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Physically-based Character Animation and Dynamic Water Simulation Neva Cherniavsky and Doug Downey We undertook to make our frog and pond animation more realistic by adding physically-based animation and a dynamic water model. This included a frog with springy legs and a body that squashed and stretched in response to physical forces, and a pond capable of producing waves and splashes. |
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Video Morphing Michael Eckert and Mirco Stern We developed an application that creates a sequence of intermediate frames that seamlessly transform one image to another and generates output in a form of movie or image file sequence. This well-known effect is called “Morphing”. We then further enhanced our application to allow a morph between two videos. The video-to-video morphing ability allows to create a special video effect with transformation of one moving object to another, like one shown in the “Black Or White” video clip by Michael Jackson, where the faces of different people change one into another and in numerous TV commercials. |
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Non-Photorealistic Rendering Daniel Hasselrot and Ioannis Giottis For our final project we implemented an OpenGL cartoon renderer. Cartoon rendering falls into the category of Non-Photorealistic Rendering and has been of interest in the last few years in computer graphics and game development. Our goal was to produce a simple animator that could “cartoonize” 3d models with no additional information from the user. We also used acceleration techniques to achieve smooth frame rates even in complex models. |
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Morphing Jed Liu and Alex Lindblad For the final project, we chose to implement the morphing algorithm describe by Beier and Shawn Neely. Morphing is the process of transforming one image into another. It involves deforming the two images to take on the same shape and then blending the two deformed images into one. This algorithm allows us to morph still images as well as video files, as seen in the artifacts. |
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Intelligent Scissors with Alpha Matting Parag Parag and Stavan Parikh Intelligent scissors is a method to extract objects from an image accurately by interactively drawing along the object contours while the computer “snaps” the curve to the nearest edge. While this method provides a good way to segment images, it does not allow for fractional mixing of foreground and background colors. This can be achieved via alpha matting, which allows the extraction of a foreground element from a background. Combining these two techniques, one can first define a nice foreground-background separation using intelligent scissors and then use alpha matting for extracting the desired foreground. |
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Caustics Michael Ringenburg and David Richardson We added photon mapping to our ray tracer in order to synthesize caustics. Caustics occur in nature when light is refocused through reflection or refraction. |
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Subdivision surfaces and Subsurface Scattering Ian Simon and Pradeep Shenoy For our final project, we implemented Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces and subsurface scattering. In some sense, our project consisted of two unrelated subprojects, but the two techniques can be combined to create images with smooth, nicely shaded surfaces. |