CS 348b Spring 2001 Rendering Competition

These images were created for the rendering competition in Pat Hanrahan's CS 348b class: Image Synthesis Techniques in the Spring quarter of 2001. Greg Humphreys was the TA, so he created this page.

The judges for the competition were:

Steve Marschner from the Stanford Graphics Lab
Brian Smits from Pixar
Dan Wexler from PDI

Grand Prize
	Iridescence in Biological Structures by Steve Bennett and Arthur Amezcua Steve and Arthur modeled the color shift due to iridescence, and won a trip to SIGGRAPH 2001 for their efforts. Note the use of a texture map to modulate the iridescence, giving the convincing veining structure. Because a single image doesn't do iridescence justice, they made a movie to show off this view-dependent effect.
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First Prize
	Rendering Ocean Scenes by Michael Hill and Gavan Kwan Michael and Gavan created high-resolution heightfields to make amazing pictures of ocean waves. The technique they use to model the waves is super-scientific and sounds quite impressive! They also did some smoothing of the normals to make the water reflection look just so.
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Honorable Mentions (In no particular order)
	Texel Shader by Eric Chan Eric implemented a fur rendering algorithm based on Kajiya and Kay's SIGGRAPH '89 paper. He used his renderer to create some cool images of carpet and other fuzzy things.
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	Manatees by Robert Lin and Shari Petersen Robert and Shari implemented photon mapping and bump mapping to create some remarkably lifelike pictures of manatees. Manatees are an endangered species. To find out how you can help, visit this web page.
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	Programmable Shading Language by Gary King Gary designed a shading language that was a clever combination of good ideas from RenderMan and DirectX8. His web page gives a demonstration of several interesting shaders. Although Gary didn't win first prize, he did get two job offers from the judges.
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	Reptiles by Matthew Everett and Jeffrey Mancuso Matt and Jeff modeled the famous M.C. Escher "Reptiles" drawing. The reptiles are subdivision surfaces, and the pages of the books are procedurally deformed NURBS. The plant is made of procedurally deformed cones. They also implemented multitexturing, bump mapping, and an "iridescentesque" shader. On top of all this, they modified their renderer to generate lightfields, and wrote a standalone lightfield viewer to adjust the viewpoint and depth of field after rendering. Did I mention they implemented a tilt/shift lens model to more accurately capture the perspective distortion in the original picture? Since they really hadn't done much, they also implemented a message-passing based parallel version of their renderer using MPI, which came in handy when rendering their 3.5MB of RIB input (along with 12 MB of texture).
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	Flower by Kok-Wei Koh and Xinru Ng Woo Kok-Wei and Xinru implemented subsurface scattering to make a natural looking flower rendering. Their final composition uses depth-of-field to create a soft feel, closely matching their original photographs. The flower is modeled with NURBS. They also implemented a texel-rendering algorithm for the pollen in the center.
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Other Cool Submissions (In no particular order)
	Participating Media by Nathan C Williams and Matthew Yu Tak Chiu Nathan and Matthew implemented a ray-marching based participating media simulation to create images of sunlight streaming into a hazy room. The blooming around the very bright window is clearly evident in their picture.
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	Fisheye Lens Effect by Logi Vidarsson and Michael Sharps Logi and Michael extended their renderer's camera model to include non-linear effects such as this fisheye lens. They also made a movie showing off the fisheye lens.
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	Procedural Butterflies by Peter Douglas and Tyler Voliter Peter and Tyler wrote a very clever procedural algorithm for generating the wings of butterflies. Using data from actual wing development, they generated NURBS surfaces for the wings, veining maps, and multiple texture maps to create each unique butterfly.
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	Prismatic Effects by Jennifer Harkness Jennifer modeled the wavelength dependent effects that occur when light interacts with prisms.
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	Still Life by Mike Cammarano and Mike Nidel Mike and Mike implemented photon mapping, a brushed metal shader, and environment mapping to model a still life of a clock and a water glass. The newspaper is a texture-mapped heightfield, and the entire left off-screen hemisphere is a huge area light!
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	Water Bottle by Zak Middleton and Huat Chye Lim Zak and Huat implemented bump mapping and photon mapping to create realistic images of this water bottle. Note the colored caustics resulting from the glass balls as well.
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	Caustics in Water by Michael Madison II and Nader Zaki Michael and Nader implemented photon mapping through volumes to make their pictures of caustics through rippling water. They also implemented KD-Trees and a more accurate model of sunlight.
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