[4eyes] FW: [faculty] Reminder: Faculty candidate Cem Yuksel, 3pm, 1601 Elings Hall

[Matthew Turk]

Reminder: Cem Yuksel's talk at 3:00pm today in 1601 Elings

-----Original Message-----
From: faculty-bounces at mat.ucsb.edu [mailto:faculty-bounces at mat.ucsb.edu] On
Behalf Of Tobias Hollerer
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 2:00 PM
To: faculty at mat.ucsb.edu; students at mat.ucsb.edu
Subject: [faculty] Reminder: Faculty candidate Cem Yuksel, 3pm, 1601 Elings
Hall

MAT Faculty Candidate - Cem Yuksel
Date: Tuesday, March 10.
Time: 3:00 pm
Place: 1601 Elings Hall


TITLE: Real-time Graphics: Towards Virtual Environments of Tomorrow

ABSTRACT:

Computer graphics has reached a remarkable level of realism. Virtual
environments and characters used in contemporary movies can be
indistinguishable from reality even to a trained eye. However, these
stunning images can only be created given enough time and
computational power combined with careful art direction to generate
each single frame. The ultimate goal is to achieve a similar realism
with real-time frame rates, so that the virtual environments of
tomorrow can reach the same quality level as their offline
counterparts.

In this talk I will lay out fundamental differences between offline
and real-time applications of computer graphics and present important
challenges in producing similar high quality visuals in real-time. I
will point out possible ways of bringing the quality of offline
graphics to real-time graphics and explain why constant innovation and
research that propose new methods and alternative approaches are
crucial to overcome the challenges real-time graphics. I will present
three example topics in computer graphics and discuss the relationship
between offline and real-time graphics. The first example is my work
on real-time water simulation, which provides a different approach to
water simulation that can be up to a million times faster than offline
techniques. My work on hair rendering is the second example; I will
talk about how computationally expensive and extremely complicated
light interactions in hair can be approximated to achieve realistic
hair rendering in real-time. Finally, I will talk about my work on
texturing and painting surfaces and how fundamental problems of
graphics in texture mapping can be resolved by providing
unconventional approaches.


BIO:

Cem Yuksel is a PhD candidate in Computer Graphics at Texas A&M
University. He has a BS in Physics and MS in Computer Engineering from
Bogazici University in Turkey. He also studied in the Visualization
Program at Texas A&M University, and Visual Arts and Communication
Design at Sabanci University in Turkey. His research covers a wide
range of topics in computer graphics, starting from physically based
simulation to realistic image synthesis. The focal point of his
research has been real-time graphics, but his methods have been
accepted by both offline and real-time graphics communities. His work
on real-time water simulation, hair rendering, and texture mapping
received strong interest from many companies in the software, video
game, visual effects, and feature animation industries, such as
Microsoft, NVIDIA, Intel, DreamWorks, Disney Animation, and Pixar.



-- 
Tobias Hollerer
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5110

holl at cs.ucsb.edu, Office: (805)893-8759, Fax: (805)893-8553