Wavefront Technologies

Abstract: VUIMS is an object-oriented user interface management system that was designed to support reconfigurable components. VUIMS consists of a collection of objects and a semantically rich token language. The objects implement primitive presentation and interaction functions. The token language controls interaction and visual style. High level objects can be created from primitive objects using token templates. The user interface and application are controlled by token streams that are emitted in response to user actions. VUIMS supports a variety of presentation and interaction styles through simple, robust manipulation of a hierarchy of visual panels with a rich set of relationships and constraints. VUIMS has been used to implement two commercial highperformance computer graphics applications and an on-line help system. It has evolved over a three-year period and has proven to be an effective tool in commercial use.

Abstract: This paper outlines a unified approach for generating all three classes of geodesic domes. The approach, which allows one method to generate configurations for all three classes, is presented in de...

Abstract: The Personal Visualizer™ was developed to enable a casual user to create high-quality rendered images. Providing sophisticated rendering techniques to casual users forced us to confront a number of issues and to undergo a shift in values. These issues are outlined, and the ways we dealt with them are discussed. Things we would do differently as a result of our development experiences are also discussed.

Abstract: In a very broad sense the historical development of computer graphics can be considered in three phases, each a giant step down the road towards "realistic" computer generated images. The first, during the late 1960's and early 1970's, can perhaps be characterized as the "wire frame" era. Basically pictures were composed of lines. Considerable em phasis was placed on "real time" interactive manipulation of the model. As models became more complex and as raster technology developed, eliminating the hidden lines or hidden surfaces from the image became critical for visual understanding. This requirement resulted in the second phase of computer graphics, the "hidden surface" era, that developed during the 1970's and early 1980's. The names associated with hidden surface algorithms read like a who's who of computer graphics. The cul mination of the hidden surface era and the beginning of the current and third era in computer graphics, the "rendering" era, was Turner Whitted's incorporation of a global illumination model into the ray trac ing algorithm. Now the goal was not just to generate an image, but to generate a realistic appearing image."