Light and Skin Interactions: Simulations for Computer Graphics Applications

Light and Skin Interactions immerses you in one of the most fascinating application areas of computer graphics: appearance simulation. The book first illuminates the fundamental biophysical processes that affect skin appearance, and reviews seminal related works aimed at applications in life and health sciences. It then examines four exemplary modeling approaches as well as definitive algorithms that can be used to generate realistic images depicting skin appearance. Despite its wide scope of simulation approaches, the book’s content is presented in a concise manner, focusing on relevant practical aspects. What’s more, these approaches can be successfully applied to a wide range of additional materials, such as eye tissue, hair, and water.

• Allows you to understand and predict the qualitative and quantitative behavior of complex natural systems
• A general background on tissue optics clarifies several confusing conceptual issues, saving you valuable time in the early stages of research
• Includes complete code and data sources for the BioSpec model

Gladimir V. G. Baranoski received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Calgary in 1998. He is currently an Associate Professor at the School of Computer Science and the leader of the Natural Phenomena Simulation Group at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is also a senior member of IEEE and a member of the editorial board of the Elsevier journal Computers & Graphics.

Aravind Krishnaswamy received his BMath and MMath in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo. He is currently a Senior Computer Scientist with the Visual Computing Lab at Adobe Systems Inc. During his time there, he has been involved in the research and development of real-time photo realistic image synthesis technology (incorporated into Adobe Photoshop®, Bridge®, and After Effects®) as well as the development of new material models.