Pacific Graphics is an international conference on computer graphics and applications. The conference will provide a forum for researchers, developers, and practitioners to exchange ideas and discuss future directions of computer graphics. The past two conferences were held in Korea (1993) and China (1994), and future conferences are planned in Taiwan (1996), Korea (1997), and Singapore (1998).
Warping and morphing permeate the realm of computer graphics. This classic book defines the field: it presents a unifying view of warping and morphing, combining a conceptual framework with a consolidated view of the state of the art. Coverage includes deformations of various graphical objects such as plane curves, images, surfaces, and volumes. The authors developed a full-featured warping and morphing system, Morphos, where several types of graphical objects and computation techniques coexist. Morphos is included on the companion CD-ROM. This book and CD-ROM offer the most comprehensive professional reference available on warping and morphing techniques. Together they are the complete source for both researchers whose main interests are in the mathematical and conceptual foundations and computer graphics professionals who need to incorporate more warping and morphing techniques into their applications. Features: *The latest warping and morphing techniques and examples *An entire chapter on image-based rendering techniques and how they relate to warping and morphing *Companion CD-ROM containing source code and documentation for the Morphos system *Links to www.visgraf.impa.br/morph/, which provides an online bibliography and pointers to other regularly updated morphing websites
After nearly half a century of research, the Holy Grail of the ?eld of art- cial intelligence (AI) remains a comprehensive computational model capable of emulating the marvelous abilities of animals, including locomotion, p- ception, behavior, manipulation, learning, and cognition. The comprehensive modeling of higher animals –humans and other primates –remains elusive; However, the research documented in this monograph achieves nothing less than a functional computer model of certain species of lower animals that are by no means trivial in their complexity. Reported herein is the 1996 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award winning work of Xiaoyuan Tu, which she carried out in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. Tu presents “arti?cial ?shes”, a rema- able computational model of familiar marine animals in their natural habitat. Originally conceived in the context of computer graphics, Tu’s is to date the only PhD dissertation from this major sub?eld of computer science (and the only thesis from a Canadian university) to win the coveted ACM award.
Shape interrogation is the process of extraction of information from a geometric model. It is a fundamental component of Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) systems. This book provides a bridge between the areas geometric modeling and solid modeling. Apart from the differential geometry topics covered, the entire book is based on the unifying concept of recasting all shape interrogation problems to the solution of a nonlinear system. It provides the mathematical fundamentals as well as algorithms for various shape interrogation methods including nonlinear polynomial solvers, intersection problems, differential geometry of intersection curves, distance functions, curve and surface interrogation, umbilics and lines of curvature, and geodesics.
This text should be suitable for researchers, professors, practitioners, students and other computing professionals interested in the topic of computer graphics.
Predicting the future is a risky game, and can often leave egg on one’s face. However when the organizers of the Intelligent Virtual Environments workshop at the European Conference on AI predicted that the field of Intelligent Virtual Agents would grow and mature rapidly, they were not wrong. From this small workshop spawned the successful one on Intelligent Virtual Agents, held in Manchester in 1999. This volume comprises the proceedings of the much larger third workshop held in Madrid, September 10 11, 2001, which successfully achieved the aim of taking a more international focus, bringing together researchers from all over the world. We received 35 submissions from 18 different countries in America, Asia, and Africa. The 16 papers presented at the conference and published here show the high quality of the work that is currently being done in this field. In addition, five contributions were selected as short papers, which were presented as posters at the workshop. This proceedings volume also includes the two prestigious papers presented at the workshop by our keynote speakers: Daniel Thalmann, Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne and Director of the Computer Graphics Lab., who talked about The Foundations to Build a Virtual Human Society. Jeff Rickel, Project Leader at the Information Sciences Institute and a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, who debated about Intelligent Virtual Agents for Education and Training: Opportunities and Challenges.
'HyperReality is a technological capability like nanotechnology, human cloning and artificial intelligence. Like them, it does not as yet exist in the sense of being clearly demonstrable and publicly available. Like them, it is maturing in laboratories where the question "if" has been replaced by the question "when?" and like them, the implications of its appearance as a basic infrastructure technology are profound and merit careful consideration.' - Nobuyoshi Terashima What comes after the Internet? Imagine a world where it is difficult to tell if the person standing next to you is real or a virtual reality, and whether they have human intelligence or artificial intelligence; a world where people can appear to be anything they want to be. HyperReality makes this possible. HyperReality offers a window into the world of the future, an interface between the natural and artificial. Nobuyoshi Terashima led the team that developed the prototype for HyperReality at Japan's ATT laboratories. John Tiffin studied they way HyperReality would create a new communications paradigm. Together with a stellar list of contributors from around the globe who are engaged in researching different aspects of HyperReality, they offer the first account of this extraordinary technology and its implications. This fascinating book explores the defining features of HyperReality: what it is, how it works and how it could become to the information society what mass media was to the industrial society. It describes ongoing research into areas such as the design of virtual worlds and virtual humans, and the role of intelligent agents. It looks at applications and ways in which HyperReality may impact on fields such as translation, medicine, education, entertainment and leisure. What are its implications for lifestyles and work, for women and the elderly: Will we grow to prefer the virtual worlds we create to the physical world we adapt to? HyperReality at the beginning of the third millennium is like steam power at the beginning of the nineteenth century and radio at the start of the twentieth century, an idea that has been shown to work but has yet to be applied. This book is for anyone concerned about the future and the effects of technology on our lives.