Ideas for papers and projects

CS 99D - The Science of Art
Winter Quarter, 1999
Marc Levoy
Handout #2

Artistic

• Reproduce one of Brunneleschi's panels, now lost, in which he demonstrated to his amazed contemporaries his ability to construct correct linear perspective views. Kemp's book tells you how. The required props are close at hand - the Baptistry of Florence and the Palazzo Vecchio!
  
  
• Model and render the 3D scene corresponding to a famous painting. Use a commercially available modeling and rendering system such as SoftImage or Alias/Maya; we have these software packages downstairs. For an extra kick, script, render, and record on video a flyaround of the scene. Alternatively, convert it into a form that can be navigated interactively on one of our high-performance graphics workstations. Beware: many paintings do not have a single, consistent 3D interpretation!
  
  
• France is well-known for its sound and light ("Son et Lumiere") shows, in which they tell the history of an architectural monument while manipulating the illumination of the monument (after sunset). Recently, they have begun to take photographs of monuments, manipulate them in some way, and then project them back onto the walls. By placing the projector exactly at the camera's viewpoint, and by carefully aligning the image with the architectural features of the monument, it can be made to appear differently colored, or differently decorated, or even like a giant line drawing! Try implementing this idea yourself. In our laboratory downstairs, we have everything you need: digital cameras, video projectors, and Adobe's Photoshop software. Try it on your statuette or other small object.

Programming

• Write a RenderMan shader that implements a nonphotorealistic rendering style. Although not really programming per se, this project does require some understanding of programming language constructs. For some fun, try to mimic the style of a famous artist. Can you draw pictures that exhibit Leonard's sfumato, or Durer's hatchings? How about Monet's brushstrokes? Can you render our 3D model of Michelangelo's David in a way that makes it look like his Sistine Chapel paintings? Or like his drawings?
  
  
• In the sound and light project described above, the imagery is strictly two-dimensional. Even more impressive effects can be achieved by scanning an object with one of our laser scanners and projecting rendered images of the 3D computer model back onto the object. One advantage of this approach is that any number of projectors may be employed, each displaying a rendering from its own viewpoint, allowing you to walk completely around the object. Again, we have all the tools you need. Try scanning our miniature model of Michelangelo's David, rendering it in Michelangelo's highly sculptural painting style as exemplified by the Sistine ceiling, then projecting this painting into the statue. Greek statues were typically originally painted. Try projecting conjectured coloration onto a copy of a classical statue. If it works, we'll show it to the director of the Vatican Museum, one of my collaborators this year. Maybe they'd like to implement something like this in their museum?! The projection could be turned on and off by the museum-goer at the press of a button, turning the viewing of sculpture into a hands-on experience.
  
  
• Program a tone reproduction operator that squeezes the large dynamic range of a synthetically rendered image into the limited dynamic range of a particular artist's media. Use a canned renderer to generate the images, Try your operator on hard scenes, like a moonlit scene or a sunlit scene with deep shadows. For extra credit, implement an operator that employs local contrast effects to extend the dynamic range of the media, as artists do. See me for some references to the graphics literature.

Writing

• The recent cleaning of the Sistine Chapel ceiling suggests that Michelangelo, rather than employing the Renaissance discovery that shadows should be dark, tending toward black, instead adhered to medieval tradition, in which shadows were fully saturated with color. If correct, then this radically changes our view of Michelangelo and his art. If, on the other hand, we have cleaned away Michelangelo's intended tones, as some critics claim, then we have ruined his masterpiece forever. Read one of the many books about the cleaning. Then read James Beck's scathing condemnation of it in Art Restoration: the Culture, the Business, and the Scandal. Who is right?
  
  
• Trace the scientific and artistic history of some optical theme that we did not cover in class, such as motion blur or depth of field. If you choose motion blur, don't forget to talk about its use in cartoon animation. If you choose depth of field, don't forget to talk about the invention of photography and its effect on our expectations about art.
  
  
• Trace the history of some category of artist's tools, such as pigments, brushes, or sculpting chisels. When were the key technological advances? What effect did they have on art? This topic, like the one above,For example, in last year's class, David Anderson implemented an interactive "Perspective Assistant" as his final project. It's a great demo. The URL is http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~sprout/perspective/. will require some digging into the literature.

For more ideas, look at the final projects from last year. The URL is: http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs99d-98/online_projects.html For a good example of a project that we placed online, look at: David Anderson's "Perspective Assistant". The URL is http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~sprout/perspective/.