We believe that interactive three-dimensional graphics and animation will be an important part of future user interfaces directed toward business, consumer, and entertainment applications. Our research addresses a wide range of topics in three-dimensional graphics and animation. Our projects include advanced rendering, modeling, and animation research. Rendering refers to the process of adding shadows and variations in color and shading to add realism to computer-based images. Modeling seeks to represent real-world and imaginary objects as either a set of mathematical expressions or as a set of instructions or algorithms.
Animation puts such models into motion.
We are exploring the means to create and shade realistic human figures to be used in applications ranging from talking-head newscasters to video game characters. We seek to address the challenges involved in the high-computational cost of producing, transmitting, and displaying complex models by researching geometric compression and multiresolution representations. Highly detailed geometric models are often represented as complex triangle meshes, challenging rendering performance, transmission bandwidth, and storage capacities. Multiresolution representations allow for more efficient storage, transmission, and rendering of the meshes. We are working to define overall systems architecture to support high-performance interactive graphics.