schrankmonster blog » High Dynamic Range

the first XBOX 360 game that exports user generated content…

bietiekay — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 10:57:54 +0000

Gamers rejoice! Today there were some really great updates in the XBOX 360 queue. The most interesting one is the update for Project Gotham Racing 3 – one of the launch titles of the 360. You finally can export the pictures you took in “Photo Mode” to your computer. Just select the picture and send it to your “Your Photos”-Webpage and grab them from there.

I straight went onto the track with the Sagaris to take some test pictures:

yes, HDR…

yes, panoramic view…

I just can say: WOW! That’s what I was looking for when I used the “Photo Mode” over half a year ago for the first time…Oh…I forgot to mention that they are also doing a competition…if you want to take part…here’s the info you need.

Source 1: http://projectgothamracing3.com/photos/PhotoGallery
Source 2: http://www.bizarreonline.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=216755

real time radiosity lighting … soon in a game near you?

bietiekay — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:27:38 +0000

It seems that a company called Geomerics has developed an algorithm that allows real time radiosity lighting in fairly complex environments. They support nearly all the things you would expect, like soft shadowing, infinite light bounces, colour bleeding:

If you don’t know what radiosity is:

“Radiosity is a global illumination algorithm used in 3D computer graphics rendering. Unlike direct illumination algorithms (such as ray tracing), which tend to simulate light reflecting only once off each surface, global illumination algorithms such as Radiosity simulate the many reflections of light around a scene, generally resulting in softer, more natural shadows”

Since you of course know how radiosity works you can imagine that it’s dead slow. And getting it up to real time is the important thing about the new algorithm.

They demonstrate their technology in a short movie:

“Geomerics real-time lighting technology incorporates all of these effects in an ‘infinite bounce’ setting. Lights can be moved dynamically, so characters exploring a scene with a torch, for example, can now experience the scene being lit as it would be in the real world. Furthermore, artists can create lights dynamically to ensure that scenes are lit the way they intended, in a similar manner to movie sets.

Our technique also supports real-time area light sources, smooth soft-edged indirect shadows, projected lighting, spot lights, colour bleeding and texture-based lighting effects such as normal and bump mapping.”

Source 1: http://www.geomerics.com/index.php?page=lighting
Source 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosity

campus world-championship HDR

bietiekay — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 21:06:53 +0000

ThamThon did the pictures and I did the HDR rendering…

Source: http://www.campus-wm-2006.de

HDR campfire…

bietiekay — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 21:19:17 +0000

We had a great campfire and I played again with my Powershot… here is the High Dynamic Range campfire:

[UPDATE] nature…experimenting with HDR

bietiekay — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 21:15:03 +0000

UPDATE: I added the full resolution versions of the HDR pictures.

During FIWAK I had the chance to play a bit with a Canon EOS 20D. It’s proper DSLR and you can do many great things with it. All the pictures below where done without a tripod. As you can see there are a few ghost pictures but less than I expected in that mode. Nevertheless my Canon PowerShot A400 is better for panoramic views – the EOS is way to big and heavy, you surely need a tripod to do proper panoramic views whereas you can do quite good panoramic views with the A400 without a tripod.

FIWAK 2006 starts today!!!

bietiekay — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 18:35:11 +0000

After last years FIWAK, FeM is back in the forest. This year with even more hardware, even more people and even more tents.

The first lecture starts in just a few minutes so stay tuned for more news on the FIWAK 06.

Source: FeM FIWAK Homepage

High Dynamic Range display available…

bietiekay — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 12:24:55 +0000

BrightSide is the name of the company that announced their High Dynamic Range display recently.

“BrightSide introduces the DR37-P, a pectacular breakthrough in display technology that uses an array of LED backlights to deliver 10 times the brightness and 100 times the contrast of existing televisions and computer monitors. BrightSide’s Extreme Dynamic Range displays deliver more vibrant images and allow you to see your data in
vivid detail.”

Extreme Dynamic Range
Over 3000 cd/m2 Brightness
Contrast Ratio > 200,000:1
High Definition 1920×1080
37” Screen
16 bits per color
IMLED – Individually Modulated Array of LED backlights

There are some movies available where you can get an impression what HDR really means. It’s a bit heavy…”less than 72 kg” says the spec. But it looks cooool:

Source 1: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/10/04/brightside_hdr_edr/1.html

Source 2: http://www.brightsidetech.com/products/dr37p.php

more High Dynamic Range experiments…

bietiekay — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 23:40:00 +0000

I am playing with my camera and that’s what resulted today…

For the next picture my apologies…I just don’t have a tripod…

High Dynamic Range Imaging… my first steps…

bietiekay — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 22:42:39 +0000

I don’t own a 600 Euro digital camera. Mine was cheap and does the job well so far. And now I’ve found something more to play with. I like to do panoramic views, as you might have mentioned before. But the technique I am now discovering is far more interesting. It’s called High Dynamic Range imaging.

Here’s an excerpt of the wikipedia article on that subject:

In computer graphics and cinematography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI for short) is a set of techniques that allow a far greater dynamic range of exposures than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to the deepest shadows.”

Since it’s night here at the moment I could only experiment in the dark, where my camera creates, beside dark pictures, very much picture noise.

So, what to do, you may ask. Well grab a camera where you can control at least the exposure time. Than take at least 2 (the more the better) pictures with different exposure times. I started with 3 pictures per HDR image. As you can see above:

When you have those pictures you need a software to combine them to an HDR image. There are many sites that can provide such tools, I recommend hdrsoft.com. They provide a tool called “Photomatix” which is specialized on HDR imaging. If you have a Photoshop CS2 available, well, that will do the job as well. Just go to the “File->Automate->Create HDR” dialog.

If you downloaded the tools, throw the pictures inside and let the magic happen. You get a 16 or 32 Bit per pixel image. You can control the exposure and saturation, the white and the black levels and so on. To save the picture as a standard-JPG like I did, you have to do some Tone-Mapping. Photomatix can do that as well.

Expect more on that subject here tomorrow. Then with some pictures of the sunny nature…well if there is sun tomorrow…Till than: Enjoy the HDR images I’ve got so far:

First the 3 source pictures:

And then the HDRI:

First the 3 source pictures:

And then the HDRI:

Source 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging

Source 2: http://www.hdrsoft.com