Abstract: A computer implemented method for deforming a 3D polygon mesh using non-linear and linear constraints. The method includes creating a coarse control 3D polygon mesh that completely encapsulates the 3D polygon mesh to be deformed, projecting the deformation energy of the 3D polygon mesh and the constraints of the 3D polygon mesh to the vertices, or subspace, of the coarse control 3D polygon mesh, and determining the resulting deformed 3D polygon mesh by iteratively determining the deformation energy of the subspace. The constraints may be either linear or non-linear constraints, for example, a Laplacian constraint, a position constraint, a projection constraint, a skeleton constraint, or a volume constraint.

Abstract: An exemplary method includes providing image data for an illuminated physical sample of a heterogeneous translucent material, determining one or more material properties of the material based in part on a diffusion equation where one of the material properties is a diffusion coefficient for diffusion of radiation in the material and where the determining includes a regularization term for the diffusion coefficient, mapping the one or more material properties to a virtual object volume, assigning virtual illumination conditions to the virtual object volume, and rendering the virtual object volume using the virtual illumination conditions as a boundary condition for a system of diffusion equations of the virtual object volume. Other methods, devices and systems are also disclosed.

Abstract: Embodiments are disclosed that relate to the correction of an estimated pose determined from depth image data. One disclosed embodiment provides, on a computing system, a method of obtaining a representation of a pose of articulated object from image data capturing the articulated object. The method comprises receiving the depth image data, obtaining an initial estimated skeleton of the articulated object from the depth image data, applying a random forest subspace regression function to the initial estimated skeleton, and determining the representation of the pose based upon a result of applying the random forest subspace regression to the initial estimated skeleton.

Abstract: Some implementations disclosed herein provide techniques and arrangements to render global light transport in real-time or near real-time. For example, in a pre-computation stage, a first computing device may render points of surfaces (e.g., using multiple light bounces and the like). Attributes for each of the points may be determined. A plurality of machine learning algorithms may be trained using particular attributes from the attributes. For example, a first machine learning algorithm may be trained using a first portion of the attributes and a second machine learning algorithm may be trained using a second portion of the attributes. The trained machine learning algorithms may be used by a second computing device to render components (e.g., diffuse and specular components) of indirect shading in real-time.

Abstract: Described is a technology in which point cloud surface reconstruction is performed via parallel processing on a graphics processing unit, achieving real-time reconstruction rates. An octree is built for a given set of oriented points, with each node containing a set of points enclosed by the node. The data structure is built on the GPU, in parallel, using level-order traversals to process nodes at a same tree level. The surface is reconstructed based on data configured and located via the traversals. To produce the surface, an implicit function over the volume spanned by the octree nodes is computed using the GPU, e.g., based on a Poisson surface reconstruction method. A sparse linear system is built and a multi-grid solver is employed to solve the system. An adaptive marching cubes procedure is performed on the GPU to extract an isosurface of the implicit function as a triangular mesh.

Abstract: Described is a technology for constructing kd-trees on GPUs, in a manner that is sufficiently fast to achieve real-time performance by exploiting GPU-based parallelism during the kd-tree construction. Tree nodes are built in breadth-first search order, e.g., to use a thread for each node at each level. For large nodes at upper tree levels, computations are parallelized over geometric primitives (instead of nodes). To this end, large nodes are split into child nodes by cutting off empty space based until an empty space ratio is achieved, and thereafter performing spatial splitting. Small nodes are split based on split candidate costs, e.g., computed by a surface area heuristic or a voxel volume heuristic (VVH).

Abstract: A mechanism is disclosed for capturing reflected rays from a surface. A first and second lens aligned along a same optical center axis are configured so that a beam of light collimated parallel to the lens center axis directed to a first side, is converged toward the lens center axis on a second side. A first light beam source between the first and second lenses directs a light beam toward the first lens parallel to the optical center axis. Second light beam source(s) on the second side of the first lens, direct a light beam toward a focal plane of the first lens at a desired angle. An image capturing component, at the second side of the second lens, has an image capture surface directed toward the second lens to capture images of the light reflected from a sample capture surface at the focal plane of the first lens.

Abstract: Embodiments are disclosed that relate to the correction of an estimated pose determined from depth image data. One disclosed embodiment provides, on a computing system, a method of obtaining a representation of a pose of articulated object from image data capturing the articulated object. The method comprises receiving the depth image data, obtaining an initial estimated skeleton of the articulated object from the depth image data, applying a random forest subspace regression function to the initial estimated skeleton, and determining the representation of the pose based upon a result of applying the random forest subspace regression to the initial estimated skeleton.

Abstract: This disclosure describes a joint-aware deformation framework that supports the direct manipulation of an arbitrary mix of rigid and deformable components. The deformation framework may include at least a joint-analysis and a joint-aware deformation enabling a more realistic deformation of a joint-aware model.

Abstract: A system for reflectance acquisition of a target includes a light source, an image capture device, and a reflectance reference chart. The reflectance reference chart is fixed relative to the target. The light source provides a uniform band of light across at least a dimension of the target. The image capture device is configured and positioned to encompass at least a portion of the target and at least a portion of the reflectance reference chart within a field-of-view of the image capture device. The image capture device captures a sequence of images of the target and the reflectance reference chart during a scan thereof. Reflectance responses are calculated for the pixels in the sequence of images. Reference reflectance response distribution functions are matched to the calculated reflectance responses, and an image of the target is reconstructed based at least in part on the matched reference reflectance response distribution functions.

Abstract: A non-linear beam tracing technique that supports full non-linear beam tracing effects including multiple reflections and refractions for computer graphics applications. The technique introduces non-linear beam tracing to render non-linear ray tracing effects such as curved mirror reflection, refraction, caustics, and shadows. Beams are allowed to be non-linear where rays within the same beam are not parallel or do not intersect at a single point. Such is the case when a primary beam bounces off of a surface and spawns one or more secondary rays or beams. Secondary beams can be rendered in a similar manner to primary rays or beams via polygon streaming. Beyond smooth ray bundles, the technique can also be applied to incoherent ray bundles which is useful for rendering bump mapped surfaces.

Abstract: A “Scene Re-Lighter” provides various techniques for using an automatically reconstructed light transport matrix derived from a sparse sampling of images to provide various combinations of complex light transport effects in images, including caustics, complex occlusions, inter-reflections, subsurface scattering, etc. More specifically, the Scene Re-Lighter reconstructs the light transport matrix from a relatively small number of acquired images using a “Kernel Nyström” based technique adapted for low rank matrices constructed from sparsely sampled images. A “light transport kernel” is incorporated into the Nyström method to exploit nonlinear coherence in the light transport matrix. Further, an adaptive process is used to efficiently capture the sparsely sampled images from a scene. The Scene Re-Lighter is capable of achieving good reconstruction of the light transport matrix with only few hundred images to produce high quality relighting results.

Abstract: An apparatus and method provide for providing an output image from an input image. The input image may contain at least one portion that does not display certain desired information of the image, such as texture information. The desired information may be obtained from a second portion of the input image and applied to the at least one portion that does not contain the texture information or contains a diminished amount of the texture information. Also, at least one characteristic of the second portion of the input image may not be applied to the at least one portion such as illumination information. In another example, the input image may be decomposed into multiple parts such as a high frequency and a low frequency component. Each component may be hallucinated individually or independently and combined to form the output image.

Abstract: An exemplary method includes providing image data for an illuminated physical sample of a heterogeneous translucent material, determining one or more material properties of the material based in part on a diffusion equation where one of the material properties is a diffusion coefficient for diffusion of radiation in the material and where the determining includes a regularization term for the diffusion coefficient, mapping the one or more material properties to a virtual object volume, assigning virtual illumination conditions to the virtual object volume, and rendering the virtual object volume using the virtual illumination conditions as a boundary condition for a system of diffusion equations of the virtual object volume. Other methods, devices and systems are also disclosed.

Abstract: Removal of the effects of dust or other impurities on image data is described. In one example, a model of artifact formation from sensor dust is determined. From the model of artifact formation, contextual information in the image and a color consistency constraint may be applied on the dust to remove the dust artifacts. Artifacts may also be removed from multiple images from the same or different cameras or camera settings.

Abstract: A mechanism is disclosed for capturing reflected rays from a surface. A first and second lens aligned along a same optical center axis are configured so that a beam of light collimated parallel to the lens center axis directed to a first side, is converged toward the lens center axis on a second side. A first light beam source between the first and second lenses directs a light beam toward the first lens parallel to the optical center axis. Second light beam source(s) on the second side of the first lens, direct a light beam toward a focal plane of the first lens at a desired angle. An image capturing component, at the second side of the second lens, has an image capture surface directed toward the second lens to capture images of the light reflected from a sample capture surface at the focal plane of the first lens.

Abstract: A light gathering process may reduce the computational resources and storage required to render a scene with a participating homogeneous media. According to some implementations, Efficiency may be obtained by evaluating the final radiance along a viewing ray directly from the lighting rays passing near to it, and by rapidly identifying such lighting rays in the scene. To facilitate a search for nearby lighting rays, the lighting rays and viewing rays may be represented as a 6D point and a plane according to the corresponding Plucker coordinates and coefficients, respectively.

Abstract: A video sharing system is described to annotate and navigate tourist videos. An example video sharing system enables non-linear browsing of multiple videos and enriches the browsing experience with contextual and geographic information.

Abstract: A mechanism is disclosed for capturing reflected rays from a surface. A first and second lens aligned along a same optical center axis are configured so that a beam of light collimated parallel to the lens center axis directed to a first side, is converged toward the lens center axis on a second side. A first light beam source between the first and second lenses directs a light beam toward the first lens parallel to the optical center axis. Second light beam source(s) on the second side of the first lens, direct a light beam toward a focal plane of the first lens at a desired angle. An image capturing component, at the second side of the second lens, has an image capture surface directed toward the second lens to capture images of the light reflected from a sample capture surface at the focal plane of the first lens.

Abstract: Removal of the effects of dust or other impurities on image data is described. In one example, a model of artifact formation from sensor dust is determined. From the model of artifact formation, contextual information in the image and a color consistency constraint may be applied on the dust to remove the dust artifacts. Artifacts may also be removed from multiple images from the same or different cameras or camera settings.