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An image synthesizer

Author:

Ken PerlinAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, Volume 19, Issue 3

Pages 287 - 296

https://doi.org/10.1145/325165.325247

Published: 01 July 1985 Publication History

Abstract

We introduce the concept of a Pixel Stream Editor. This forms the basis for an interactive synthesizer for designing highly realistic Computer Generated Imagery. The designer works in an interactive Very High Level programming environment which provides a very fast concept/implement/view iteration cycle.Naturalistic visual complexity is built up by composition of non-linear functions, as opposed to the more conventional texture mapping or growth model algorithms. Powerful primitives are included for creating controlled stochastic effects. We introduce the concept of "solid texture" to the field of CGI.We have used this system to create very convincing representations of clouds, fire, water, stars, marble, wood, rock, soap films and crystal. The algorithms created with this paradigm are generally extremely fast, highly realistic, and asynchronously parallelizable at the pixel level.

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https://doi.org/10.1177/02762374241311881
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Index Terms

An image synthesizer
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Computer graphics
    1. Graphics systems and interfaces
    2. Image manipulation
      1. Texturing

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics

ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Volume 19, Issue 3

Jul. 1985

305 pages

ISSN:0097-8930

DOI:10.1145/325165

Editors:
Brian A. Barsky
Univ. of California, Berkely, Berkely
,
John C. Beatty
Univ. of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ont., Canada

Issue’s Table of Contents

SIGGRAPH '85: Proceedings of the 12th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques
July 1985
332 pages
ISBN:0897911660
DOI:10.1145/325334
Chairmen:
Pat Cole
Hewlett-Packard, Palo alto, CA
,
Robert Heilman
Gould Inc., Campbell, CA
,
Brian A. Barsky
Univ. of California, Berkely, Berkely

Copyright © 1985 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 July 1985

Published in SIGGRAPH Volume 19, Issue 3

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