Light & Skin Interactions

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.

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.

Computer graphics has revolutionized the realm of scientific research, and graphical models are now constantly being used to understand complex biomedical behavior. This book immerses you in one of the most fascinating application areas of this field: the predictive simulation of skin appearance under radically different circumstances. It first brings together the most current knowledge about the biophysical processes that affect skin appearance (for example, think how the sun can burn or tan you), and then examines the algorithms and techniques used to model such processes. Despite its wide scope of applications, the books contents are presented in a concise manner, focusing on practical implementation details, sample code, and data sources. For the graphics professional intent on exploring the exciting possibilities of simulation, here is a self-contained introduction to the scientific ideas and rendering procedures that will bring your visions to life.