Title:Nucleus: Towards a Unified Dynamics Solver for Computer Graphics
Abstract:
In this talk I will present some research I have done over the past few years in developing a unified dynamics solver for computer graphics. Currently many solvers are specialized for a given phenomenon such as fluid flow, cloth, rigid bodies, hair, etc. Having these different solvers interact is sometimes problematic. We propose to model all matter as a linked particle system having the topology of a simplicial complex. The dynamical complex evolves due to external forces like gravity and constraints such as collisions and internal deformation energies. We use a solution scheme that iteratively updates the velocities to achieve all constraints. Key to the stability of our system is to interleave the solve for the different constraints. The talk will cover the main ideas and ingredients of our solver and will be accompanied with live demonstrations.
Bio:
A native of the Netherlands, Dr. Stam began his studies at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, where Stam received dual Bachelor of Science degrees in computer science and pure mathematics. In 1989, he moved to Canada, where he completed Masters and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the University of Toronto. Stam also worked for Alias, focusing on the advancement of particle systems for the company’s PowerAnimator software. Following postdoctoral studies in Paris and Helsinki, he returned to Alias in 1997. After a foray in Seattle, Stam settled in Toronto in 2003 as a senior research scientist with what is now Autodesk Research.
Stam was presented with the 2005 Computer Graphics Achievement Award at SIGGRAPH 2005. This honor recognized Stam's influence and groundbreaking work on subdivision surfaces and fast algorithms for the simulation of natural phenomena, especially fire, fluids and gases.
Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann
Title:Physical Behavior of Deformable Hair and Clothes: What Is Common?
Abstract:
As computers become computationally more powerful, the gap between virtual and physical reality is continuously diminishing. Striving for increased accuracy, computer simulations are becoming more and more specialized by the day – but are less capable of generalization. There is currently no comprehensive physically-based simulation approach for real-time animation of deformable objects within one unique framework. The first step required to tackle this challenge is to investigate invariant aspects in the correlation between dynamic behavior and physical properties of objects with different shape and consistency. In this paper we discuss the mechanical behavior of deformable one-dimensional rods and two-dimensional surfaces: hair and clothes
Bio:
Prof. Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann has pioneered research into virtual humans over the last 25 years. She obtained several Bachelor's and Master's degrees in various disciplines (Psychology, Biology and Chemistry) and a PhD in Quantum Physics from the University of Geneva. From 1977 to 1989, she was a Professor at the University of Montreal and led the research lab MIRALab in Canada. She moved to the University of Geneva in 1989, where she founded the Swiss MIRALab, an internationally interdisciplinary lab composed of about 30 researchers. She is author and coauthor of a very high number of research papers and books in the field of modeling virtual humans, interacting with them and in augmented life. She has received several scientific and artistic awards for her work, mainly on the Virtual Marylin and the film RENDEZ-VOUS A MONTREAL, but more recently, in 1997, she has been elected to the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences and has been nominated as a Swiss personality who has contributed to the advance of science in the 150 years history CD-ROM produced by the Swiss Confederation Parliament. She has directed and produced several films and real-time mixed reality shows, among the latest are the UTOPIANS (2001), THE AUGMENTED LIFE IN POMPEII (2004) and REAL-TIME TERRA-COTTA SOLDIERS (2006). She is editor-in-chief of the Visual Computer Journal published by Springer Verlag and coeditor- in -chief of the Computer Animation & Virtual Worlds journal published by John Wiley.
Daniel Cohen-Or
Title:Surface Reconstruction Techniques for Imperfect Raw-data
Abstract:
In my talk I will present some surface reconstruction techniques that handle imperfect data. Such data is common in raw scans and contains large missing parts, ghost outliers and under-sampled regions. We explore reconstruction techniques that focus on such problematic regions. Our general goal is recovering the expected shape in terms of global topology and local geometric detail. I will present different methods that focus on several essential problems of imperfect data reconstruction: In the first part I will present a deformable model method that recovers a watertight surface and well interprets the topology of imperfect scans. Then, I will briefly introduce an interactive topology-aware reconstruction method that uses minimal user input to correctly reconstruct regions where the topology of the model cannot be automatically induced. I will also show how the reconstruction can be improved with the use of local priors and a visibility prior. Then, I will present a registration technique that handle noisy data. The technique allows registering raw noisy data, possibly contaminated with outliers, without pre-filtering or denoising the data.
Finally, if time permits, I will present a novel approach based on the argument that man-made models can be distilled using a few special 1D wires and their mutual relations. Maintaining the properties of such a small number of wires allows preserving the defining characteristics of the entire object. The new method takes an analyze-and-edit approach, where prior to editing, it performs a light-weight analysis of the input shape to extract a descriptive set of wires. Analyzing the individual and mutual properties of the wires, and augmenting them with geometric attributes makes them intelligent and ready to be manipulated. Editing the object by modifying the intelligent wires leads to a powerful editing framework that retains the original design intent and object characteristics.
Bio:
Daniel Cohen-Or is a Professor at the School of Computer Science, Tel Aviv University. He received a B.Sc in both Mathematics and Computer Science (1985), an M.Sc in Computer Science (1986) from Ben-Gurion University, and a Ph.D from the Department of Computer Science (1991) at State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the recipient of the 2005 Eurographics Outstanding Technical Contributions Award. His research interests cover a wide range of computer graphics, with focus on motion and transformations, visibility techniques, shapes and surfaces, and point-based modeling. He also has interest in client/server 3D graphics applications, compression and streaming techniques, real-time walkthroughs, image-space techniques, morphing and volume graphics.
Prof. Daniel Cohen-Or is on the editorial board of a number of international journals, and a member of the program committees of several international conferences on visualization and computer graphics. Between 1996-8 he served as the Chairman of the Central Israel SIGGRAPH Chapter.
Dinesh Manocha Department of Computer Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Title:Interactive Sound Rendering
Abstract:
Extending the frontier of visual computing, a sound rendering utilizes sound to communicate information to a user and offers an alternative means of visualization. By harnessing the sense of hearing, audio rendering can further enhance a user’s experience in a multimodal virtual world. In addition to immersive environments, auditory display can provide a natural and intuitive human-computer interface for many desktop applications such as computer games, online virtual worlds, simulation and training. In this talk, I will give an overview of our recent work on sound synthesis and sound propagation. These include generating realistic physically-based sounds from rigid body dynamic simulations and liquid sounds based on bubble resonance and coupling with fluid simulators. We also describe new and fast algorithms for sound propagation based on improved numerical techniques and fast geometric sound propagation. Our algorithms improve the state of the art in sound propagation by almost 1-2 orders of magnitude and we demonstrate that it is indeed possible to perform interactive propagation in complex, dynamic environments by utilizing the computational capabilities of multi-core CPUs and many-core GPUs.
Bio:
Dinesh Manocha is currently the Phi Delta Theta/Mason Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley 1992. He received Junior Faculty Award in 1992, Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and NSF Career Award in 1995, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in 1996, Honda Research Initiation Award in 1997, and Hettleman Prize for Scholarly Achievements at UNC Chapel Hill in 1998. He has also received 12 best paper & panel awards at the ACM SuperComputing, ACM Multimedia, IEEE Visualization, ACM Solid Modeling, Pacific Graphics, IEEE VR, CAD, I/ITSEC and Eurographics Conferences.
His research has been sponsored by ARO, DARPA, DOE, Ford, Honda, Intel, Disney, Microsoft, NSF, ONR and RDECOM. He has published more than 260 papers in leading conferences and journals on computer graphics, geometric and solid modeling, robotics, symbolic and numeric computation, virtual environments and computational geometry. He has also served as a program committee member and program chair for more than 50 conferences in these areas. He has also served in the editorial boards of many leading journals.
Wei Sun
Title:BioCAD in Tissue Science and Engineering
Abstract:
CAD has been widely used in assisting engineering design, modeling, analysis, simulation and manufacturing. Advances in CAD/CAM, Information Technology and Bioengineering have evolved new applications of CAD in biomedicine, tissue engineering, and biotechnology. Such applications can be found, for example, in the design and modeling of orthopedics, medical devices and implants, modeling of biological systems, tissue organism and anatomy, and design of complicated tissue scaffolds and replacements. In emerging application of BioCAD, i.e., Biology and Biomedical Engineering centered Computer-Aided Design, CAD plays an important role in multi-scale modeling and representation of complex morphology, heterogeneity, and organizational structure of biological system, tissue and anatomy, particularly in computer-aided tissue engineering for biomimetic design, analysis, simulation and freeform fabrication of regenerative tissues, tissue scaffolds and substitutes. This presentation attempts to give a broad review of recent research and developments of BioCAD in biomedical and tissue engineering. An overview of tissue engineering, computer-aided tissue engineering and the emerging field of tissue science and engineering will be given. Methodology of 3D BioCAD model reconstruction from non-invasive medical imaging and reverse engineering will be described. Enabling BioCAD modeling and Rapid Prototyping for generation of medical physical models and the model application to bio-tissue representation and surgical planning will be introduced. Bio-CAD based heterogeneous tissue modeling and representation of tissue morphology, structure and physiological bio-blueprint for biomimetic designing complicated tissue scaffolds will be presented. Future application of BioCAD modeling for cell printing, pattern, assembling as well as for biofabrication of advanced biological model and tissue organ printing will also be presented.
Bio:
Dr. Wei Sun is currently appointed as Albert Soffa Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Drexel University. His research interests include Bio-modeling and Biofabrication, Computer-Aided Tissue Engineering, Bioengineering, CAD/CAM, and Solid Freeform Fabrication. His research has been supported by NSF, DARPA, NASA, NIST, ARL, and the private sectors. He has published over 250 technical articles and conducted over 120 invited national and international presentations. Dr. Sun is currently serving Editor-in-Chief for international journal of Biofabrication. He also serves Chair of Biomanufacturing Technical Committee in Manufacturing Engineering Division, American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), and Member of Editorial Board for 5 other technical journals. Dr. Sun received 2009 College of Engineering Outstanding Research Award from Drexel University, the Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award from the International Society for Automotive Engineers in 2003, the Professor of the Year Award in 2002 and the Outstanding Contribution to Graduate Teaching Award in 2004, Drexel University. Dr. Sun is an annual proposal reviewer and panelist for NSF, NIH, Chinese Natural National Science Foundation, Hong Kong, Canada, and Singapore Research Councils.
Jean-Claude LEON
Title:Prospective analysis for CAD-FEM integration and other product views
Abstract:
The concept of product view and the corresponding required models is a basic constituent of a product development process where shape transformations are repeatedly encountered. Here, topological and geometric issues are identified and major shape modeling principles are studied. As a result, some core concepts of a framework for product view integration are proposed and justified. Notions of mixed shape representation and layered topological representation are briefly outlined as part of the proposed framework. Categories of operators enabling the required shape transformations are also shortly introduced as element of the proposed framework.
Bio:
Pr. Jean-Claude LEON
Professor at Grenoble Institute of Technology, Water, Energy, Environment Engineering faculty, vice-director of the Mechanical engineering faculty during nine years. Head of the Integrated Design research team of Laboratory 3S during 4 years. Performing research at the Laboratory G-SCOP.
Member of the European network of excellence AIM@SHAPE.
PhD in Automation from Ecole Centrale Paris, MSc in Mechanics from Ecole Normale Supérieure Cachan.
The research area addressed cover the design of methods, algorithms aiding at the design of industrial products based on the concepts of digital mock-up, rapid prototyping, concurrent and collaborative engineering. More precisely, the research activities focus on the CAD/FEA link, the multiple shapes of the product during the design phase (manufacturing model, assembly model, simulation models, VR models,…). A strong know-how has been gained in the field geometric modelling, mesh generation and transformation, free-form surfaces deformation and variational geometry. Synergies between computer science and mechanical engineering are of particular interest
Author and co-author of 65 papers in international journals and over 180 papers in international and national conferences.
International Program Committee member in more than 25 international conferences.
Jean-Daniel Fekete
Title:
Visualizing Networks using Adjacency Matrices: Progresses and Challenges
Abstract:
Visualizing networks has become a very important research and application topic in the recent years, due to the availability of network data through the web, but also to the need of analyzing several types of networks such as computer networks, social networks, biological networks (e.g. gene similarities or biological pathways). Until 2000, the node-link diagram was the only representation used. However, this representation suffers from many readability issues when the network becomes dense. In 2003, we showed that the adjacency matrix representation was more effective to visualize networks when they were dense. In out talk, we will present new methods designed by our group and others to make adjacency matrices usable for network analysis and exploration. We will explore various alternatives around the matrix representations (combined views, augmented matrices, hybrid node-link and matrix views), interaction and navigation methods for very large networks and algorithmic methods to reorder the matrices in order to show high-level structures. We will conclude with some research challenges ahead in matrix-based visualization of networks.
Bio:
Jean-Daniel Fekete received his PhD from the Universitée Paris-Sud in 1997. He headed the “Interactive Design and Modeling” group of the Ecole des Mines de Nantes in 2000, was invited at the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory of the University of Maryland at College Park in 2001-2002. He is a researcher at INRIA since 2002. He heads the AVIZ Research team since 2007 (www.aviz.fr), which also belongs to the Microsoft-Research/INRIA Joint Research Centre in Saclay. AVIZ studies analysis and visualization of large datasets, combining machine learning approaches with information visualization and multiscale interaction techniques to help analysts explore and understand massive data. Jean-Daniel's research topics include network visualization, evaluation of information visualization systems, and toolkits for user interfaces and information visualization. His research is applied in several fields such as biology, history, sociology, digital libraries, and business intelligence. Jean-Daniel Fekete’s research interests include Human-Computer Interaction, Information Visualization and Visual Analytics. He authored more than 70 articles in journals and conferences. He is member of the editorial board of the “International Journal of Human-Computer Studies”, co-founder of the Information Visualization Contest, an event that takes place every year during the InfoVis conference since 2003 and co paper-chair of the IEEE InfoVis Conference in 2009.
Shaochen Chen
Title:NanoManufacturing: Challenges and Opportunities from Design to Fabrication
Abstract:
The National Science Foundation (NSF) provided approximately $27 million in Fiscal Year 2008 for fundamental research and education in nanomanufacturing in the United States, mostly to colleges and universities, with some support provided to small businesses. The core Nanomanufacturing Program emphasizes scale-up of nanotechnology to increase the production rate, reliability, robustness, yield, and efficiency of manufacturing processes and reduce the cost of nanotechnology products and services. Nanomanufacturing capitalizes on the special material properties and processing capabilities at the nanoscale, promotes integration of nanostructures to functional micro devices and meso/macroscale architectures and systems, and addresses interfacing issues across dimensional scales. The program promotes multi-functionality across all energetic domains, including mechanical, thermal, fluidic, chemical, biochemical, electromagnetic, optical etc. The focus incorporates a systems approach, encompassing nanoscale materials and structures, fabrication and integration processes, production equipment and characterization instrumentation, theory/modeling/simulation and control tools, biomimetic design and integration of multiscale functional systems, and industrial application. In this talk, I will overview research projects recently funded in the Design and Nanomanufacturing Programs at NSF.
Bio:
Dr. Chen is the Program Director of NanoManufacturing at NSF. He is on leave from the University of Texas at Austin where he is a Henderson Centennial Endowed Faculty Fellow and Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department. Dr. Chen received a B.E. degree from Tsinghua University in 1989 and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1999. His current research interest includes nanophotonics, nanomanufacturing, biomaterials and nanomedicine, ultrafast science and engineering, thermal / fluid Transport in micro and nano-systems.
Dr. Chen received a CAREER Award from NSF in 2001, an Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers in 2002, and a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research in 2004. He received AIAA Best Paper award in 2006. He is a committee member of the ASME Nanotechnology Institute and IEEE Nanotechnology Council. Dr. Chen is an Associate Editor of ASME Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering and Journal of Biomedical Nanotechnology. He is an editor of a book – “Nanomanufacturing” (ASP, 2009) and serves on the Editorial Board of journal – Nanomedicine and Biofabrication. He was as a Guest Editor in 2003 for IEEE Transactions on Advanced Packaging: Special Issue on NEMS/MEMS Packaging. Dr. Chen is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and a Fellow of the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE).
Yoshinori Dobashi
Title:
Simulation of Various Natural Phenomena based on Computational Fluid Dynamics
Abstract:
Visual simulation of natural phenomena has become one of the most important research topics in computer graphics. Such phenomena include water, fire, smoke, clouds, and so on. Recent methods for the simulation of these phenomena make use of the techniques developed in computational fluid dynamics. In this talk, I will briefly review the basic equations (Navier-Stokes equations) for simulating these phenomena. Then, I will explain how the basic equations are extended to various natural phenomena. Especially, I will explain details of our researches related
to fluids, such as simulation of smoke, clouds, water, and aerodynamic sound.
Bio:
Yoshinori Dobashi is an associate professor at Hokkaido University in the graduate school of information science and technology, Japan since 2006. His research interests center in computer graphics including lighting simulation, fluid simulation, realistic image synthesis, and so on. He published 4 Siggraph papers and 8 Eurographics papers, among them, one paper received the Best Paper Award of Eurographics1995. Dobashi received his BE, ME and Ph.D in Engineering in 1992, 1994, and 1997, respectively, from Hiroshima University. He worked at Hiroshima City University from 1997 to 2000 as a research associate.
Yizhou Yu
Title:
Hierarchical and Wavelet-Based Multilinear Models for Multi-Dimensional Visual Data Approximation
Abstract:
Visual data comprise of multi-scale and inhomogeneous signals. In this talk, I present two multilinear models that exploit these characteristics to compactly approximate multi-dimensional visual data. The first model is based on a hierarchical tensor-based transformation. An original multi-dimensional dataset is transformed into a hierarchy of signals to expose its multi-scale structures. The signal at each level of the hierarchy is further divided into a number of smaller tensors to expose its spatially inhomogeneous structures. These smaller tensors are further transformed and pruned using a tensor approximation technique. Hierarchical tensor approximation supports progressive transmission and partial decompression.
The wavelet transform hierarchically decomposes images with prescribed bases, while multilineal models search for optimal bases to adapt visual data. Our second model integrates these two approaches to compactly represent 2D images and 3D volume data. Once a wavelet (packet) decomposition has been performed, the coefficients are subdivided into small blocks most of which have small energy and are pruned. Surviving blocks usually exhibit strong redundancy among different channels and subbands. To exploit this property, we organize the surviving blocks into small tensors, group the tensors into clusters using an EM algorithm, and compactly approximate each cluster using tensor ensemble approximation. Experimental results indicate that our technique can achieve higher compression ratios and quality than previous methods, including wavelet transforms, wavelet packet transforms, and single-level tensor approximation. We have successfully applied our techniques to multiple tasks involving multi-dimensional visual data, including compact image representation, medical and scientific data visualization, data-driven rendering and texture synthesis.
Bio:
Yizhou Yu is currently an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his PhD degree in Computer Science from University of California at Berkeley in 2000. He is a recipient of the best paper award in ACM Symposium on Computer Animation, NSF CAREER Award and Microsoft Fellowship. His current interests include data-driven computer animation, texture analysis and synthesis, visual analytics, and image processing.
