The age of ubiquitous computer graphics is upon us. In the last ten years 3D computer graphics technology has migrated from a few privileged research laboratories into mainstream media such as the movies. Moreover, every personal computer is now equipped with 3D graphics hardware. Underlying this revolution is a set of algorithms and systems for producing images by computer, which is generally termed rendering. I define rendering as the modeling and computer simulation of appearance: lights and lighting effects, materials and their reflective properties, and cameras and aspects of image formation. In this talk I will present several projects in rendering that I have been involved in over the last several years.

Biography

Pat Hanrahan is the CANON USA Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University where he teaches computer graphics. His current research involves visualization, image synthesis, and graphics systems and architectures. Before joining Stanford he was a faculty member at Princeton. He has also worked at Pixar where he developed developed volume rendering software and was the chief architect of the RenderMan(TM) Interface - a protocol that allows modeling programs to describe scenes to high quality rendering programs. Previous to Pixar he directed the 3D computer graphics group in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at New York Institute of Technology. Professor Hanrahan has received three university teaching awards. He has received an Academy Award for Science and Technology, the Spirit of America Creativity Award, the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award, and was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering.