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Joshua Grant
Department of Computer Science
Florida State University
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| Research Interests |
I am interested in all aspects of computer graphics and its applications.
My main studies deal with scientific visualization, with an increasing
interest in visual effects and photo realism.
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| Background |
I came to Florida State University in the
Summer of 1996, where I began pursuing a Meteorology degree. I took my
first programming course (FORTRAN for nonspecialist) in the Spring of 1997
and was hooked immediately.
I soon decided to double major in Computer Science thinking it would be
beneficial to my Meteorology degree.
In February of 1999 I was hired by the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction
Studies (COAPS) to create 2D animations of various weather events
(e.g. El Nino, La Nina, etc.), using IDL. This position later expanded to include
Web Design, CGI, Perl scripting, and helping co-workers with programming
questions. Prior to my position at COAPS I did not have experience
programming graphics applications, but my interest in graphics was quickly
growing. In the Spring of 2000, I took a scientific visualization course
and realized I was more interested in programming graphics applications
then I was Meteorology.
When I graduated in April of 2000, I was determined to find work related to
2D/3D graphics. I had interviews with
I received a few tempting offers and few disappointing rejections. In the
end I decided I would rather go back to school and use my mind then take "A
Job" and be miserable. So I enrolled in graduate school in the Fall of
2000.
Originally, my emphasis was going to only be on scientific visualization,
but in the Spring of 2001 I took a photo-realistic computer graphics course
and became extremely interested in photo-realism. My thesis work still
deals with scientific visualization, but I am working on side projects
related to photo-realism with the hopes of someday working for a visual
effects studio. In fact, I have become interested in photo realism so much
that I wrote a ray tracing API for Open Inventor. IVTrace was written entirely in my spare time
and therefore is not regularly updated, but it still creates great images.
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| Courses |
Here are some descriptions of a few courses I have taken at FSU.
| Scientific Visualization |
Study some simple and more advanced techniques
used to visualize data in 3D using Open Inventor. Most techniques dealt with isosurfaces, volume
rendering and vector field visualization. Weekly assignments included
reading technical papers and writing programs using Open Inventor.
My Scientific Visualization web page.
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| Computer Graphics |
Introduced the most simple concepts in computer
graphics (PPM files) and later dove into more advanced topics (Ray Tracing). Assignments included
creating PPM files, using filter functions for anti-aliasing,
and programming in OpenGL and Open Inventor.
My Computer Graphics web page.
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| Photo-Realisitic
Computer Graphics |
Introduced the fundamentals and theory behind
photo-realistic computer graphics. Including emittance distribution
functions, brdfs, ray tracing, global illumination, and radiosity.
All of the programming assignments required Open Inventor with a
solid background in computer graphics fundamentals (mainly matrix
multiplication).
My Photo-Realistic
Computer Graphics web page.
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| Writing |
For the final project of my Scientific
Visualization course, Kevin
Kurtz and I wrote a paper entitled: Examining Topology on Computer Generated Brain Surfaces.
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| Programming |
Writing graphics programs is my favorite. Here is a link to an Open Inventor program I wrote while taking Computer Graphics.
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| Books |
The Dirac Science Library has several books in my area. Here is
a list of some of them.
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| Journals |
Here are some journals and magazines in my research area.
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| Scholarly Conferences |
There are several conferences in computer graphics, some
sponsored by ACM and
IEEE.
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| WWW |
Here are some resources on the World Wide Web in my research area.
| OpenGL |
Home page of the graphics library used by most developers.
Contains documentation and code examples. |
| GraphicsPapers.com |
The Napster of computer graphics papers. Search their database
for any topic related to computer graphics and get back hundreds of
links to different resources. |
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