The Footprint Function for the Realistic Texturing of Public Room
Walls
Today's radiosity methods are able to produce nearly perfect light
distributions for interior rooms. Unrealistic appearance now mainly is
due to missing texturing of the walls. One important feature of public
room walls are footprints in the lower areas. This paper presents a set
of simple functions to easily generate a class of footprint textures
for such applications. Different randomization techniques ensure the
realistic appearance of the results. This technique is of increasing
importance for the visualization of architectural objects in the
future.
Keywords: realism, rendering, textures,
footprints
Today's radiosity methods are able to produce nearly perfect light
distributions of interior rooms. Unrealistic appearance now mainly is
due to missing texturing of the walls. One important feature of public
room walls are footprints in the lower areas.
The basic footprint function is a combination of trivial, i.e. easy to
implement, parametric functions. The footprint is divided into a ball
and a heel which can have independent sole textures. The sizes are
chosen such that a simulation of shoe sizes 35 to 42 for women profiles
and 39 to 46 for men profiles is performed.
Distribution techniques will be presented that ensure that the lower
part of the wall contains significantly more footprints than the higher
parts. Especially, no footprints must occur above a certain threshold
height, due to physiological limitations of the human being.
Additionally, random functions will take care that most footprints
remain incomplete and vary in color and shape.
Preliminary investigations are encouraging. As we have not implemented
the new method yet, there are no concrete results, yet. The final paper
might include images.
A footprint function for the realistic imaging of walls is presented.
Details of all functions are given to ensure an easy implementation for
the reader.
to be included in the final paper.
Last update: March 23, 1995. If you have any comments, please
send a mail to wp#cg.tuwien.ac.at.
Werner Purgathofer, Institute of Computer Graphics, Technical
University of Vienna.