Thomas Strothotte – författare

Even as developments in photorealistic computer graphics continue to affect our work and leisure activities, practitioners and researchers are devoting more and more attention to non-photorealistic (NPR) techniques for generating images that appear to have been created by hand. These efforts benefit every field in which illustrations—thanks to their ability to clarify, emphasize, and convey very precise meanings—offer advantages over photographs. These fields include medicine, architecture, entertainment, education, geography, publishing, and visualization.Non-Photorealistic Computer Graphics is the first and only resource to examine non-photorealistic efforts in depth, providing detailed accounts of the major algorithms, as well as the background information and implementation advice readers need to make headway with these increasingly important techniques.Already, an estimated 10% of computer graphics users require some form of non-photorealism. Strothotte and Schlechtweg''s important new book is designed and destined to be the standard NPR reference for this large, diverse, and growing group of professionals.- Hard-to-find information needed by a wide range and growing number of computer graphics programmers and applications users.- Traces NPR principles and techniques back to their origins in human vision and perception.- Focuses on areas that stand to benefit most from advances in NPR, including medical and architectural illustration, cartography, and data visualization.- Presents algorithms for two and three-dimensional effects, using pseudo-code where needed to clarify complex steps.- Helps readers attain pen-and-ink, pencil-sketch, and painterly effects, in addition to other styles.- Explores specific challenges for NPR—including "wrong" marks, deformation, natural media, artistic technique, lighting, and dimensionality.- Includes a series of programming projects in which readers can apply the book''s concepts and algorithms.

Even as developments in photorealistic computer graphics continue to affect our work and leisure activities, practitioners and researchers are devoting more and more attention to non-photorealistic (NPR) techniques for generating images that appear to have been created by hand. These efforts benefit every field in which illustrations-thanks to their ability to clarify, emphasize, and convey very precise meanings-offer advantages over photographs. These fields include medicine, architecture, entertainment, education, geography, publishing, and visualization.Non-Photorealistic Computer Graphics is the first and only resource to examine non-photorealistic efforts in depth, providing detailed accounts of the major algorithms, as well as the background information and implementation advice readers need to make headway with these increasingly important techniques.Already, an estimated 10% of computer graphics users require some form of non-photorealism. Strothotte and Schlechtweg's important new book is designed and destined to be the standard NPR reference for this large, diverse, and growing group of professionals. Hard-to-find information needed by a wide range and growing number of computer graphics programmers and applications users. Traces NPR principles and techniques back to their origins in human vision and perception. Focuses on areas that stand to benefit most from advances in NPR, including medical and architectural illustration, cartography, and data visualization. Presents algorithms for two and three-dimensional effects, using pseudo-code where needed to clarify complex steps. Helps readers attain pen-and-ink, pencil-sketch, and painterly effects, in addition to other styles. Explores specific challenges for NPR-including "wrong" marks, deformation, natural media, artistic technique, lighting, and dimensionality. Includes a series of programming projects in which readers can apply the book's concepts and algorithms.

In recent years there has been a rising awareness within the international scientific commu­ nity that there is a need to study the various aspects of the integration of images and new me­ dia both from the point of view of computer science as well as from other areas which deal with users'' interface to information sources, in particular design, psychology, education, po­ litical science, sociology, and philosophy. To a certain extent the view of the topic from any single one of these disciplines leads to a one-sided analysis. Indeed, interdisciplinary approaches involving two or more of them ap­ plied to selected research problems have emerged. Examples of scientific conferences which embody such approaches are CHI and the German "Mensch und Computer" Conferences, where in particular the collaboration between disciplines is furthered. Truly interdisciplinary research involving pairs of disciplines, or even triplets or quadruples of these areas, are still few and far between.

A unified and coherent introduction to the notion of abstraction in interactive computer graphics is provided by this book. Abstraction entails refinement of images based on geometric models so as to reflect the importance of the features of the model for the dialog context and the visualization goal. This may require leaving out irrelevant details or accentuating significant features by adding details or enlarging or deforming parts. Such modifications are routine by hand but are at the leading edge of research in 2D and 3D computer graphics. The authors see the abstraction process as an interactive exploration of complex information spaces, and report especially on zooming and rendering techniques. Benefits are discussed for applications in medical illustration and technical documentation.

Pictures are at the heart of how we communicate with computers, emblematic of our cur­ rent fascination with multimedia and web-based computing. Nevertheless, most of us know far less about pictures and the way in which they work than we know about the text that often accompanies them. In an attempt to understand pictures, perhaps the most fundamental question we can ask is, "What is a picture?" What is it that objects as di­ verse as icons, bar charts, paintings, and photographs have in common that makes us refer to all of them as pictures? And what is it about pictures that convinces us to use them instead of, or in addition to, text? We often talk about how pictures "depict" things. But, even the process of depiction seems to differ from one picture to another. On a computer, we may use a paint system to guide a virtual brush over the screen, a video camera to capture a live image, a spread­ sheet to automatically generate a corresponding bar chart, or a rendering system that models the interactions of synthetic lights, objects, and cameras. Is there some un­ derlying property that these processes all share? Computer scientists are used to thinking of pictures in terms of their representation: an array of pixels, a list or hierarchy of graphics primitives, or even a program written in a language such as PostScript.

A unified and coherent introduction to the notion of abstraction in interactive computer graphics is provided by this book. Abstraction entails refinement of images based on geometric models so as to reflect the importance of the features of the model for the dialog context and the visualization goal. This may require leaving out irrelevant details or accentuating significant features by adding details or enlarging or deforming parts. Such modifications are routine by hand but are at the leading edge of research in 2D and 3D computer graphics. The authors see the abstraction process as an interactive exploration of complex information spaces, and report especially on zooming and rendering techniques. Benefits are discussed for applications in medical illustration and technical documentation.

Pictures are at the heart of how we communicate with computers, emblematic of our cur­ rent fascination with multimedia and web-based computing. Nevertheless, most of us know far less about pictures and the way in which they work than we know about the text that often accompanies them. In an attempt to understand pictures, perhaps the most fundamental question we can ask is, "What is a picture?" What is it that objects as di­ verse as icons, bar charts, paintings, and photographs have in common that makes us refer to all of them as pictures? And what is it about pictures that convinces us to use them instead of, or in addition to, text? We often talk about how pictures "depict" things. But, even the process of depiction seems to differ from one picture to another. On a computer, we may use a paint system to guide a virtual brush over the screen, a video camera to capture a live image, a spread­ sheet to automatically generate a corresponding bar chart, or a rendering system that models the interactions of synthetic lights, objects, and cameras. Is there some un­ derlying property that these processes all share? Computer scientists are used to thinking of pictures in terms of their representation: an array of pixels, a list or hierarchy of graphics primitives, or even a program written in a language such as PostScript.

Dieses Buch ist eine Sammlung von Aufs{tzen zur Mensch-Computer-Kommunikation, zu ihren Methoden und Werkzeugen, ihrem Einsatz in der Praxis, insbesondere ihrer Bedeutung f}r die Software-Erstellung, und ihren wesentlichen Entwicklungstrends. Die Beitr{gereichen von Erfahrungsberichten und Bestandsaufnahmen bis hin zu detaillierten Analysen des Zusammenhangs von MCK mit anderen Wissenschaftsdisziplinen. MCK stellt sich als Forschungsgebiet dar, das mit anderen Gebieten in Wechselwirkung steht und in unterschiedlichen Anwendungsfeldern relevant ist. Den Kern des Buches bilden Beitr{ge zum Entwurf und zur Evaluation von Benutzungsschnittstellen.Einen weiteren Schwerpunkt stellen Beitr{ge zu wissensbasierten Methoden dar; sie beschreiben und bewerten unterschiedliche Ans{tze, dieInteraktion mit dem Computer flexibler, ihn intelligenter zu machen. Einen dritten Schwerpunkt bilden Beitr{ge }ber spezielle Anwendungen und Anwendungsbereiche (z.B. Medizin, Behinderte, Schule). Dar}ber hinaus wird in zwei grundlegenden Beitr{gen die Entwicklung der zugeh|rigen Paradigmen diskutiert. Das Werk ist Prof. Dr.Rul Gunzenh{user, Universit{t Stuttgart, gewidmet f}r seine Verdienste, die Mensch-Maschine-Kommunikation in Deutschland als Wissenschaftsdisziplin zu etablieren.