Papers by Mark Meyer


Order by: Date  | Author  | Title  | Index of all authors  | Index of Pixar Technical Memos


Statistical Acceleration for Animated Global Illumination

Mark Meyer, John Anderson
January 2006

Global illumination provides important visual cues to an animation, however its computational expense limits its use in practice. In this paper, we present an easy to implement technique for accelerating the computation of indirect illumination for an animated sequence using stochastic ray tracing. We begin by computing a quick but noisy solution using a ... more

Paper (PDF)

Additional materials: [ShotRender.mov]

To appear in SIGGRAPH 2006

Available as Pixar Technical Memo #06-03


Harmonic Coordinates for Character Articulation

Pushkar Joshi, Mark Meyer, Tony DeRose, Brian Green, Tom Sanocki
May 2007

In this paper we consider the problem of creating and controlling volume deformations used to articulate characters for use in high-end applications such as computer generated feature films. We introduce a method we call harmonic coordinates that significantly improves upon existing volume deformation techniques. Our deformations are controlled using a topologically flexible structure, called a cage, ... more

Paper (PDF)

Additional materials: [HarmonicCoordinates.divx], [SiggraphSlides.pdf]

Available in the proceedings of Siggraph 2007.

Available as Pixar Technical Memo #06-02b

Other versions:


Key Point Subspace Acceleration and Soft Caching

Mark Meyer, John Anderson
May 2007

Many applications in Computer Graphics contain computationally expensive calculations. These calculations are often performed at many points to produce a full solution, even though the subspace of reasonable solutions may be of a relatively low dimension. The calculation of facial articulation and rendering of scenes with global illumination are two example applications that ... more

Paper (PDF)

Additional materials: [SiggraphSlides.pdf], [softCaching.mov]

Available in the proceedings of Siggraph 2007

Available as Pixar Technical Memo #06-04b

Other versions:


Feature Adaptive GPU Rendering of Catmull-Clark Subdivision Surfaces

Matthias Niessner, Charles Loop, Mark Meyer, Tony DeRose
January 2012

We present a novel method for high-performance GPU-based rendering of Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces. Unlike previous methods, our algorithm computes the true limit surface up to machine precision, and is capable of rendering surfaces that conform to the full RenderMan specification for Catmull-Clark surfaces. Specifically, our algorithm can accommodate base meshes ... more

Paper (PDF)

Available in ACM Transactions on Graphics, January 2012.


Tone Mapping High Dynamic Range Videos using Wavelets

Qi Shan, Mark Meyer, Tony DeRose, John Anderson
January 2012

We propose a novel 3D wavelet based tone mapping framework for high dynamic range videos. Still image tone mapping methods can be applied to videos in a frame by frame fashion, but they often exhibit haloing artifacts and do not guarantee temporal coherence, resulting in flickering. Directly extending wavelet analysis/synthesis ... more

Paper (PDF)

Available as Pixar Technical Memo #12-01


Artistic Simulation of Curly Hair

Hayley Iben, Mark Meyer, Lena Petrovic, Olivier Soares, John Anderson, Andrew Witkin
July 2013

Artistic simulation of hair presents many challenges - ranging from incorporating artistic control to dealing with extreme motions of characters. Additionally, in a production environment, the simulation needs to be fast and results need to be usable "out of the box" (without extensive parameter modifications) in order to produce ... more

Paper (PDF)

Additional materials: [tazVideo-SCA.mov]

Available in the Proceedings of the Symposium on Computer Animation 2013.

Available as Pixar Technical Memo #12-03b

Other versions:


Subspace Clothing Simulation using Adaptive Bases

Fabian Hahn, Bernhard Thomaszewski, Stelian Coros, Robert W. Sumner, Forrester Cole, Mark Meyer, Tony DeRose, Markus Gross
January 2014

We present a new approach to clothing simulation using low-dimensional linear subspaces with temporally adaptive bases. Our method exploits full-space simulation training data in order to construct a pool of low-dimensional bases distributed across pose space. For this purpose, we interpret the simulation data as offsets from a kinematic deformation ... more

Paper (PDF)

Additional materials: [SubspaceClothingSiggraph2.mp4]

Available as Pixar Technical Memo #14-03


Subspace Condensation: Full Space Adaptivity for Subspace Deformations

Yun Teng, Mark Meyer, Tony DeRose, Theodore Kim
May 2015

Subspace deformable body simulations can be very fast, but can behave unrealistically when behaviors outside the prescribed subspace, such as novel external collisions, are encountered. We address this limitation by presenting a fast, flexible new method that allows full space computation to be activated in the neighborhood of novel events ... more

Paper (PDF)

Additional materials: [paper_0089.mov]

To appear in SIGGRAPH 2015.

Available as Pixar Technical Memo #15-03


Subdivision Exterior Calculus for Geometry Processing

Fernando de Goes, Mathieu Desbrun, Mark Meyer, Tony DeRose
April 2016

This paper introduces a new computational method to solve differential equations on subdivision surfaces. Our approach adapts the numerical framework of Discrete Exterior Calculus (DEC) from the polygonal to the subdivision setting by exploiting the refinability of subdivision basis functions. The resulting Subdivision Exterior Calculus (SEC) provides significant improvements in ... more

Paper (PDF)

Additional materials: [supplemental.pdf], [supplementalFigs.pdf]

SIGGRAPH 2016

Available as Pixar Technical Memo #16-01


Kernel-Predicting Convolutional Networks for Denoising Monte Carlo Renderings

Steve Bako, Thijs Vogels, Brian McWilliams, Mark Meyer, Jan Novak, Alex Harvill, Pradeep Sen, Tony DeRose, Fabrice Rousselle
July 2017

Regression-based algorithms have shown to be good at denoising Monte Carlo (MC) renderings by leveraging its inexpensive by-products (e.g., feature buffers). However, when using higher-order models to handle complex cases, these techniques often overfit to noise in the input. For this reason, supervised learning methods have been proposed that ... more

Paper (PDF)

SIGGRAPH 2017


Denoising with Kernel Prediction and Asymmetric Loss Functions

Thijs Vogels, Fabrice Rouselle, Brian McWilliams, Gerhard Roethlin, Alex Harvill, David Adler, Mark Meyer, Jan Novak
May 2018

We present a modular convolutional architecture for denoising rendered images. We expand on the capabilities of kernel-predicting networks by combining them with a number of task-specific modules, and optimizing the assembly using an asymmetric loss. The source aware encoder - the first module in the assembly - extracts ... more

Paper (PDF)


Deep Learned Super Resolution for Feature Film Production

Vaibhav Vavilala, Mark Meyer
June 2020

Upscaling techniques are commonly used to create high resolution images, which are cost-prohibitive or even impossible to produce otherwise. In recent years, deep learning methods have improved the detail and sharpness of upscaled images over traditional algorithms. Here we discuss the motivation and challenges of bringing deep learned super resolution ... more

Paper (PDF)


FaceBaker: Baking Character Facial Rigs with Machine Learning

Sarah Radzihovsky, Fernando de Goes, Mark Meyer
June 2020

Character rigs are procedural systems that deform a character's shape driven by a set of rig-control variables. Film quality character rigs are highly complex and therefore computationally expensive and slow to evaluate. We present a machine learning method for approximating facial mesh deformations which reduces rig computations, increases longevity of ... more

Paper (PDF)

Video


Denoising Production Volumetric Rendering

Shilin Zhu, Xianyao Zhang, Gerhard Rothlin, Marios Papas, Mark Meyer
May 2023

Denoising is an integral part of production rendering pipelines that use Monte-Carlo (MC) path tracing. Machine learning based denoisers have been proven to effectively remove the residual noise and produce a clean image. However, denoising volumetric rendering remains a problem due to the lack of useful features and large-scale volume ... more

Paper (PDF)

SIGGRAPH Talks 2023


CurveCrafter: A System for Animated Curve Manipulation

Nora S Willett, Kurt Fleischer, Haldean Brown, Ilene L E, Mark Meyer
September 2023

Linework on 3D animated characters is an important aspect of stylized looks for films. We present CurveCrafter, a system allowing animators to create new lines on 3D models and to edit the shape and opacity of silhouette curves. Our tools allow users to draw, re-draw, erase, edit and retime user ... more

Paper (PDF)

UIST


Stylizing Ribbons: Computing Surface Contours with Temporally Coherent Orientations

Nora S Willett, Fernando de Goes, Kurt Fleischer, Mark Meyer, Chris Burrows
September 2023

Line work is a core element for the stylization of computer animations used by recent shows. However, existing stylization tech- niques are limited to edge treatments based on brush strokes or textures applied solely on top of curves. In this work, we propose new stylization effects by offering artists direct ... more

Paper (PDF)

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics


Denoising Deep Pixels for Deep Compositing

Shilin Zhu, Mark Meyer
July 2024

Denoising path traced images is essential in the production rendering pipeline. Existing denoisers only apply to 2D flat images, which introduces challenges in the compositing stage where multiple rendered components are combined together to produce the final look. In recent years, deep image has become more popular and preferable in ... more

Paper (PDF)

Technical Report