Papers by Mark Meyer

	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: January 2006
	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: January 2006
	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: June 2012
	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