Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

National Initiatives

The ANR ALTA project started in October 2011, and focuses on the development of novel algorithms for realistic and efficient global illumination. The project is coordinated by the Grenoble Inria group ARTIS (N.Holzschuch), and the Bordeaux Inria group MANAO (X. Granier) is also a partner. Our participation is the study of error bounds for these algorithms and the development of interactive global illumination. This year we developed a new global illumination algorithm described in Sec.  7.2.12 which was published at EGSR [10] .

https://www-sop.inria.fr/members/Adrien.Bousseau/drao/

The ANR DRAO is a young researcher project coordinated by Adrien Bousseau, in collaboration with the InSitu project team at Inria Saclay - Ile de France (W. Mackay and T. Tsandilas) and the MANAO project team (P. Barla and G. Guennebaud) and POTIOC project team (M. Hachet) at Inria Bordeaux - Sud Ouest. The goal of this collaboration is to develop novel drawing tools for amateurs as well as for expert designers and illustrators, combining expertise in Computer Graphics (REVES and MANAO) and Human-Computer Interaction (InSitu, POTIOC). This ANR project funds the PhD of Emmanuel Iarussi.

The first part of the project involved the observation of how people draw with existing tools. To do so we conducted observational studies where we will interview designers and illustrators and collect data by videotaping drawing sessions and by recording drawings with digital pens. In the second part of the project we deduced from our observations new user interfaces and rendering algorithms that automate part of the drawing process and enrich 2D drawings with realistic rendering capabilities. We combined computer vision and computer graphics techniques to estimate geometric information from sketches and then used this information to guide rendering algorithms that generate plausible depictions of material and lighting over the drawing. We also developed computer-assisted drawing lessons to help amateurs draw from photographs and 3D models, using image analysis algorithms to estimate the structure of a photograph and use that structure as guidance for drawing. To summarize, the goal of the ANR DRAO project was to make amateurs more confident in their drawing skills and to allow expert designers to produce complex illustrations more effectively.

The ANR DRAO has resulted in three publications this year on normal field estimation from rough sketches [7] , 3D interpretation of line drawings [14] and jewelry design [8] .