Urban Reconstruction and Modeling for Building Virtual Worlds March 12, 2008

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Google Tech Talks
March, 11 2008

ABSTRACT

Creating digital content for virtual worlds remains a significant
challenge, especially for urban environments, which are among the
largest and most complex. As display capabilities improve and audience
expectations grow, procedural modeling techniques are becoming an
increasingly important supplement to traditional modeling software. In
this talk, we present grammar-based, image-based and interactive
methods for the efficient creation of urban environments. Thus massive
architectural models of high visual quality and geometric detail can
be produced at low cost. Selected examples demonstrate solutions to
previously unsolved modeling problems, especially to consistent mass
modeling with volumetric shapes of arbitrary orientation. Furthermore,
we show massive urban models with unprecedented level of detail, with
the virtual rebuilding of the archaeological site of Pompeii as a case
in point.

Speaker: Peter Wonka
Peter Wonka joined the computer science faculty of Arizona State
University as Assistent Professor in 2004 after two years as a
post-doctorate researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He
received his Ph.D. in computer science from the Vienna University of
Technology in 2001 and a masters degree in urban planning in 2002. His
research interests include various topics in computer graphics,
especially real-time rendering and procedural modeling. Peter Wonka is
a member of the PRISM lab (http://prism.asu.edu/).

Speaker: Pascal Mueller
Pascal Mueller is researcher at the Computer Vision Laboratory of the
ETH Zurich (http://www.vision.ethz.ch) and CEO of the recently founded
spin-off company Procedural Inc. (http://www.procedural.com) located
in Zurich, Switzerland. His main interests lie in the field of
computer graphics: procedural modeling, generative design, visual
effects production pipelines and computer-aided media art. He
developed the architectural modeling tool CityEngine and is
co-developer of the multimedia engine Soundium. He has published
various scientific papers including SIGGRAPH, and his body of artistic
work includes videos, short movies, over fifty live visuals
performances, and several interactive installations exhibited in
museums like the Ars Electronica Center. Pascal Mueller received a
master degree in computer science from ETH Zurich in 2001. For two
years, he worked as a 3D artist and technical director for the Swiss
production company Central Pictures.