A new 3D graphics and multimedia hardware architecture, codenamed Talisman, is described which exploits both spatial and temporal coherence to reduce the cost of high quality animation.Individually animated objects are rendered into independent image layers which are composited together at video refresh rates to create the final display.During the compositing process, a full affine transformation is applied to the layers to allow translation, rotation, scaling and skew to be used to simulate 3D motion of objects, thus providing a multiplier on 3D rendering performance and exploiting temporal image coherence.Image compression is broadly exploited for textures and image layers to reduce image capacity and bandwidth requirements.Performance rivaling highend 3D graphics workstations can be achieved at a cost point of two to three hundred dollars.

article Free Access Share on Generative modeling: a symbolic system for geometric modeling Authors: John M. Snyder California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CAView Profile , James T. Kajiya California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CAView Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM SIGGRAPH Computer GraphicsVolume 26Issue 2July 1992 pp 369–378https://doi.org/10.1145/142920.134094Published:01 July 1992Publication History 47citation952DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations47Total Downloads952Last 12 Months38Last 6 weeks2 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

We present a method for rendering scenes with fine detail via an object called a texel, a rendering primitive inspired by volume densities mixed with anisotropic lighting models. This technique solves a long outstanding problem in image synthesis: the rendering of furry surfaces.

We present an integral equation which generalizes a variety of known rendering algorithms. In the course of discussing a monte carlo solution we also present a new form of variance reduction, called Hierarchical sampling and give a number of elaborations shows that it may be an efficient new technique for a wide variety of monte carlo procedures. The resulting rendering algorithm extends the range of optical phenomena which can be effectively simulated.

A new algorithm for speeding up ray-object intersection calculations is presented. Objects are bounded by a new type of extent, which can be made to fit convex hulls arbitrarily tightly. The objects are placed into a hierarchy. A new hierarchy traversal algorithm is presented which is efficient in the sense that objects along the ray are queried in an efficient order.Results are presented which demonstrate that our technique is several times faster than other published algorithms. Furthermore, we demonstrate that it is currently possible to ray trace scenes containing hundreds of thousands of objects.

We propose a new machine architecture for high performance execution of late binding object\noriented languages The two principal mechanisms for attaining this goal are a fast context allocation/access\nscheme and an instruction translation lookaside buffer New ideas in this paper include the concept and\nimplementation of abstract instructions, using floating point addresses to solve the small object problem, and a\nnovel context allocation/access mechanism

We present a new set of lighting models derived from the questions of electromagnetism. These models describe the reflection and refraction of light from surfaces which exhibit anisotropy---surfaces with preferred directions. The model allows a new mapping technique, which we call frame mapping. We also discuss the general relationship between geometric models, surface mapping of all types, and lighting models in the context of rendering images with extreme complexity.

This paper presents new algorithms to trace objects represented by densities within a volume grid, e.g. clouds, fog, flames, dust, particle systems. We develop the light scattering equations, discuss previous methods of solution, and present a new approximate solution to the full three-dimensional radiative scattering problem suitable for use in computer graphics. Additionally we review dynamical models for clouds used to make an animated movie.

We present new algorithms for efficient ray tracing of three procedurally defined objects: fractal surfaces, prisms, and surfaces of revolution. The fractal surface algorithm performs recursive subdivision adaptively. Subsurfaces which cannot intersect a given ray are culled from further consideration. The prism algorithm transforms the three dimensional ray-surface intersection problem into a two dimensional ray-curve intersection problem, which is solved by the method of strip trees. The surface of revolution algorithm transforms the three dimensional ray-surface intersection problem into a two dimensional curve-curve intersection problem, which again is solved by strip trees.

We present new algorithms for efficient ray tracing of three procedurally defined objects: fractal surfaces, prisms, and surfaces of revolution.The fractal surface algorithm performs recursive subdivision adaptively.Subsurfaces which cannot intersect a given ray are culled from further consideration.The prism algorithm transforms the three-dimensional ray-surface intersection problem into a twodimensional ray-curve intersection problem, which is solved by the method of strip trees.The surfaceof-revolution algorithm transforms the three-dimensional ray-surface intersection problem into a two-dimensional curve-curve intersection problem, which again is solved by strip trees.

This paper describes an algorithm that uses ray tracing techniques to display bivariate polynomial surface patches. A new intersection algorithm is developed which uses ideas from algebraic geometry to obtain a numerical procedure for finding the intersection of a ray and a patch without subdivision. The algorithm may use complex coordinates for the (u, v)-parameters of the patches. The choice of these coordinates makes the computations more uniform, so that there are fewer special cases to be considered. In particular, the appearance and disappearance of silhouette edges can be handled quite naturally. The uniformity of these techniques may be suitable for implementation on either a general purpose pipelined machine, or on special purpose hardware.

Recently several investigators have studied the problem of displaying text characters on grey level raster scan displays. Despite arguments suggesting that grey level displays are equivalent to very high resolution bitmaps, the performance of grey level displays has been disappointing. This paper will show that much of the problem can be traced to inappropriate antialiasing procedures. Instead of the classical (sin x)/x filter, the situation calls for a filter with characteristics matched both to the nature of display on CRTs and to the human visual system. We give examples to illustrate the problems of the existing methods and the advantages of the new methods. Although the techniques are described in terms of text, the results have application to the general antialiasing problem—at least in theory if not in practice.