Aesthetic Rendering and Arrangement of Spatial Content

As work and play become increasingly virtual, the bottleneck is rapidly becoming content creation rather than raw computational power. But many tools for content creation in computer graphics remain in the domain of the specialist since they requires an uncommon set of skills, both artistic and technical. The digital designer must possess a natural aptitude for artistic aspects such as composition, colour, and visual flow, and also engage in esoteric technical tasks such as object transformations or non-linear operations. Yet, even for those with such comprehensive skill sets, many tasks remain complex and labour-intensive. The overarching theme of this research is therefore to reduce the complexity of graphical applications through semi-automation and the incorporation of aesthetic constraints, thereby facilitating the generation and presentation of digital content. Generating 3D content in ways that are accessible to a broad set of users is challenging and is the subject of this proposed work, specifically with regards to the development of novel approaches. This theme will be manifested in several closely related initiatives that will develop and evaluate new graphics-intensive methods with distinctive incarnations and combinations of navigation, spatial arrangement and lighting styles. Over the past decade, my research has intertwined computer graphics, perception and interaction, and increasingly my intention is to more closely fuse these threads. Our recent work on Object Clouds introduced a novel, engaging and efficient system for object browsing and searching. And we have developed successful optimization processes for tone mapping, which is the process of judiciously reducing the high luminance ranges of dark-to-bright in real world and rendered scenes down to a range visible on a typical screen. This has been achieved not just for tone mapping images but has also recently been adapted to real-time through the clustering of scenes, their pre-computed optimization and the interpolation between them. The aim of the present work is to build on these past successes and introduce new innovations by offering visually engaging metaphors that are understandable without onerous levels of training, while the underlying methods will delve into both technical and stylistic elements. These initiatives feed directly into my long-term research trajectory which aims to infuse graphics with perceptual and aesthetic elements, and they directly address the need for supportive content creation tools. The proposed research addresses this need for the creation of content for digital games and virtual worlds, as well as its refined presentation and navigation. This will positively impact the efficiency and quality of digital production, as well as broaden the accessibility of digital content design.