Abstract

Full Paper. Session: Futures and Heritages / Meta interfaces and media spaces

Keywords: Dynamic Paintings, Interactive Paintings, Web-Based Artistic Interfaces

In this work, we present an approach to creating dynamic paintings that can be re-rendered interactively in real-time on the web. Using this approach, any existing painting can be turned into an interactive web-based dynamic artwork. Our interactive system provides most global illumination effects such as reflection, refraction, shadow, and subsurface scattering by processing images. In our system, the scene is defined only by a set of images. These include (1) A shape image, (2) two diffuse images, (3) one background image, (4) one foreground image, and (5) one transparency image. A shape image is either a normal map or height. Two diffuse images are usually hand-painted. They are interpolated using illumination information. The transparency image is used to define the transparent and reflective regions that can reflect the foreground image and refract the background image, both of which are also hand-drawn. This framework that mainly uses hand-drawn images provides qualitatively convincing painterly global illumination effects such as reflection and refraction. We also include parameters to provide additional artistic controls. For instance, using our piece-wise linear Fresnel function it is possible to control the ratio of reflection and refraction. This system is a result of a long line of research contributions. On the other hand, the art-directed Fresnel function that provides physically plausible compositing of reflection and refraction with artistic control is completely new. The art-directed warping equations that provide qualitatively convincing refraction and reflection effects with linearized artistic control are also new. You can try our web-based system for real-time interactive dynamic paintings at http://mock3d.tamu.edu/. This work is the result of several thesis and capstone projects by Anusha Shanker, Yinan Xiong, Ani Barseghyan, and Motahareh Fard that span almost five years. http://mock3d.tamu.edu

• Dr. Ergun Akleman is a Professor in the Departments of Visualization & Computer Science and Engineering in Texas A&M University (USA) since 1995. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1992. He is also a professional cartoonist who published more than 500 cartoons. He has a bi-monthly corner called Computing through Time in the Flagship magazine of IEEE Computer Society, IEEE Computer. He has illustrated and written several children’s books. He had more than 150 publications in leading journals and conferences in wide variety of disciplines from computer graphics, computer-aided design, and mathematics to art, architecture and social sciences. Almost 100 students received graduate degrees under his direct supervision. Most of his former students now work in companies such as PIXAR, Disney, DreamWorks, Digital Domain, Google, Amazon and Facebook.
• Anusha Shanker, Yinan Xiong & Motahareh Shafiei Fard