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This paper describes a method to efficiently define and 3D print unique kaleidoscopic hypercomplex fractals. The\ud proposed method allows the user to easily edit fractals in three ways: changing the power the fractal is raised to,\ud changing the number of sides of the kaleidoscope, and the angle and position of the fractal, which creates different\ud shapes due to the kaleidoscope. In the example of the Mandelbulb and the inverted Mandelbulb fractals, where the\ud shape of fractals is manipulated through the “kaleidoscopic effect”, we create 3D fractal sculptures that can be\ud realised as physical objects by using 3D printing. The flexible parametrisation of the fractal definition implemented\ud as the Houdini tool allows the definition of many unique shapes of kaleidoscopic hypercomplex fractals that can\ud be digitally fabricated with a little pre-processing. The paper results can be used for creating fractal-based\ud sculptures as a part of 3D fractal art.

The folk art of decorating Easter eggs is an important part of Romania's intangible cultural heritage. We have developed a prototype for a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) app that allows users to virtually decorate Easter eggs, using a 3D printed egg as a physical AR marker to allow tangible interaction with the egg, mimicking the decorating process., Session 2, Ana-Maria-Cristina Ureche, Oleg Fryazinov, and Eike Falk Anderson

The rapid technological advances in computing and computer graphics of the past three decades have in turn fueled the proliferation of the use of these technologies for Cultural Heritage. Formal educational courses for the application of computer graphics to Cultural Heritage are few and far between, and the courses that do exist tend to be targeted at archaeology students, with hardly any courses catering to computing or computer graphics students. To address this gap in education provision, we introduce a final year undergraduate course on ''CG and Animation for Cultural Heritage'', which provides students on technical and art & design computer graphics and animation courses with a broad introduction to the creation of Cultural Heritage applications of CG and animation techniques more commonly found in digital entertainment and visual effects. In this paper we describe this course and its curriculum and discuss its outcomes., Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage, Engaging with Cultural Heritage, 11, 19, Eike Falk Anderson, Valery Adzhiev, and Oleg Fryazinov

In this work we explore this fusion of art and technology through the 3D printing of fluid simulations and what\ud limits the design of such simulations before perception is abstracted. The challenge of 3D printing complex forms\ud presents itself through the comparison of the artefacts and what was rendered online. The properties of fluid are\ud controlled using viscosity, speed and collision objects and a static frame of the simulation is 3D printed. This\ud paper presents the potential pipeline to 3D printing of fluids and the process undergone to achieve aesthetically\ud pleasing results.

The work deals with a visual-auditory representation and an analysis of static and dynamic continuous scalar fields.We propose a general approach and give examples of dynamic and static objects representations related to molecular data simulations. We describe the practical application and demonstrate how the approach may help to track geometrical features., Eurographics 2019 - Posters, Posters, 25, 26, Evgeniya Malikova, Valery Adzhiev, Oleg Fryazinov, and Alexander Pasko, CCS Concepts: Mathematics of computing --> Continuous functions; Human-centered computing --> Scientific visualization; Computing methodologies --> Volumetric models; Information systems --> Multimedia content creation; Hardware --> Soundbased input / output

This paper describes a novel framework allowing for a hybrid representation of heterogeneous objects. We consider advantages and drawbacks of the conventional representations based on scalar fields of different kinds. The main result is introducing a hybrid representation called Hybrid Function Representation (HFRep) that preserves the advantages of the Function Representation (FRep) and Signed Distance Fields (SDFs) without their drawbacks. This new representation allows for obtaining a continuous smooth distance field in the Euclidean space for the FRep. We present the mathematical basics for our approach that uses the Discrete Distance Transform (DDT) and a step-function. The procedure for generation HFRep using continuous interpolation and smoothing techniques are also described. A few examples show how the approach works in practice., Eurographics 2019 - Short Papers, Geometry Processing, 17, 20, Alexander Tereshin, Valery Adzhiev, Oleg Fryazinov, and Alexander Pasko, CCS Concepts: Shape modelling --> Volumetric models

Digital technology provides an opportunity for people with disabilities to be involved in artistic activities, such as\ud virtual sculpting whose output can be fabricated using 3D printing. Existing accessible solutions, however, present\ud mainly a set of separate tools rather than a whole cohesive production pipeline which takes into an account the specific\ud needs of the user group. Challenges include accessible user interfaces for all pipeline steps, suitable shape modelling\ud operations, ”3D Print” button and model data formats that require no post-processing or clean-up operations for the\ud Direct Fabrication step. In this paper we discuss an accessible pipeline which includes 3D modelling and 3D printing,\ud providing an example of a 3D modelling system with developed special-purpose applications allowing children with\ud complex disabilities to participate in sculpting activities through accessible interfaces such as eye-gaze control.

This paper presents the latest advances and research in Computer Graphics education in a nutshell. It is concerned with topics that were presented at the Education Track of the Eurographics Conference held in Lisbon in 2016. We describe works corresponding to approaches to Computer Graphics education that are unconventional in some way and attempt to tackle unsolved problems and challenges regarding the role of arts in computer graphics education, the role of research-oriented activities in undergraduate education and the interaction among different areas of Computer Graphics, as well as their application to courses or extra-curricular activities. We present related works addressing these topics and report experiences, successes and issues in implementing the approaches.

We propose a novel approach for the generation of volumetric muscle primitives and their associated fiber field, suitable for simulation in computer animation. Muscles are notoriously difficult to sculpt because of their complex shapes and fiber architecture, therefore often requiring trained artists to render anatomical details. Moreover, physics simulation requires these geometries to be modeled in an intersection-free rest state and to have a spatially-varying fiber field to support contraction with\ud anisotropic material models. Inspired by the principles of computational design, we satisfy these requirements by generating muscle primitives automatically, complete with tendons and fiber fields, using physics based simulation of inflatable 3D patches which are user-defined on the external mesh of a character.

Among educators, the promotion of undergraduate research is a much debated topic, with issues arising from questions as to how it can be integrated with undergraduate degree programmes and how to structure its delivery. Undergraduate research is also considered important by employers, as can be seen in case of the computer game development and visual effects industries who demand that universities produce graduate software developers with not only vocational but also with rather advanced research skills. In this paper we present a successful undergraduate research course, implemented for one of our undergraduate degree programmes. It includes teaching and learning focussed on the nature of small team research and development as encountered in the creative industries dealing with computer graphics, computer animation and game development. We discuss our curriculum design and issues in conducting undergraduate research that we have identified through several iterations of the course.

A fluid simulation suitable for use in real-time virtual environments running at interactive frame rates has the potential to greatly improve the quality of the virtual environments it is used in. To this end we present a method suitable for use in real-time grid-based fluid simulation that considerably reduces the amount of data being processed at each simulation step by removing unused cells from the simulation grid

Signed distance fields obtained from polygonal meshes are commonly used in various applications. However, they can have C1 discontinuities causing creases to appear when applying operations such as blending or metamorphosis. The focus of this work is to efficiently evaluate the signed distance function and to apply a smoothing filter to it while preserving the shape of the initial mesh. The resulting function is smooth almost everywhere, while preserving the exact shape of the polygonal mesh. Due to its low complexity, the proposed filtering technique remains fast compared to its main alternatives providing C1-continuous distance field approximation. Several applications are presented such as blending, metamorphosis and heterogeneous modelling with polygonal meshes.

Enabling animators to smoothly transform between animated meshes of differing topologies is a long-standing problem in geometric modelling and computer animation. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid approach built upon the advantages of scalar field-based models (often called implicit surfaces) which can easily change their topology by changing their defining scalar field. Given two meshes, animated by their rigging-skeletons, we associate each mesh with its own approximating implicit surface. This implicit surface moves synchronously with the mesh. The shape-metamorphosis process is performed in several steps: first, we collapse the two meshes to their corresponding approximating implicit surfaces, then we transform between the two implicit surfaces and finally we inverse transition from the resulting metamorphosed implicit surface to the target mesh. The examples presented in this paper demonstrating the results of the proposed technique were implemented using an in-house plug-in for Maya™. © 2013 The Authors Computer Graphics Forum © 2013 The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

In this paper we present the SHIVA project which was designed to provide virtual sculpting tools for children with complex disabilities, to allow them to engage with artistic and creative activities that they might otherwise never be able to access. Modern 3D printing then allows us to physically build their creations. To achieve this, we combined our expertise in education, accessible technology, user interfaces and geometric modelling. We built a generic accessible graphical user interface (GUI), a suitable geometric modelling system and used these to produce two prototype modelling systems. These tools were deployed in a school for students with disabilities and are being used for a variety of educational purposes. In this paper, we present the project's motivations, approach and implementation details together with initial results, including 3D printed objects designed by children with disabilities.

Fast and reliable rendering of implicit surfaces is an important area in the field of implicit modelling. Direct rendering, namely ray-tracing, is shown to be a suitable technique for obtaining good-quality visualisations of implicit surfaces. We present a technique for reliable ray-tracing of arbitrary procedurally defined implicit surfaces by using a modification of Affine Arithmetic called Revised Affine Arithmetic. A wide range of procedurally defined implicit objects can be rendered using this technique including polynomial surfaces, constructive solids, pseudo-random objects, procedurally defined microstructures, and others. We compare our technique with other reliable techniques based on Interval and Affine Arithmetic to show that our technique provides the fastest, while still reliable, ray-surface intersections and ray-tracing. We also suggest possible modifications for the GPU implementation of this technique for real-time rendering of relatively simple implicit models and for near real-time for complex implicit models.

The problem considered in this work is to find a dimension independent algorithm for the generation of signed scalar fields exactly representing polygonal objects and satisfying the following requirements: the defining real function takes zero value exactly at the polygonal object boundary; no extra zero-value isosurfaces should be generated; C1 continuity of the function in the entire domain. The proposed algorithms are based on the binary space partitioning (BSP) of the object by the planes passing through the polygonal faces and are independent of the object genus, the number of disjoint components, and holes in the initial polygonal mesh. Several extensions to the basic algorithm are proposed to satisfy the selected optimization criteria. The generated BSP-fields allow for applying techniques of function-based modelling to already existing legacy objects from CAD and computer animation areas, which is illustrated by several examples.

The paper presents a web-oriented function-based modeling framework utilizing a high-level volume modeling\ud language for defining 3D point sets and their volumetric attributes. We illustrate how function-based modeling allows\ud for advanced control and manipulation of 3D models and associated attributes while at the same time allowing for\ud simplified interfaces and parametrization that is difficult or impossible to achieve in other systems. This and other\ud properties of function-based modeling allows for the creation of modeling interfaces suitable for the casual and novice\ud user on the web.

In this paper we address shape modelling problems, encountered in computer animation and computer games development that are difficult to solve just using polygonal meshes. Our approach is based on a hybrid modelling concept that combines polygonal meshes with implicit surfaces. A hybrid model consists of an animated polygonal mesh and an approximation of this mesh by a convolution surface stand-in that is embedded within it or is attached to it. The motions of both objects are synchronised using a rigging skeleton. This approach is used to model the interaction between an animated mesh object and a viscoelastic substance, normally modelled in implicit form. The adhesive behaviour of the viscous object is modelled using geometric blending operations on the corresponding implicit surfaces. Another application of this approach is the creation of metamorphosing implicit surface parts that are attached to an animated mesh. A prototype implementation of the proposed approach and several examples of modelling and animation with near real-time preview times are presented.

In this paper we present a method for interactive rendering general procedurally defined functionally represented (FRep) objects using the acceleration with graphics hardware, namely Graphics Processing Units (GPU). We obtain interactive rates by using GPU acceleration for all computations in rendering algorithm, such as ray-surface intersection, function evaluation and normal computations. We compute primary rays as well as secondary rays for shadows, reflection and refraction for obtaining high quality of the output visualization and further extension to ray-tracing of FRep objects. The algorithm is well-suited for modern GPUs and provides acceptable interactive rates with good quality of the results. A wide range of objects can be rendered including traditional skeletal implicit surfaces, constructive solids, and purely procedural objects such as 3D fractals.