Tag Archives: graphics programming

Gradient-descent optimized recursive filters for deconvolution / deblurring

This post is a follow-up to my post on deconvolution/deblurring of the images. In my previous blog post, I discussed the process of “deconvolution” – undoing a known convolution operation. I have focused on traditional convolution filters – “linear phase, … Continue reading

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Progressive image stippling and greedy blue noise importance sampling

Introduction I recently read the “Gaussian Blue Noise” paper by Ahmed et al. and was very impressed by the quality of their results and the rigor of their method. They provide a theoretical framework to analyze the quality of blue … Continue reading

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Transforming “noise” and random variables through non-linearities

This post covers a topic slightly different from my usual ones and something I haven’t written much about before – applied elements of probability theory. We will discuss what happens with “noise” – a random variable – when we apply … Continue reading

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Fast, GPU friendly, antialiasing downsampling filter

In this shorter post, I will describe a 2X downsampling filter that I propose as a “safe default” for GPU image processing. It’s been an omission on my side that I have not proposed any specific filter despite writing so … Continue reading

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Exposure Fusion – local tonemapping for real-time rendering

In this post I want to close the loop and come back to the topic I described ~6y ago! Local tonemapping (I’ll refer to it as LTM) – a component I considered a missing piece in video games rendering, especially … Continue reading

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Practical Gaussian filtering: Binomial filter and small sigma Gaussians

Gaussian filters are the bread and butter of signal and image filtering. They are isotropic and radially symmetric, filter out high frequencies extremely well, and just look pleasant and smooth. In this post I will cover two of my favorite … Continue reading

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Neural material (de)compression – data-driven nonlinear dimensionality reduction

In this post I come back to something I didn’t expect coming back to – dimensionality reduction and compression for whole material texture sets (as opposed to single textures) – a significantly underexplored topic. In one of my past posts … Continue reading

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Superfast void-and-cluster Blue Noise in Python (Numpy/Jax)

This is a super short blog post to accompany this Colab notebook. It’s not an official part of my dithering / Blue Noise post series, but thematically fits it well and be sure to check it out for some motivation … Continue reading

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Computing gradients on grids of pixels and voxels – forward, central, and… diagonal differences

In this post, I will focus on gradients of image signals defined on grids in computer graphics and image processing. Specifically, gradients / derivatives of images, height fields, distance fields, when they are represented as discrete, uniform grids of pixels … Continue reading

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Why are video games graphics (still) a challenge? Productionizing rendering algorithms

Intro This post will cover challenges and aspects of production to consider when creating new rendering / graphics techniques and algorithms – especially in the context of applied research for real time rendering. I will base this on my personal … Continue reading

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Compressing PBR material texture sets with sparsity and k-SVD dictionary learning

Introduction In this blog post, I am going to continue exploration of compressing whole PBR texture sets together (as opposed to compressing each texture from the set separately) and using the fact that those textures are strongly correlated. In my … Continue reading

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Using JAX, numpy, and optimization techniques to improve separable image filters

In today’s blog post I will look at two topics: how to use JAX (“hyped” new Python ML / autodifferentiation library), and a basic application that is follow-up to my previous blog post on using SVD for low-rank approximations and … Continue reading

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How (not) to test graphics algorithms

Intro Siggraph 2019 is sadly over, but as always I came back super inspired and grateful for meeting many friends.  Conferences are mostly not about seeing the presentations – but about all the interesting and inspiring discussions, and one of … Continue reading

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Dithering part three – real world 2D quantization dithering

In previous two parts of this blog post mini-series I described basic uses mentioned blue noise definition, referenced/presented 2 techniques of generating blue noise and one of many general purpose high-frequency low-discrepancy sampling sequences. In this post, we will look … Continue reading

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Dithering part two – golden ratio sequence, blue noise and highpass-and-remap

In previous part of the mini-series I covered dithering definition and how dithering changes error characteristics of simple 1D quantization and functions. In this part I will try to look at what blue noise is, but first wanted to have a … Continue reading

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Dithering in games – mini series

This an opening post of mini blog post series about various uses of dithering for quantization and sampling in video games. It is something most of us use intuitively in every day work, so wanted to write down some of … Continue reading

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Image dynamic range

Intro This post is a second part of my mini-series about dynamic range in games. In this part I would like to talk a bit about dynamic range, contrast/gamma and viewing conditions. You can find the other post in the series here and … Continue reading

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Localized tonemapping – is global exposure and global tonemapping operator enough for video games?

In this blog post, I wanted to address something that I was thinking about for many years – since starting working on rendering in video games and with HDR workflows and having experience with various photographic techniques. For the title … Continue reading

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White balance and physically based rendering pipelines. Part 2 – practical problems.

White balance and lighting conditions After this long introduction (be sure to check part one if you haven’t!), we can finally go to the problem that started whole idea for this post (as in my opinion it is unsolved problem – … Continue reading

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White balance and physically based rendering pipelines. Part 1 – introduction.

This is part one of the whole article. Part two is here. In this two posts (started as one, but I had to split it to make it more… digestible) I’m going to talk a bit about the white balance. First … Continue reading

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