Stylized Environmental Rendering

Michael Lester

Background

• Rendering of natural environments is very difficult for photorealistic real-time graphics

• It is very expensive and the results are often unsatisfactory.

•

Stylized Rendering

• Generate images that appear don't adhere to real-world rules

• Convey information without being precise and complete

The Goal

• Apply artistic techniques to interactive graphics– Traditionally animated film– NPR research papers

• Solve rendering problems by using an NPR style

• Use the GPU as much as possible• Applicable to Games

How do artists solve the problem?

• They have it easy• Fixed viewpoint

allows for image-based effects

• Use several “tricks” that can be adapted to interactive graphics

“Deep” Grass

• Grass is simply a plane

• Artists create the illusion of depth

• Only the silhouette is significant

Applying to Graphics

• Graftals– Based on a paper by Markosian and

Kowalski– A small texture element attached to an

object– Represented with by a small geometric

“fin”

• Affected by viewing angle, distance, geometric collision, etc.

• Abstracts the scene complexity away from the geometry

The System

• Preprocessing – calculating intial graftal positions

• Level of Detail (LOD) – Scaling, Styling, Abstracting based on viewing distance

• Rendering – Drawing the graftals and silhouette edges

Progress

• Pure research for now• Code framework running– Development begins next week

• Eurographics 2011– Intend to submit a Short Paper

• Follow progress at– realtimemike.wordpress.com

Thank You!