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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

computer generated image of statue computer generated image of human face

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, October 26, 2009 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Henrik Jensen

"Seeing is Believing"

ABSTRACT -- Photorealistic rendering is an important research area in computer graphics. The goal is to generate an image, from a 3-dimensional description of a scene, that looks like an actual photograph of this scene. This involves asking basic questions such as why the sky is blue, why grass is green, and what determines the color of human skin. Having an understanding of how light interacts with materials allows us to simulate the appearance of these materials.

In this talk, I will describe some of our recent work in simulating the appearance of materials such as human skin, hair, milk, and ice. The combination of these materials makes it possible to render a human face, which is a particularly challenging problem, since human observers are very sensitive to the appearance of faces. I will also present techniques for simulating the night sky as it appears to the human observer. Finally, I will present new research for predicting the appearance of materials based on their molecular structure in order to answer the question: "what will it look like if I mix these molecules together"?

SPEAKER -- Henrik Wann Jensen is an associate professor at the University of California at San Diego, where he teaches computer graphics. His research focuses on realistic image synthesis, global illumination, rendering of natural phenomena, and appearance modeling. He is the author of Realistic Image Synthesis Using Photon Mapping, AK Peters 2001. His images have appeared on the front covers of the SIGGRAPH proceedings (2001) and the National Geographic Magazine (2002). Three of his animations have been shown in the SIGGRAPH electronic theater (1998, 2000, 2001). Before joining UCSD in 2002, he was a research associate at Stanford University from 1999-2002, a consultant to Pixar in 2001, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1998-1999, and a research scientist in industry working on commercial rendering software from 1996-1998. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Technical University of Denmark in 1996.

In 2004, Professor Jensen received an Academy Award (Technical Achievement Award) from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for pioneering research in rendering translucent materials. He also became a Sloan Fellow and he was selected as one of the top 10 scientists in 2004 by Popular Science magazine.


Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov