Research in computer graphics at Yale includes the areas of modeling and interacting with architectural-scale scenes, sketching and alternative design techniques, material and texture models, applications of perception to computer graphics, applications of computer graphics in cultural heritage, and recovering shape and reflectance from images.
With the proliferation of 3D graphics capabilities and the introduction of virtual reality systems, an increasing number of applications are being developed that require the interactive visualization of complex 3D scenes. However impressive the evolution of graphics hardware over the past thirty years, the goal of realistically modeling and interactively manipulating scenes of industrial complexity remains an elusive one. At Yale the research along this line is to develop (1) improved methods for the capture and editing of architectural-scale models with a mix of 3D scanning, digital photography, and novel user interfaces and (2) new algorithms to accelerate the visualization of very complex 3D scenes using novel simplification techniques and image-based impostors.
While researchers have made great strides in light transport algorithms, or rendering, simulations depend just as much on the underlying material models. Unfortunately, the models widely used in computer graphics assume that the materials are both pristine and immutable, even though real materials are neither. The research on material and texture models at Yale is to devise both new material representations and operators for generating and capturing a broad range of complex surface appearances, and to develop methods both to simulate materials and the processes that affect them, and to physically measure the input required for these models.
Faculty members working in this area are Julie Dorsey and Holly Rushmeier.