Design Galleries: A general approach to setting parameters for computer graphics and animation

Abstract

Image rendering maps scene parameters to output pixel values; animation maps motion-control parameters to trajectory values. Because these mapping functions are usually multidimensional, nonlinear, and discontinuous, finding input parameters that yield desirable output values is often a painful process of manual tweaking. Interactive evolution and inverse design are two general methodologies for computer-assisted parameter setting in which the computer plays a prominent role. In this paper we present another such methodology: Design Gallery TM (DG) interfaces present the user with the broadest selection--- automatically generated and organized--- of perceptually different graphics or animations that can be produced by varying a given input-parameter vector. The principal technical challenges posed by the DG approach are dispersion, finding a set of input-parameter vectors that optimally disperses the resulting output-value vectors, and arrangement, organizing the resulting graphics for easy and intuitive browsing by the user. We describe the use of DGs for several parametersetting problems: light selection and placement for image rendering, both standard and image-based; opacity and color transfer-function specification for volume rendering; and motion control for particle-system and articulated-figure animation.