Radiance Caching is a ray tracing-based method for accelerated global illumination computation in scenes with low-frequency glossy BRDFs. The method is based on sparse sampling, caching, and interpolating radiance on glossy surfaces. In particular we extend the irradiance caching scheme proposed by Ward et al. in 1988 to cache and interpolate directional incoming radiance instead of irradiance. The incoming radiance at a point is represented by a vector of coefficients with respect to a spherical or hemispherical basis.

Skeletal animation is an established technique to model and animate articulated objects in real-time virtual environments. The idea of skeletal animation is to use an auxiliary structure (skeleton) to simplify the control of the modelled 3D object. A variety of problems arises in the context of skeletal animation. In this project, we focus mainly on the problems of skin deformation (skinning) and collision detection.

The aim of this project is to understand 2.5D structure of classical cartoon animations produced by cel or paper based technique where animation frames are created as a planar composition of static textural background and dynamic homogeneous foreground. Algorithms are developed to disassemble the original composition of layers and to estimate mutual correspondences between frames/regions in the animation.

The dynamic range of visual stimuli appearing in the real world is extremely large and this holds for physically plausible synthetic images as well. However, conventional media used to present these images can only display a limited range of luminous intensity. This problem, i.e., displaying high contrast images on output devices with limited contrast, is a task of high dynamic range imaging and it is usually referred to as a tone mapping.

The aim of this project is to design and develop a system for processing virtual models of existing cities. The target system is characterized by the following parameters: independence of computational platform, dynamic behavior according to user requests (speed, amount of data, richness of multimedia information, image quality, level of details etc.), access using both the web and a standalone distribution on CD. The structure of the system has been successfully checked on a real web application - the Virtual Old Prague.

The Center for Computer Graphics covers computer graphics groups of four prominent universities in the Czech Republic: Czech Technical University in Prague, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Masaryk University in Brno, and Brno University of Technology. The center aims to combine the expertise of the partners and stimulate their cooperation in the area of new interaction methods for virtual reality, development of algorithms for modelling and visualization, and the design of specialized graphics hardware.

The project aims at integrating an AR teaching platform into the everyday environment of teachers and students, displaying audiovisual and multimedia content in line with the needs identified by education experts and researchers in the relevant areas. Using 3D presentations and userfriendly interaction techniques will lead to a better understanding of scientific and cultural content coupled with high student motivation.

The aim of this project was to digitally reconstruct selected significant objects of cultural heritage in four European cities Prague, Bratislava, Maribor and Graz and save them for the future in a public digital archive. The goal was focused on architectural verticals of the cities. Therefore the subtitle of the project was Towers and Wells. The presentation of five historical objects from the city of Prague has been created using several interactive technologies.