Independent Study in Non Photorealisitic Rendering Proposal, January 2005

"The driving force behind computer graphics for the past 40 years has been photorealism. The quality of images created using a computer is judged by how closely they resemble a photograph. Images are rendered by running a physics simulation which emulates the behavior of light inside the modeled scene. The term Photorealistic rendering is used to describe this type of computer graphics technique. In Non-Photorealistic Rending images are instead judged by how effectively they communicate. When using images to communicate the essence of a scene, simulating reality is not as important as creating the illusion of reality. NPR involves stylization and communication, usually driven by human perception. Knowledge and techniques long used by artists are now being applied to computer graphics to emphasize specific features of a scene, expose subtle attributes, and omit extraneous information to give rise to a new field."

Gooch, Bruce, and Amy Gooch. Non-Photorealistic Rendering.

When NPR techniques are used in a video game, the purpose is to emphasize a certain feeling, to move beyond realism. Just as an impressionist painting focuses on the general impression produced by a scene, NPR allows designers to convey additional mood and atmosphere.

One of the first games to use NPR was JetSetRadio. It made clever use of cel-shading to give the game a cartoony feel. Okami, a game by the newly formed Clover Studio (part of Capcom) on PS2, will display magnificent graphics reminiscent of traditional Japanese paintings. It brings games closer to art than never before.

NPR is a cutting edge field that deserves to be studied by anyone who wants to program graphics for the games of tomorrow. The applications are numerous, and have only begun to be truly exercised.

This independent study proposes to tackle Non-Photorealistic Rendering in a comprehensive way, by implementing a broad variety of techniques in NPR, and considering their use in real time simulations.

For the projects I made during this independent study, see the Projects Page.

References:

• Books:

  Gooch, Bruce, and Amy Gooch. Non-Photorealistic Rendering. Natick: A K Peters Ltd., 2001.

  Strothotte, Thomas, and Stefan Schelechtweg. Non-Photorealistic Computer Graphics Modeling, Rendering, and Animation. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 2002.

• Websites:

  Game Technology Research at Brown Very good papers, I used two of them for this independent study.

  Nonphotorealistic computer graphics class at the University of Waterloo. Art-based Rendering using Graftals An implementation of graftals from that class.

  Stylized Depiction in Computer Graphics an annotated survey of online resources by Craig Reynolds Some dead links, but a very good source of inspiration.

  NEHE Lesson 37 Celshading in software (easily converted to vertex shaders).

  Bruce Gooch and Amy Gooch at the Northwestern University.

  University of Washington's Graphics and Imaging Laboratory.

  Some of MIT's research on NPR.

  International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering.

• Plus lots of SIGRRAPH Papers!

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