Update 6

Sorry for the extremely overdue update! As we mentioned in our last post, our focus has been on restructuring our project to more clearly define our goals so we have a better idea of how to plan out the remainder of the semester. These new objectives will be detailed a little later on in the post.

Before spring break (March 6 - March 15), Becky and I created new lamp models with temporary glass textures, based on scans from the Glass of the Sultans book. We had Professor Holod critique them in terms of shape and proportion, and also asked her for more specific details on the textures of the glass lamps. According to Professor Holod, the original intended color for the glass would have been almost transparent and mostly colorless with a slight bluish tinge. She also suggested we try a glass texture with a yellowish tinge. As mentioned previously, these glass textures are temporary, as we plan to incorporate the data collected from the spectroradiometer to more accurately simulate how light should pass through the glass. For now however, the lamps can be seen pictured here:

In addition to the spectroradiometer readings taken as the museum, Joe Kider helped Becky and I take readings of an oil flame. Using a model lamp Cory obtained at the museum store, we filled it with olive oil and used a makeshift wick that Becky made by braiding book binding thread. It should be noted that the model lamp wasn't glass, but it still seemed to work well enough for our purposes.

More importantly, we also met with Professor Safonova, Dr. Badler, and Joe in order to get advice on how to best restructure our project. After much discussion, we've agreed that by May 1, we should have:

- One glass lamp filled with different fluids and a moving flame (appropriate indices of refraction should also be used)

- A still image of the lamp in a section of the mosque 

- A flythrough of a section of the mosque with the lamp and moving flame

Dr. Badler helpfully suggested that we treat our project as a small series of experiments leading up to the final goal, thus our first main goal is to produce a still image of the scene (lamp, flame, and mosque.) In order to achieve this first checkpoint, Becky and I must have finished:

- Successful exporting of Maya models into Radiance

- UV mapping

- Creating accurate glass shaders using spectroradiometer data

- Flame 

For the second phase (the animation):

- Animating a camera

- Animating cylinders

- Being able to analyze a video file

- Writing a script for the flame animation

At our last meeting, it was decided that the flame would be simulated by creating a stack of cylindrical light objects that vary in size and position throughout the animation. The movement of the light objects would be determined by analyzing a video of a real flame provided to us by Irfan Essa, who used the video as part of the "Video Textures" paper by Schodl et al. For the video analysis, we are going to try converting frames of the video into bmp files, and then collecting information on the bitmap's rgb values. We're still fleshing out details for this however, so at least for the present details on this will be vague.

We will also be working on a paper detailing the background and process of our project, which we will hopefully submit to the VAST conference. For now, we are responsible for writing about the art history aspect of the project: background work, details on what the materials were like back then and how we tried to simulate that, the reasoning behind our decisions, etc.

At present, I will be responsible for bringing Maya models into Radiance, UV mapping, using the spectroradiometer data to create more accurate glass shaders, and creating the flame. Becky will be responsible for writing code to analyze the video file and animation. These roles may change in the future, depending on how difficult a task is or how much our tasks overlap (i.e., rendering and animating the flame.)

As for bringing Maya models into Radiance, progress so far has been pretty good. As of last Thursday, I was able to successfully use obj2mesh to render one of our lamps in Radiance using a basic red plastic shader:

I am also acquainted with the process of UV mapping, and was able to take a basic textured cube in Maya and render it in Radiance. I have included renders from both Radiance and Maya below, so that comparisons between the two can be made. Render times were relatively the same, but it's clear that the image rendered in Radiance has a more clear and crisp texture. On Maya, I rendered it with the Mental Ray renderer with a production quality and ray tracing turned on, and I used two lights. In Radiance, I only used one basic light. 

Image rendered in Radiance

Image rendered in Maya Mental Ray

Right now, I am working on exporting a very small section of the Maya mosque scene file into Radiance. I'm a little concerned with the complexity of the scene, as there are several different textures being used, and I will be sure to report more as I continue working.