2003-2004 Academic Year

  


With the advent of ever-increasing computing power and more advanced data
acquisition technologies, solid geometry has quickly gained popularity as a
natural and intuitive paradigm for representing and modeling
three-dimensional objects in interactive graphics, shape design,
physics-based animation, scientific visualization, and virtual environments.
However, the current state-of-the-art falls short in offering designers an
integrated paradigm to represent complex solid geometry, arbitrary topology,
and continuously-varying physical attributes in a single framework
simultaneously. Furthermore, it is almost impossible to employ the existing
techniques for interactive sculpting, direct manipulation, and dynamic
analysis of digital models of real-world objects through an intuitive,
haptic interface.

In this talk, I will articulate our novel spline-based framework for
modeling, manipulating, and visualizing volumetric objects. We have
systematically developed the new Dynamic Inhomogeneous Volumetric
Environment, DIVE, which is founded upon spline-based volumetric implicit
functions and powerful physics-based modeling. This new graphics framework
facilitates the flexible modeling and effective rendering of
multi-dimensional, physical attributes across any volumetric objects. In
addition, our spline-based volumetric models are governed by the principle
of dynamics, hence responding to sculpting forces in a natural and
predictable manner. The versatility of our dynamic volumetric modeling
affords users to easily modify both the geometry and the topology of modeled
objects, while the inherent inhomogeneous physical properties can offer an
intuitive interface for direct manipulation. We augment our framework with a
3D haptic interface, further enhancing the realistic manipulation of any
modeled dataset. We also develop the novel Scalar-Field-guided shape
Deformation (SFD) technique for free-form deformation and animation.
Throughout my talk, I will highlight diverse applications including shape
design, shape reconstruction, digital arts, haptic sculpting, computer
animation and morphing, and medical data exploration and visualization
through slide shows and video clips.


Short Bio:

Mr. Jing Hua is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook (SUNYSB), where he is also a Research
Assistant in the SUNYSB Center for Visual Computing (CVC). His research
interests include computer graphics, scientific visualization, geometric and
physics-based modeling, human-computer interaction, and computer vision. For
more information please see http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~jinghua.