Making Global Illumination User-Friendly
by Greg Ward
ABSTRACT
Global illumination researchers tend to think in terms of mesh
density and sampling frequency, and their software reflects this
in its user interface.
Advanced rendering systems are rife with long command lines and
parameters for tuning the sample densities, thresholds and
other algorithm-specific variables, and the novice user is
quickly lost in a sea of possibilities.
This paper details a successful effort of making one such global
illumination system usable by people who understand their
problems, even if they do not understand the methods needed to solve them,
through an assisted oracle approach.
A single program is introduced to map a small set of intuitive
control variables to the rendering commands and parameter
settings needed to produce the desired output in a reasonable time.
This new executive program then serves as the basis for a
graphical user interface that is both friendly in its appearance and
reliable in its performance.
Finally, we conclude with some future directions for improving this
interface.
Unfortunately, we do not have an HTML version of this paper to offer.
Instead, we have two compressed PostScript files that together comprise
the original submission, plus some additional overhead slides on
the rad(1) program
The PostScript files are:
- paper.ps.Z (45K)
- Postscript of text of paper.
- figure1.ps.Z (32K)
- Figure 1.
- radslides.ps.Z (866K)
- Overhead slide presentation describing rad.
Alternative formats are offered below:
- paper.pdf (46K)
- Acrobat Exchange of paper text.
- figure1.gif (14K)
- GIF version of Figure 1.