Faculty of Science

Deadline: 21 June 2013

Supervisory Team: Professor A Day

The Project:

Real-time crowd rendering has become an increasingly important topic in computer graphics and presents two separate challenges; that of displaying a large number of animated characters and that of incorporating plausible crowd variety. A significant amount of progress has been made in recent years and many of the fundamental problems have already been solved. For example, [Dud07, SBOT08] demonstrate how a combination of hardware skinning and geometry instancing can be used to draw several thousands of animated characters; [MYT08] provides an overview of how best to inject crowd variety and the latest research has shown where to focus computational resources in order to maximize the perception of variety by the user [MLD08, MLH09]. LOD techniques in terms of geometry, skeleton and motion simplifcation are considered in [SM08] but despite these advances, real-time crowd rendering remains a long way from where we envisage it to be.

One of the reasons for this is the concessions that have to be made when attempting to visualize many thousands of characters. In comparison to traditional character rendering, crowds are usually displayed by way of a dedicated (and far less capable) system and this distinction can become all too obvious when members of a crowd approach the camera too closely.

Our research has developed a unified approach that has the potential to remove these limitations by processing crowds akin to how we do with standard characters. This opens the door for a new wave of research by providing a platform on which to develop the animation and rendering techniques necessary to bring real-time crowds up to the level that we would expect from ‘next-generation’ games. The candidate should have a working knowledge of programmable shading and will have the opportunity to work with state-of-the-art technologies in computer graphics

Entry Requirements:

Minimum entry requirements: 1st in Computer Science

Funding:

Due to funding restrictions funding will cover home/EU fees only. Overseas students will be required to pay the difference between home/EU and overseas fees.

Making Your Application:

Please apply via the University’s online application system. To discuss the application process or particular projects, please contact the: Admissions Office, email: pgr.enquiries.admiss@uea.ac.uk or telephone +44 (0)1603 591709.