Thursday, June 25, 2009

Michael F. Cohen, John R. Wallace - Radiosity and Realistic Image Synthesis




Michael F. Cohen, John R. Wallace - Radiosity and Realistic Image Synthesis (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics):
Morgan Kaufmann | ISBN: 0121782700 | 1993-08-04 | PDF (OCR) | 381 pages | 5.84 Mb

The first comprehensive book written about Radiosity. Features applications from the fields of computer graphics, architecture, industrial design, and related computer aided design technologies. Contains a chapter authored by Pat Hanrahan on the basic concepts of image synthesis and a foreword by Donald Greenberg.

Radiosity is a computer graphics technique which makes use a global illumination model to accurately represent the inter-reflection of light between surfaces. The technique produces view-independent results, so that most of the work is complete before viewing parameters are selected. This allows efficient interactive walk-throughs of simulated environments. However, radiosity is the most computationally expensive image generation technique. Most other image generation techniques make use of local illumination models and give faster image generation times.

The method is based on engineering techniques which were originally used to calculate radiant interchange between surfaces, for applications such as boiler and radiator design. The literature available has expanded rapidly in the past ten years and until now there has been no single comprehensive source describing the available techniques. This book is a comprehensive source and is written by respected names in the field of computer graphics.

The book starts with the derivation of a global illumination model (i.e. maths) and then moves on to finite element methods and domain subdivision (i.e. more maths). The final three chapters briefly deal with image production, extensions to the basic radiosity technique and applications for radiosity, such as architectural and lighting design. The bibliography consists of 274 entries.

In order to make the most of this book you will need a solid background in computer graphics and graduate level maths. The radiosity technique is only a part of the image generation process and to make practical use of the information contained in the book you will need an existing graphics system. This will allow you to attach the radiosity elements described in the book to your existing system, once you've managed to implement them! This is _not_ a type-and-go book, like some of the ray tracing texts available. There is no disc containing a complete ready to run system and the code fragments which are given are in pseudo code. You should be prepared to invest a large amount of time and effort if you intend to produce a working system from the information contained in the book.

There are 16 pages of full colour images and over 100 illustrations to explain the development and show the results of the radiosity method. Results of applications of this new technology from a variety of fields are also included.

If you are a Computer Graphics Student or Professional then this book is something you should look at if you're serious about radiosity; there is nothing else like it available.

About the authors
Michael Cohen has worked in the area of realistic image synthesis since 1983 and was instrumental in the development of the radiosity method. He is currently an assistant professor of computer science at Princeton University. John Wallace is a software engineer at 3D/EYE, Inc., where he is the project leader for the development of Hewlett-Packard's ATRCore radiosity and ray tracing library. A chapter on the basic concepts of image synthesis is contributed by Patrick Hanrahan. He has worked on the topic of image synthesis at Pixar, where he was instrumental in the development of the Renderman software. He has also led research on the hierarchical methods at Princeton University, where he is an associate professor of computer science. All three authors have written numerous articles on radiosity that have appeared in the SIGGAPH proceedings and elsewhere.
They have also taught the SIGGRAPH course on radiosity for 5 years.



----------------
Now playing: Jose Feliciano& Marc Anthony - [? #00] Oye Guitarra Mia [foobar2000 v0.9.6.8]
via FoxyTunes