This poster describes an experiment designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a seven screen tiled display. Results show that there are no statistically significant differences in performance on a simple spatial task across display technology. This work can assist researchers of panoramic display systems in evaluating the optimal spatial placement of screen hardware and limits for bezel separation.

New immersive display systems are emerging, providing new platforms to present 3D data and virtual worlds. However, little effort has been spent evaluating these systems, or providing guiding design principles from a human factors point of view. The objective of the proposed work is to compare performance and user interaction across two immersive displays. The goal is to compare a low-cost, multi-screen, spatially immersive visualization facility to a more expensive system. The low cost system is designed using off-the-shelf components and constructed by arranging LCD displays in a tiled semi-circle. The more expensive system is a semi-rigid, rear projected, continuous curved screen, designed by Rockwell Collins. Our hypothesis is that low-cost systems present a perceptually equivalent visual experience, despite image seams introduced by the connecting display screens. Psychophysical experimentation will compare the two systems through human judgements based on performance. The outcomes, through knowledge gained from the experiments, should make availability of immersive visualization systems possible in areas currently unable to afford such systems or justify the expense.

Modeling three-dimensional faces on the computer has been an interesting yet challenging problem. This paper presents a method for creating cartoon faces by using a subdivision scheme. We use set-operations for conceptual design of subdivision control meshes. To ensure the quality of the control mesh, we have eliminated high valenced extraordinary vertices since smoothness of the surface decreases with valence. In addition, we have limited the number of extraordinary vertices to eliminate ripples. We have also ensured an even structure around extraordinary vertices (The size of each quadrilateral in subdivided meshes are roughly similar). We have also developed a user-friendly interface to sculpt the control mesh. Using this interface we have been able to create a variety of cartoon faces.

The ability to express emotions is important for creating believable interactive characters. To simulate emotional expressions in an interactive environment, an intelligent agent needs both an adaptive model for generating believable responses, and a visualization model for mapping emotions into facial expressions. Recent advances in intelligent agents and in facial modeling have produced effective algorithms for these tasks independently. We describe a method for integrating these algorithms to create an interactive simulation of an agent that produces appropriate facial expressions in a dynamic environment. Our approach to combining a model of emotions with a facial model represents a first step towards developing the technology of a truly believable interactive agent which has a wide range of applications from designing intelligent training systems to video games and animation tools.

Panel OverviewFacial animation is now attracting more attention than ever before in its 25 years as an identifiable area of computer graphics.Imaginative applications of animated graphical faces are found in sophisticated human-computer interfaces, interactive games, multimedia titles, VR telepresence experiences, and, as always, in a broad variety of production animations.Graphics technologies underlying facial animation now run the gamut from keyframing to image morphing, video tracking, geometric and physical modeling, and behavioral animation.Supporting technologies include speech synthesis and artificial intelligence.Whether the goal is to synthesize realistic faces or fantastic ones, representing the dynamic facial likeness of humans and other creatures is giving impetus to a diverse and rapidly growing body of cross-disciplinary research.The panel will present a historical perspective, assess the state of the art, and speculate on the exciting future of facial animation.

Abstract In most currently produced computer generated animation there is significant visual information that is literally never seen because of the characteristics of the human visual system. By tailoring the rendering of animation images to match the characteristics of human visual perception, significant computational and image storage savings can be obtained while retaining perceived animation quality. Vision research indicates that the human visual system processes two information channels. The transient channel rapidly processes low spatial resolution full colour information. The sustained channel processes high spatial resolution luminance information at a much slower rate. This paper discusses how the rendering of animation images can be accomplished to match these perception characteristics and achieve significant savings while maintaining animation quality. Computation and storage savings of up to 80 per cent are possible. Several animation segments have been produced to demonstrate the viability of this approach.

An automated method of synchronizing facial animation to recorded speech is described. In this method, a common speech synthesis method (linear prediction) is adapted to provide simple and accurate phoneme recognition. The recognized phonemes are then associated with mouth positions to provide keyframes for computer animation of speech using a parametric model of the human face.

Accompanying the rapid development of integrated circuit fabrication technology has been a parallel, but slower, development of IC design techniques and systems. Recent approaches to IC design enable individual designers to consider developing their own VLSI circuits. Such capability may open the door to a more varied set of system designs than could previously be considered in most design environments.

The results of expected performance analysis and simulation of three multiple processor Z-buffer architectures are presented. These architectures have been proposed as approaches to applying many processors, working in parallel, to the task of rapidly creating shaded raster images. These architectures are attractive since they offer potentially high performance, in terms of image update rate, at modest cost. All three approaches make use of multiple instances of identical processor modules.The analyses and simulations indicate that substantial gain is possible by applying multiple processors to the task. But, as more and more processors are added, additional gains in performance become smaller and smaller. This result suggests optimal system sizes. The performance of these architectures depends on the processors used, the number of processors, and certain characteristics of the image environments. Each architecture has its own performance characteristics and limitations.

The adaptation and generalization of scan and slit-scan animation stand techniques for use in computer generated animation is discussed. Scan and slit-scan techniques are based on moving artwork, camera, and, for slit-scan, a thin aperture while the camera shutter is open. These processes can be described as selectively sampling an environment over time and recording the result as a single image. Sequences of such images form the animated film. Rather than use mechanical means to accomplish this, it is possible to develop algorithms which mimic this processes but are based on sampling dynamic environment descriptions to generate computer produced images.

A discussion of graphic models in gen eral and graphic models for the human face in particular is presented. Emphasis is given to three-dimensional polygonal models including parameterized models. These models have been used to produce computer generated expression sequences including sequences which match a spoken soundtrack.

A parametric model for human faces is described which is capable of expression and lip animation. With this model speech synchronized animation is reduced to varying parameters in accordance with a timed speech sequence.

This paper describes a method for measuring the three-dimensional position of points on a surface using only a two-dimensional tablet or digitizer, standard photographic techniques and some computing power. The tablet is used to extract two-dimensional information from photographs of the surface. Data from multiple views of the surface is processed to give the three-dimensional position of points on the surface. This method has been successfully used to obtain point position data for the polygonal representation of several human faces and a human body.