Paul Heckbert

I was a Computer Science Professor at Carnegie Mellon University from 1992-2001. I am no longer teaching or advising at CMU, and do not have an office on campus. As of 2009, I am a Software Engineer for GigaPan, and GigaPan Systems, living and working in Pittsburgh.

former Associate Professor of Computer Science and Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University

Shortcuts: pix | CS bib | Google | CMU SCS | SCS facil | NY Times | Yahoo pop | dictionary | thesaurus | misc links | private

Politics

• Paul's Politics Page: Pittsburgh anti-Bush marches, letters to the editor, Bush Lies and Raygun pictures, etc.

Teaching

• Computer Graphics 2 (15-463) More advanced topics: morphing, subdivision surfaces, recursive ray tracing, ... Undergraduate course I taught Spring 01.
• Introduction to Scientific Computing (15-859B). Graduate course taught Fall 2000.
• Computer Graphics 1 (15-462) Undergraduate course on computer graphics, I last taught Spring 2000. Web page from Spring 2000.
• Image Based Modeling and Rendering (15-869), graduate course taught by Steve Seitz and me, Fall 99.
• Hierarchical Methods for Simulation (15-859E). Graduate course I taught in Fall 1998.
• Computer Graphics 1 (15-462) Undergraduate course on computer graphics, taught in Fall 1997.
  See our videos!
• Multiresolution Surface Modeling. A 1-day course I taught at SIGGRAPH 97, 5 August 1997. My info | SIGGRAPH's info .
• Special Topics in Computer Graphics: Global Illumination (15-860). Graduate course, taught in Fall 1996.
• Rendering (15-862). Graduate course on rendering research, taught in Fall 1995.
• teaching evaluations (FCE's)

Research Summaries

• Summary of my research interests

My Book

• Graphics Gems IV, edited by Paul Heckbert, Academic Press (Morgan Kaufmann) 1994. bib file for book, info from publisher, source code from book.

My Bibliographies and Link Collections

• multiresolution modeling, surface simplification, and terrain links, collected by Michael Garland and Paul Heckbert.
• multiresolution modeling and surface simplification bibliography, collected by Paul Heckbert and Michael Garland.
• Texture mapping/image warping bibliography (just the best, compiled 1995).
• Texture mapping bibliography (larger, older).
• mesh generation links
• mesh generation bibliography, Paul Heckbert and Frank Bossen
  ( also available from the big collection of CS bibliographies)
• shadow algorithm links
• shadow algorithm bibliography
• partial index to Ray Tracing News, focuses on spatial data structures for optimizing ray tracing
• jobs and scholarships in computer graphics
• Computer graphics-related courses at CMU

My Papers

Four favorite papers are marked in red below.

• Computer Graphics Course Notes

  • Course Notes for Computer Graphics 2, my undergrad. course on advanced computer graphics.

• Global Illumination (Radiosity, Ray Tracing)

  • Face Cluster Radiosity, Andrew Willmott, Paul Heckbert, and Michael Garland, Eurographics Workshop on Rendering, Granada, Spain, June 1999.
  • An Empirical Comparison of Progressive and Wavelet Radiosity, Andrew Willmott and Paul Heckbert, Eurographics Workshop on Rendering, St. Etienne, France, June 1997, 12 pp.
  • An Empirical Comparison of Radiosity Algorithms, Andrew Willmott and Paul Heckbert, CMU-CS-97-115, CS Dept, Carnegie Mellon U., May 1997, 89 pp.
  • Introduction to Finite Element Methods and Finite Element Methods for Radiosity, Paul Heckbert, Global Illumination course, SIGGRAPH '93, Aug. 1993.
  • Introduction to Global Illumination, Paul Heckbert, SIGGRAPH '92 Global Illumination Course, July 1992.
  • Radiosity in Flatland, Paul Heckbert, Computer Graphics Forum (Eurographics '92), Sept. 1992. (missing color figures)
  • Discontinuity Meshing for Radiosity, Paul Heckbert, Eurographics Workshop on Rendering, Bristol, UK, May 1992. (missing color figures)
  • Irradiance Gradients, Greg Ward and Paul Heckbert, Eurographics Workshop on Rendering, Bristol, UK, May 1992.
  • Simulating Global Illumination Using Adaptive Meshing, Paul Heckbert, Ph.D. thesis, UCB/CSD 91/636, CS Division, U.C. Berkeley, May 1991, 100 pp. TIFF version scanned by UC Berkeley. How to order a printed copy.
  • Finite Element Methods for Global Illumination, Paul Heckbert and James Winget, UCB/CSD 91/643, CS Division, U.C. Berkeley, July 1991, 19 pp. TIFF version scanned by UC Berkeley.
  • Derivation of Refraction Formulas, Paul Heckbert, Introduction to Ray Tracing, (Andrew Glassner, ed.), Academic Press, London, 1989, pp. 288-293. (Postscript, missing figures)
  • Beam Tracing Polygonal Objects, Paul Heckbert and Pat Hanrahan, SIGGRAPH '84, 1984, postscript (missing figures), figure 7, figure 8.

• Multiresolution Modeling and Surface Simplification

  • Finding and Removing Features from Polyhedra, Jose Ribelles, Paul Heckbert, Michael Garland, Tom Stahovich, and Vinit Srivastava, American Association of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Design Automation Conference, Pittsburgh PA, Sept. 2001. (PDF) errata
  • Optimal Triangulation and Quadric-Based Surface Simplification, Paul Heckbert and Michael Garland, Journal of Computational Geometry: Theory and Applications, Nov. 1999. (PDF) In the same issue. Elsevier's info on this paper.
  • Simplifying Surfaces with Color and Texture using Quadric Error Metrics, Michael Garland and Paul Heckbert, Visualization '98, Oct. 1998.
  • Survey of Polygonal Surface Simplification Algorithms, Paul Heckbert and Michael Garland, CS Dept., Carnegie Mellon U., (draft, May 1997)
  • Surface Simplification Using Quadric Error Metrics, Michael Garland and Paul Heckbert, SIGGRAPH 97. ( Postscript, PDF, info & code )
  • Fast Polygonal Approximation of Terrains and Height Fields, Michael Garland and Paul Heckbert, CMU-CS-95-181, CS Dept, Carnegie Mellon U., Sept. 1995.
  • Very Brief Note on Point Location in Triangulations, Dec. 1994. (Postscript).
  • Multiresolution Modeling For Fast Rendering, Paul Heckbert and Michael Garland, Graphics Interface '94 (Postscript). Errata.

• Mesh Generation

  • A Pliant Method for Anisotropic Mesh Generation, Frank Bossen and Paul Heckbert, 5th Intl. Meshing Roundtable, Oct. 1996. A nice mesh we generated.
  • Mesh Generation Using Relaxation in Warped Space talk, Paul Heckbert and Frank Bossen, Fiat Lux Conference, New Orleans, Aug. 1996 (Postscript slides).

• Surface Modeling

  • Fast Surface Particle Repulsion, Paul Heckbert, CMU Computer Science Tech. Report CMU-CS-97-130, April 1997. Appeared in SIGGRAPH 98 course notes Procedural Implicit Techniques for Modeling and Texturing.
  • Using Particles to Sample and Control Implicit Surfaces, Andy Witkin and Paul Heckbert, SIGGRAPH '94 (Postscript). MPEG video of interactive session.
    Pictures: 1086 spots on a sphere, spots on a branching thing. Errata.

• Shadows

  • Simulating Soft Shadows with Graphics Hardware, Paul Heckbert and Michael Herf, CMU-CS-97-104, CS Dept, Carnegie Mellon U., Jan. 1997, b&w pages, color plate page. Other shadow info.

• Texture Mapping

  • Interpolation for Polygon Texture Mapping and Shading, Paul Heckbert and Henry Moreton, State of the Art in Computer Graphics: Visualization and Modeling, Springer-Verlag, 1991 (Postscript).
  • Fundamentals of Texture Mapping and Image Warping, Paul Heckbert, Master's thesis, UCB/CSD 89/516, CS Division, U.C. Berkeley, June 1989, 86 pp. Postscript version (missing about 40 figures), errata, TIFF version scanned by UC Berkeley (complete). PDF version made from Berkeley's TIFF version (4MB). How to order a printed copy. C code from appendix.
  • Survey of Texture Mapping, Paul Heckbert, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Nov. 1986. Comes in two files:
    Postscript: text, figures.
    PDF: text, figures.
  • Filtering by Repeated Integration, Paul Heckbert, Proceedings of SIGGRAPH '86, Aug. 1986, pp. 317-321. (Postscript, missing figures)
  • Creating Raster Omnimax Images from Multiple Perspective Views Using The Elliptical Weighted Average Filter, Ned Greene and Paul Heckbert, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, June 1986, pp. 21-27. (Postscript, missing figures).
  • Texture Mapping Polygons in Perspective, Paul Heckbert, Computer Graphics Lab, New York Inst. of Tech., Technical Memo 13, April 1983 (missing equations and figures), postscript, troff.

• Other

  • Informal review of the book Infinite Loop about Apple Computer
  • translation of a seminar announcement (humor)
  • Software Standards, Paul Heckbert, March 1991 (Postscript).
  • Book review of George Wolberg's "Digital Image Warping", IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Jan. 1991, pp. 114-116. (Postscript). Addendum May 1991, p. 5.
  • Ray Tracing Jell-O Brand Gelatin, Paul Heckbert, SIGGRAPH '87, pp. 73-74. (Postscript, missing figures). (reprinted in Communications of the ACM, Feb. 1988, pp. 131-134). Scholarly commentary on USENET, 1988. Further commentary, 1996. Jell-O links.
  • Ten Unsolved Problems in Rendering, Paul Heckbert, Workshop on Rendering Algorithms and Systems, Graphics Interface '87, Toronto, April 1987 (Postscript).
  • Making the Magic Egg: A Personal Account, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, June 1986, pp. 3-8. (Postscript, missing figures).
  • Fun With Gaussians, 3-D Technical Memo 12, New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab, Mar. 1985. (Postscript, missing figures). Appeared in Advanced Image Processing course notes, SIGGRAPH '86, Aug. 1986.
  • An Efficient Algorithm for Generating Zonohedra, 3-D Technical Memo 11, New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab, Feb. 1985. (Postscript, missing figures)
  • Non-Overshooting Hermite Cubic Splines for Keyframe Interpolation, 3-D Technical Memo 10, New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab, Feb. 1985. (Postscript, missing figures)
  • Techniques for Real-Time Frame Buffer Animation, Proceedings of Computer FX 84, London, Oct. 1984, pp. 57-67. (Postscript, missing figures)
  • The Mathematics of Quadric Surface Rendering and SOID, 3-D Technical Memo 4, New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab, July 1984. (Postscript, missing figures)
  • Color Image Quantization for Frame Buffer Display, SIGGRAPH '82, July 1982, pp. 297-307. (Postscript, missing figures)
  • Color Image Quantization for Frame Buffer Display, Bachelor's thesis, Architecture Machine Group, MIT, May 1980, 57 pp. (text file, missing most equations, and all 20 figures). My 1982 paper above is based on this work. For a complete copy of this thesis, contact the CMU or MIT library.
  • ordering info for UC Berkeley tech reports.
  • See my vitae for a complete list of my papers.

Software

• Radiosity software, by Andrew Willmott, C++ code for progressive and wavelet radiosity and test scenes
• Reflectance model visualizer (Phong, Cook-Torrance, Oren-Nayar, He). C++ source code, SGI executable.
• Surface Simplification Using Quadric Error Metrics, C++ source code.
• Height field and terrain simplification software, by Michael Garland and P.H.
• A neat C argument parser.
• C code to zoom raster images up or down, with nice filtering.
• C code for texture mapping/image warping on quadrilaterals, from Master's thesis listed above.
• C code to draw circles fast on an SGI using gl, using opengl, timing comparison, email.
• How to draw highlighted edges / hidden lines in Opengl. summary, offset man page, hiddenline.c, Akeley article, stenedge.c, edge.c.
• C code from my Graphics Gems articles. In Graphics Gems:
  • Nice Numbers for Graph Labels
  • Generic Convex Polygon Scan Conversion and Clipping
  • Concave Polygon Scan Conversion
  • Digital Line Drawing
  • Recording Animation in Binary Order for Progressive Temporal Refinement
  • A Seed Fill Algorithm
  In Graphics Gems IV:
  • A Minimal Ray Tracer
  • Bilinear Coons Patch Image Warping
• Minimal ray tracer: C code, Postscript (run it), business card back (run it), business card front (run it). This bizarre programming contest is explained in my Graphics Gems IV book.
• Obfuscated C contest (see my 1987 winner). Hall of Obfuscators.
• Microcode for the Ikonas graphics processor. What's an Ikonas?

Pictures

• family pictures: recent (smaller) , full collection of pictures & audio (big)
• SCS Day 2004, my photo won 3rd place in the photo exhibition (photos 7, 79).
• Zonohedron generated from 30 vectors in a circle, (GIF); from 100 random vectors, (GIF).
• Pittsburgh at night, with UFO, photo by Jose Ribelles.
• Photos of CMU Computer Graphics Group
• Pictures from the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab, early 1980's
• Talking Heads Remain In Light album cover, 1980, which I contributed to. another copy

Old Morph Videos

• 1994: play morph video! (900K MPEG), credits for morph video.
• 1995: play morph video! (500K MPEG), credits for morph video.
• 1996: Play morph video! (1Mb MPEG), credits for morph video.

Miscellaneous

• my athletic career: 2001 Pretty Good Race 5K run, (video); 2001 The Great Race 5K
• Acronyms Frequently Heard Around the School of Computer Science

Collaborators at CMU

• CMU Computer Graphics group (many more links here).
• Liu Ren, PhD student.
• Jin-Xiang Chai, PhD student.
• Tom Stahovich, Professor, Mechanical Engineering.

Other Collaborators

• Andrew Willmott, ex-PhD student, radiosity. now at the Maxis division of Electronic Arts, Walnut Creek, CA.
• Jose Ribelles, ex-visiting PhD student, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain.
• Michael Garland, ex-PhD student, multiresolution modeling. now at U. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
• Andy Witkin, ex-professor, now at Pixar.
• Frank Bossen, ex-master's student, mesh generation, now at Sony, Tokyo.
  Frank's tech report, Anisotropic Mesh Generation with Particles, CMU-CS-96-134, for letter paper and for A4 paper.
• Michael Herf, ex-undergrad, shadows. Consulting in LA area.

Links to Elsewhere

• CMU School of Computer Science
• my links to individuals, CS departments, projects, bibliographies, ....