Non-Photorealistic Computer Graphics Library

Non-Photorealistic Virtual Environments

Author(s): Allison W. Klein, Wilmot Li, Michael M. Kazhdan, Wagner T. Correa, Adam Finkelstein, Thomas A. Funkhouser.
Proceedings: Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2000, Kurt Akeley, pp. 527--534, July, ACM Press / ACM SIGGRAPH / Addison Wesley Longman, 2000.
[BibTeX]

Abstract:
We describe a system for non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) of virtual environments. In real time, it synthesizes imagery of architectural interiors using stroke-based textures. We address the four main challenges of such a system – interactivity, visual detail, controlled stroke size, and frame-to-frame coherence – through image based rendering (IBR) methods. In a preprocessing stage, we capture photos of a real or synthetic environment, map the photos to a coarse model of the environment, and run a series of NPR filters to generate textures. At runtime, the system re-renders the NPR textures over the geometry of the coarse model, and it adds dark lines that emphasize creases and silhouettes. We provide a method for constructing non-photorealistic textures from photographs that largely avoids seams in the resulting imagery. We also offer a new construction, art-maps, to control stroke size across the images. Finally, we show a working system that provides an immersive experience rendered in a variety of NPR styles.