Browse Theses

Computer generated shaded images have evolved to a stage of extreme realism and can easily be confused for photographs of "real" objects. Such imitation of realism has been the major thrust of computer graphic research in recent years with efforts to model such physical phenomena as light reflection, surface texture, shadows, and transparency. Although this realism has been successful in imitating photographs, several applications exist in which the viewers are more interested in an exact knowledge of the three dimensional shape of the surface than simply a realistic shaded reproduction. The goal of this research is to investigate interactive techniques for displaying shaded images with enhanced three dimensionality. Two basic approaches are investigated: direct rendering and viewing of shape information, and imitation of visual perception stimuli. The first approach consists of directly rendering depth and normal information into the frame buffer and examining meaningful ways of viewing the information. The second approach uses the results of research in the field of visual perception to generate cues for enhanced three dimensional visualization. The stimulations which are investigated are texture gradients, gradients of illumination, binocular stereopsis, and motion. Each technique is investigated in an interactive environment to allow greater control over the shape analysis.