Alexander Wilkie

Associate Professor

Head of the computer graphics branch of CGG
At Charles University since 2008.

Contact

Professional Memberships

ACM and IEEE

Interests

Biography

Core research interest: computer graphics so accurate that it can be used to predict what things would look like, if they were real.
Predictive Rendering, in other words.

Of the many potential research areas within Predictive Rendering, I have over the years specialised in the following:

  1. Spectral rendering, in particular
    • Inclusion of fluorescence into rendering pipelines
    • Polarisation effects
    • Spectral uplifting
  2. Skylight models
  3. Colour science
  4. Contrast enhancement for full colour 3D printing

The last point might seem like an odd addition to this research portfolio, until one realises that optimisation of 3D print appearance critically depends on being able to predict what a 3D print-out would look like, if it were created with a specific voxel configuration. So moving the state of the art in this area forward really belongs to the rendering people, as prediction of print-out appearance is the hardest part of any such feedback loop.

A very long term project of mine is ART: The Advanced Rendering Toolkit. This is rendering research software we have used over the years to prototype various effects that do not fit well into conventional rendering software. It is still being updated, although a public release of the current version is overdue (planned for June/July 2021, as we want to publicly demonstrate an integration of our new sky dome model into a path tracer).

Teaching

The topic of this lecture is predictive image synthesis, and the technologies that are needed to accomplish it. The emphasis of the lecture is on those aspects of computer graphics that are unique to this particular application domain.
The goal of the seminar is to imporve the participants' skills in scientific work. The topics include effective reading of scientific publications, critical interpretation of published results, scientific writing, presentation in the English language.
Basic course of 2D and 3D computer graphics - topics: human visual system, color systems, color reproduction, vector and raster graphics, halftoning, anti-aliasing, HDR graphics, basic drawing algorithms, raster image coding, 3D scene representation, linear 2D and 3D transformations, projections, algorithms for hidden line/surface removal, introduction to shading, OpenGL basics.
The seminar for advanced computer graphics and vision has no fixed topics, its purpose is to inform participants about recent advances in computer graphics and vision. Participants of the seminar present interesting methods from literature (external students) or their own research (CGG group members).

Open Source Software

Publications & Research