Mathematical optimization is used in nearly all computer graphics applications, from computer vision to animation. This book teaches readers the core set of techniques that every computer graphics professional should understand in order to envision and expand the boundaries of what is possible in their work.
Study of this authoritative reference will help readers develop a very powerful tool- the ability to create and decipher mathematical models that can better realize solutions to even the toughest problems confronting computer graphics community today.
The authors are renowned researchers from IMPA, the Brazilian National Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics.
*Distils down a vast and complex world of info on optimization into one short, self-contained volume especially for computer graphics
*Helps CG professionals identify the best technique for solving particular problems quickly, by categorizing the most effective algorithms by application
*Keeps readers current by supplementing the focus on key, classic methods with special end-of-chapter sections on cutting-edge developments

Based on more than 10 years of teaching experience, Blanken and his coeditors have assembled all the topics that should be covered in advanced undergraduate or graduate courses on multimedia retrieval and multimedia databases. The single chapters of this textbook explain the general architecture of multimedia information retrieval systems and cover various metadata languages such as Dublin Core, RDF, or MPEG. The authors emphasize high-level features and show how these are used in mathematical models to support the retrieval process. For each chapter, there 's detail on further reading, and additional exercises and teaching material is available online.

Computer graphics systems are capable of generating stunningly realistic images of objects that have never physically existed. In order for computers to create these accurately detailed images, digital models of appearance must include robust data to give viewers a credible visual impression of the depicted materials. In particular, digital models demonstrating the nuances of how materials interact with light are essential to this capability.
This is the first comprehensive work on the digital modeling of material appearance: it explains how models from physics and engineering are combined with keen observation skills for use in computer graphics rendering.
Written by the foremost experts in appearance modeling and rendering, this book is for practitioners who want a general framework for understanding material modeling tools, and also for researchers pursuing the development of new modeling techniques. The text is not a "how to" guide for a particular software system. Instead, it provides a thorough discussion of foundations and detailed coverage of key advances.
Practitioners and researchers in applications such as architecture, theater, product development, cultural heritage documentation, visual simulation and training, as well as traditional digital application areas such as feature film, television, and computer games, will benefit from this much needed resource.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Julie Dorsey and Holly Rushmeier are professors in the Computer Science Department at Yale University and co-directors of the Yale Computer Graphics Group. Francois Sillion is a senior researcher with INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique), and director of its Grenoble Rhone-Alpes research center.
* First comprehensive treatment of the digital modeling of material appearance;
* Provides a foundation for modeling appearance, based on the physics of how light interacts with materials, how people perceive appearance, and the implications of rendering appearance on a digital computer;
* An invaluable, one-stop resource for practitioners and researchers in a variety of fields dealing with the digital modeling of material appearance."

This book covers various aspects of spatial data modelling specifically regarding three-dimensional (3D) modelling and structuring. The realization of "true" 3D geoinformation spatial systems requires a high input, and the developmental process is taking place in various research centers and universities around the globe. The development of such systems and solutions, including the modelling theories are presented in this book.

In the early days of the Web a need was recognized for a language to display 3D objects through a browser. An HTML-like language, VRML, was proposed in 1994 and became the standard for describing interactive 3D objects and worlds on the Web. 3D Web courses were started, several best-selling books were published, and VRML continues to be used today. However VRML, because it was based on HTML, is a stodgy language that is not easy to incorporate with other applications and has been difficult to add features to. Meanwhile, applications for interactive 3D graphics have been exploding in areas such as medicine, science, industry, and entertainment. There is a strong need for a set of modern Web-based technologies, applied within a standard extensible framework, to enable a new generation of modeling & simulation applications to emerge, develop, and interoperate. X3D is the next generation open standard for 3D on the web. It is the result of several years of development by the Web 3D Consortium's X3D Task Group. Instead of a large monolithic specification (like VRML), which requires full adoption for compliance, X3D is a component-based architecture that can support applications ranging from a simple non-interactive animation to the latest streaming or rendering applications. X3D replaces VRML, but also provides compatibility with existing VRML content and browsers. Don Brutzman organized the first symposium on VRML and is playing a similar role with X3D; he is a founding member of the consortium. Len Daly is a professional member of the consortium and both Len and Don have been involved with the development of the standard from the start.
* The first book on the new way to present interactive 3D content over the Web, written by two of the designers of the standard
* Plentiful illustrations and screen shots in the full color text
* Companion website with extensive content, including the X3D specification, sample code and applications, content creation tools, and demos of compatible Web browsers

The polygon-mesh approach to 3D modeling was a huge advance, but today its limitations are clear. Longer render times for increasingly complex images effectively cap image complexity, or else stretch budgets and schedules to the breaking point.

Point-based graphics promises to change all that, and this book explains how. Comprised of contributions from leaders in the development and application of this technology, Point-Based Graphics examines it from all angles, beginning with the way in which the latest photographic and scanning devices have enabled modeling based on true geometry, rather than appearance.

From there, it s on to the methods themselves. Even though point-based graphics is in its infancy, practitioners have already established many effective, economical techniques for achieving all the major effects associated with traditional 3D Modeling and rendering. You ll learn to apply these techniques, and you ll also learn how to create your own. The final chapter demonstrates how to do this using Pointshop3D, an open-source tool for developing new point-based algorithms. A copy of this tool can be found on the companion website.
*The first book on a major development in computer graphics by the pioneers in the field
* Shows how 3D images can be manipulated as easily as 2D images are with Photoshop
* Includes CD-ROM with the open source software program Pointshop3D for experimentation with point graphics"

This book presents an overview of the field of multimodal location estimation. The authors' aim is to describe the research results in this field in a unified way. The book describes fundamental methods of acoustic, visual, textual, social graph, and metadata processing as well as multimodal integration methods used for location estimation. In addition, the book covers benchmark metrics and explores the limits of the technology based on a human baseline. The book also outlines privacy implications and discusses directions for future research in the area.

Since its original inception back in 1989 the Web has changed into an environment where Web applications range from small-scale information dissemination applications, often developed by non-IT professionals, to large-scale, commercial, enterprise-planning and scheduling applications, developed by multidisciplinary teams of people with diverse skills and backgrounds and using cutting-edge, diverse technologies.

As an engineering discipline, Web engineering must provide principles, methodologies and frameworks to help Web professionals and researchers develop applications and manage projects effectively. Mendes and Mosley have selected experts from numerous areas in Web engineering, who contribute chapters where important concepts are presented and then detailed using real industrial case studies. After an introduction into the discipline itself and its intricacies, the contributions range from Web effort estimation, productivity benchmarking and conceptual and model-based application development methodologies, to other important principles such as usability, reliability, testing, process improvement and quality measurement. This is the first book that looks at Web engineering from a measurement perspective.

The result is a self-containing, comprehensive overview detailing the role of measurement and metrics within the context of Web engineering. This book is ideal for professionals and researchers who want to know how to use sound principles for the effective management of Web projects, as well as for courses at an advanced undergraduate or graduate level.

This book provides insight into the challenges in providing data authentication over wireless communication channels. The authors posit that established standard authentication mechanisms - for wired devices - are not sufficient to authenticate data, such as voice, images, and video over wireless channels. The authors propose new mechanisms based on the so-called soft authentication algorithms, which tolerate some legitimate modifications in the data that they protect. The authors explain that the goal of these algorithms is that they are tolerant to changes in the content but are still able to identify the forgeries. The authors go on to describe how an additional advantage of the soft authentication algorithms is the ability to identify the locations of the modifications and correct them if possible. The authors show how to achieve this by protecting the data features with the help of error correcting codes. The correction methods are typically based on watermarking, as the authors discuss in the book. Provides a discussion of data (particularly image) authentication methods in the presence of noise experienced in wireless communication; Presents a new class of soft authentication methods, instead of the standard hard authentication methods, used to tolerate minor changes in image data; Features authentication methods based on the usage of authentication tags as well as digital watermarks.

Future technology information technology stands for all of continuously evolving and converging information technologies, including digital convergence, multimedia convergence, intelligent applications, embedded systems, mobile and wireless communications, bio-inspired computing, grid and cloud computing, semantic web, user experience and HCI, security and trust computing and so on, for satisfying our ever-changing needs. In past twenty five years or so, Information Technology (IT) influenced and changed every aspect of our lives and our cultures. These proceedings foster the dissemination of state-of-the-art research in all future IT areas, including their models, services, and novel applications associated with their utilization.

This book is the first resource to provide in-depth coverage on topical areas of assistive, rehabilitative, and health-related applications for haptic (touch-based) technologies. Application topics are grouped into thematic areas spanning haptic devices for sensory impairments, health and well-being, and physical impairments which are illustrated in this book. A diverse group of experts in the field were invited to contribute different chapters to provide complementary and multidisciplinary perspectives. Unlike other books on haptics, which focus on human haptic perception, specific modalities of haptics (e.g., realistic haptic rendering), or broadly cover the subfields of haptics, this book takes an application-oriented approach to present a tour of how the field of haptics has been advanced with respect to important, impactful thematic focuses. Under Theme 1 "Sensory Impairments", haptics technologies to support individuals with sensory impairments is presented which includes: Spatial awareness in sensory impairments through touch; Haptically-assisted interfaces for persons with visual impairments; and Enabling learning experiences for visually impaired children by interaction design. Under Theme 2 "Haptics for Health and Well-Being", haptics technologies aimed at supporting exercise and healthy aging will be covered including: Haptics in rehabilitation, exergames and health; Therapeutic haptics for mental health and well-being; and Applications of haptics in medicine. Under Theme 3 "Haptics for Physical Impairments", haptics technologies for enhancing the quality of life for individuals with weakened/impaired limbs or neurological diseases impacting movement is targeted including: Assistive soft exoskeletons with pneumatic artificial muscles; Haptics for accessibility in rehabilitative hardware; and intelligent robotics and immersive displays for enhancing haptic interaction in physical rehabilitation environments. Engineers, scientists, and researchers working in the areas of haptics, multimedia, virtual/augmented/mixed-reality, human-computer interaction, assistive technologies, rehabilitative technologies, healthcare technologies, and/or actuator design will want to purchase this book. Advanced level students and hobbyists interested in haptics will also be interested in this book.

This book includes a short history of interactive narrative and an account of a small group collaboratively authored social media narrative: Romeo and Juliet on Facebook: After Love Comes Destruction. At the forefront of narrative innovation are social media channels - speculative spaces for creating and experiencing stories that are interactive and collaborative. Media, however, is only the access point to the expressiveness of narrative content. Wikis, messaging, mash-ups, and social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others) are on a trajectory of participatory story creation that goes back many centuries. These forms offer authors ways to create narrative meaning that reflects our current media culture, as the harlequinade reflected the culture of the 18th century, and as the volvelle reflected that of the 13th century. Interactivity, Collaboration, and Authoring in Social Media first prospects the last millennium for antecedents of today's authoring practices. It does so with a view to considering how today's digital manifestations are a continuation, perhaps a reiteration, perhaps a novel pioneering, of humans' abiding interest in interactive narrative. The book then takes the reader inside the process of creating a collaborative, interactive narrative in today's social media through an authoring experience undertaken by a group of graduate students. The engaging mix of blogs, emails, personal diaries , and fabricated documents used to create the narrative demonstrates that a social media environment can facilitate a meaningful and productive collaborative authorial experience and result in an abundance of networked, personally expressive, and visually and textually referential content. The resulting narrative, After Love Comes Destruction, based in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, shows how a generative narrative space evolved around the students' use of social media in ways they had not previously considered both for authoring and for delivery of their final narrative artifact.

This book offers a comprehensive explanation of iterated function systems and how to use them in generation of complex objects. Discussion covers the most popular fractal models applied in the field of image synthesis; surveys iterated function system models; explores algorithms for creating and manipulating fractal objects, and techniques for implementing the algorithms, and more. The book includes both descriptive text and pseudo-code samples for the convenience of graphics application programmers.

Correcting the Great Mistake People often mistake one thing for another. That's human nature. However, one would expect the leaders in a particular ?eld of endeavour to have superior ab- ities to discriminate among the developments within that ?eld. That is why it is so perplexing that the technology elite - supposedly savvy folk such as software developers, marketers and businessmen - have continually mistaken Web-based graphics for something it is not. The ?rst great graphics technology for the Web, VRML, has been mistaken for something else since its inception. Viewed variously as a game system, a format for architectural walkthroughs, a platform for multi-user chat and an augmentation of reality, VRML may qualify as the least understood invention in the history of inf- mation technology. Perhaps it is so because when VRML was originally introduced it was touted as a tool for putting the shopping malls of the world online, at once prosaic and horrifyingly mundane to those of us who were developing it. Perhaps those ?rst two initials,"VR,"created expectations of sprawling, photorealistic f- tasy landscapes for exploration and play across the Web. Or perhaps the magnitude of the invention was simply too great to be understood at the time by the many, ironically even by those spending the money to underwrite its development. Regardless of the reasons, VRML suffered in the mainstream as it was twisted to meet unintended ends and stretched far beyond its limitations.

This comprehensive book draws together experts to explore how knowledge technologies can be exploited to create new multimedia applications, and how multimedia technologies can provide new contexts for the use of knowledge technologies. Thorough coverage of all relevant topics is given. The step-by-step approach guides the reader from fundamental enabling technologies of ontologies, analysis and reasoning, through to applications which have hitherto had less attention.

Here is a thorough, not-overly-complex introduction to the three technical foundations for multimedia applications across the Internet: communications (principles, technologies and networking); compressive encoding of digital media; and Internet protocol and services. All the contributing systems elements are explained through descriptive text and numerous illustrative figures; the result is a book well-suited toward non-specialists, preferably with technical background, who need well-composed tutorial introductions to the three foundation areas. The text discusses the latest advances in digital audio and video encoding, optical and wireless communications technologies, high-speed access networks, and IP-based media streaming, all crucial enablers of the multimedia Internet.

This volume comprises eight well-versed contributed chapters devoted to report the latest findings on the intelligent approaches to multimedia data analysis. Multimedia data is a combination of different discrete and continuous content forms like text, audio, images, videos, animations and interactional data. At least a single continuous media in the transmitted information generates multimedia information. Due to these different types of varieties, multimedia data present varied degrees of uncertainties and imprecision, which cannot be easy to deal by the conventional computing paradigm. Soft computing technologies are quite efficient to handle the imprecision and uncertainty of the multimedia data and they are flexible enough to process the real-world information. Proper analysis of multimedia data finds wide applications in medical diagnosis, video surveillance, text annotation etc. This volume is intended to be used as a reference by undergraduate and post graduate students of the disciplines of computer science, electronics and telecommunication, information science and electrical engineering. THE SERIES: FRONTIERS IN COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE The series Frontiers In Computational Intelligence is envisioned to provide comprehensive coverage and understanding of cutting edge research in computational intelligence. It intends to augment the scholarly discourse on all topics relating to the advances in artifi cial life and machine learning in the form of metaheuristics, approximate reasoning, and robotics. Latest research fi ndings are coupled with applications to varied domains of engineering and computer sciences. This field is steadily growing especially with the advent of novel machine learning algorithms being applied to different domains of engineering and technology. The series brings together leading researchers that intend to continue to advance the fi eld and create a broad knowledge about the most recent state of the art.

The third entry in the Jim Blinn's Corner series, this is, like the others, a handy compilation of selected installments of his influential column. But here, for the first time, you get the "Director's Cut" of the articles: revised, expanded, and enhanced versions of the originals. What's changed? Improved mathematical notation, more diagrams, new solutions. What remains the same? All the things you've come to rely on: straight answers, irreverent style, and innovative thinking. This is Jim Blinn at his best now even better.
Highlights
- Features 21 expanded and updated installments of "Jim Blinn's Corner," dating from 1995 to 2001, and never before published in book form.
- Includes "deleted scenes" tangential explorations that didn't make it into the original columns.
- Details how Blinn represented planets in his famous JPL flyby animations.
- Explores a wide variety of other topics, from the concrete to the theoretical: assembly language optimization for parallel processors, exotic usage of C++ template instantiation, algebraic geometry, a graphical notation for tensor contraction, and his hopes for a future world.
*Features 21 expanded and updated installments of "Jim Blinn's Corner," dating from 1995 to 2001, and never before published in book form.
*Includes "deleted scenes" tangential explorations that didn't make it into the original columns.
*Details how Blinn represented planets in his famous JPL flyby animations.
*Explores a wide variety of other topics, from the concrete to the theoretical: assembly language optimization for parallel processors, exotic usage of C++ template instantiation, algebraic geometry, a graphical notation for tensor contraction, and his hopes for a future world."