Poisson disk sampling: modern techniques

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Department of Computer Science and Engineering


PhD Thesis Defence


Title: "Poisson disk sampling: modern techniques"

By

Mr. Hongwei Li


Abstract

Poisson disk sampling has proven to be very useful and versatile in a variety 
of computer graphics applications in the past 35 years since it was first 
introduced to solve the ray tracing sampling problem. It can simply and 
mathematically be defined as a set of samples (points) in a certain distance 
space and every pair of samples are at least certain distance away from each 
other. Poisson disk sampling is by far the sampling which achieves the combined 
objective of acquiring the highest quality in visual appearance and producing 
the least spectral artifacts in the spectral domain. Henceforth, it is favored 
by ray tracing, which wants least artifacts when using a small number of ray 
samples, by stippling, which requires a uniform distribution of drawing 
metaphors to represent gray scale smoothly without any noticeable structure, by 
surface remeshing for its random and uniform resultant vertex positions, and by 
many other applications which ask for a plausible uniform distribution of 
objects in any distance space.

In this thesis, I present my three works on Poisson disk sampling, each of 
which addresses certain problems in a more specific context: Poisson disk 
sampling on surface by using dual Poisson disk tiling, the acceleration of 
capacity constrained Voronoi tessellation and anisotropic Poisson disk sampling 
in Riemannian distance space. Apart from the detailed description of my own 
work, the prior work on the same topic will also be discussed to serve as a 
background of Poisson disk sampling research. I categorized all these 
algorithms into 3 chapters based on their working domain, 2D Euclidean space, 
manifold surface and Riemannian space. Finally, I compare different Poisson 
disk sampling algorithms in terms of quality and performance in order to 
provide a reference by which the audience can grasp the usage of Poisson disk 
sampling in their own research problem and choose the appropriate method.


Date:			Wednesday, 11 August 2010

Time:			3:00pm – 5:00pm

Venue:			Room 3304
 			Lifts 17/18

Chairman:		Prof. Kaijie Zhu (IELM)

Committee Members:	Prof. Pedro Sander (Supervisor)
 			Prof. Long Quan
 			Prof. Chiew-Lan Tai
 			Prof. Ajay Joneja (IELM)
                         Prof. Pheng-Ann Heng (Comp. Sci. & Engg., CUHK)


**** ALL are Welcome ****