- Dr. Paul Debevec gave an eye opening keynote on how to control the effects of light.
- His techniques allow the creation of true texture maps where the effects of light have been removed.
- Trimble announced a new indoor mobile mapping solution.
One of the most impressive keynotes at SPAR 2010 was presented by Paul Debevec, Assoc. Director of Graphics Research at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies. His title and affiliation are very descriptive of the man.
Paul did his Ph.D. research at Berkley where he used a kite to take photographs of the campus. Using just 20 photos and his photogrammetric modeling techniques he was able to create a very impressive fly through of the campus. His ability to control the viewpoint of his videos eventually became of interest to the makers of the Matrix.
A recent project involved scanning the Parthenon in Greece. This provided him with the 3D geometry, but as the title of his presentation – “Beyond Shape” indicates he was also interested in controlling the light for his renderings. As he described it his goal is to remove the lighting effects from photographs so that he can create true texture maps for the presentation. There is not enough space to describe the techniques he has developed, but if you are interested in controlling the effects of light Paul is the man.
The first day at SPAR was jam packed with keynotes in the AM, and sessions in the PM, followed by 2 hours on the show floor. It will take some time to highlight a number of the important news items, but one press release that I just came across that is worth noting is from Trimble. They are announcing an indoor mobile mapping solution. This is actually coming from Applanix and I think will be of real interest for many purposes.
