Hardware Accelarated Real Time Charcoal Rendering
Author(s): Aditi Majumder, M. Gopi.
Proceedings: 2nd International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR'02), Annecy, France, June 3-5,
2002.
[BibTeX] 
Abstract:
In this paper, we present simple rendering techniques implemented using traditional graphics hardware to achieve the effects of charcoal drawing. The effects include characteristics of charcoal drawings like broad grainy strokes and smooth tonal variations that are achieved by smudging the charcoal by hand. Further, we also generate the closure effect that is used by artists at times to avoid hard silhouette edges. All these effects are achieved using contrast enhancement operators on textures and/or colors of the 3D model. Our contribution lies in unifying the methods to achieve these effects under the common framework of contrast enhancement operators. Further, since the effects have been implemented using traditional graphics hardware, a single rendering pass is sufficient to create different effects. Hence, we can render highly complex models with large number of triangles at interactive rates. Thus, our method is especially suited for applications like scientific visualization and preliminary sketches/animations.