Melissa L. Koudelka Graduate Student Electrical Engineering

My research interest is in computer vision and graphics, in the area of image-based rendering. The main goal in my work is to understand the complex way in which real-world objects and textured surfaces reflect light, and how their appearance changes as the lighting and viewing conditions are changed. Using large image datasets taken under variable illumination and viewpoint, we can render both objects and textures under novel conditions. These image-based objects can then be integrated into synthetic or real scenes with believable appearance for the lighting conditions in the scene. Texture datasets can be used to synthesize novel texture maps with the same underlying structure, and to investigate simple representations for the texture's appearance under variable lighting and viewing angles.