Orion Lawlor's PhD Thesis: Impostors for Parallel Interactive Computer Graphics

Campus Rendering Antialiased Soft-Shadow Tree

This page describes my parallel programming and computer graphics work on impostors, which are 2D texture standins for real 3D geometry. Impostors provide a substantial amount of latency tolerance and rendering speedup, which can be used to render huge and detailed models--like a model of the entire UIUC campus--with quality antialiased rendering techniques, including soft shadows.

The best places to learn more about these techniques are:

I gave my final defense on 2:00PM Monday, November 29, 2004 in 4407 Siebel. Defense Version of Dissertation (5.5MB, Updated 11/23)

Committee:

Selected Self Citations

Selected Prior Work

Prelim Report

Prelim Report, final revision (PDF 7.3MB).

Prelim Presentation (PowerPoint, 5.4MB) (PDF 3.4MB) (4-up PDF 1.0MB)

The prelim was held 4:00pm Monday, April 12, 2004.

ChangeLog

(Updated Wednesday, December 21 2005: Finally added movies.)

(... many updates in preparation for defense...)

(Updated 4pm Sunday, November 7: Added final defense schedule.)

(Updated 4pm Sunday, April 11: Final version of slides.)

(Updated 3am Sunday, April 11: Added slides.)

(Updated 6pm Thursday, April 1: Final version.)

(Updated 11pm Wednesday, March 31: Incorporate suggestions from Kale and Sayantan.)

(Updated 2am Wednesday, March 31: Example images from penumbra limit maps, upload self-citation papers.)

(Updated 4pm Saturday, March 27: More graphics references.)

(Updated 2am Saturday, March 27: Incorporate Kale e-mail edits, a few final additions.)

(Updated 2am Thursday, March 25: Incorporate Kale edits, rework most sections.)

(Updated 2pm Wednesday, March 24: Better fundamentals section, more rendering details.)


Orion Lawlor, olawlor@acm.org, 3/23/2004