simulating wax crayons. A physically
inspired model of wax deposition produces a map of wax on the page, and
the Kubelka-Munk reflectance model gives the appearance of the page.
The overall system is able to produce lifelike crayon drawings.
Download the talk
Stained Glass
This talk describes a method for creating stained glass images.
An input image is segmented, the segments are divided into shapes
feasible for cutting from glass, and a color is chosen for each segment;
then, a custom rendering process produces the final stained glass image.
Download the talk