In this master's thesis the principle of hybrid ray tracing, consisting of a rasterization pipeline which includes ray tracing techniques for certain effects, is explained and the implementation of an application which uses a hybrid approach in which ray tracing is used to calculate shadows, ambient occlusion, and reflections and combines those with direct lighting is documented and explained. Hybrid ray tracing is based on the idea of combining the performance and flexibility of rasterization-based approaches with ray tracing to overcome the limitation of not being able to access the complete surrounding geometry at any point in the scene. While describing the implementation of said application, the RTX API which is being used for ray tracing is explained as well Vulkan, the graphics API used. Based on the results and the insights gained while using the RTX API, it is assessed in regards of its usage scenarios and technical sophistication.

NURBS sind eine Art von Splines, die besondere Eigenschaften besitzen. Das ray tracen von NURBS ist eine der Darstellungsmöglichkeiten von NURBS. Dies ist durch das konkrete berechnen von Schnittpunkten mit Strahlen möglich. Durch die vielseitige Möglichkeiten der Modellierung mittels NURBS sind diese beliebt in Anwendungen die im Maschinenbau verwendet werden und auch anderen CAD-Programmen. Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit der Berechnung von NURBS-Kurven und -Oberflächen, dem direkten rendern von diesen und wägt ab ob sich der Aufwand dafür im Vergleich zu Tesselierung lohnt.

Bildsynthese durch Raytracing gewinnt durch Hardware-Unterstützung in Verbraucher-Grafikkarten eine immer größer werdende Relevanz. Der Linespace dient dabei als eine neue, vielversprechende Beschleunigungsstruktur. Durch seine richtungsbasierte Natur ist es sinnvoll, ihn in andere Datenstrukturen zu integrieren. Bisher wurde er in ein Uniform-Grid integriert. Problematisch werden einheitlich große Voxel allerdings bei Szenen mit variierbarem Detailgrad. Diese Arbeit führt den adaptiven Linespace ein, eine Kombination aus Octree und Linespace. Die Struktur wird hinsichtlich ihrer Beschleunigungsfähigkeit untersucht und mit dem bisherigen Grid-Ansatz verglichen. Es wird gezeigt, dass der adaptive Linespace für hohe Grid-Auflösungen besser skaliert, durch eine ineffiziente GPU-Nutzung allerdings keine optimalen Werte erzielt.

Tracking is an integral part of many modern applications, especially in areas like autonomous systems and Augmented Reality. For performing tracking there are a wide array of approaches. One that has become a subject of research just recently is the utilization of Neural Networks. In the scope of this master thesis an application will be developed which uses such a Neural Network for the tracking process. This also requires the creation of training data as well as the creation and training of a Neural Network. Subsequently the usage of Neural Networks for tracking will be analyzed and evaluated. This includes several aspects. The quality of the tracking for different degrees of freedom will be checked as well as the the impact of the Neural Network on the applications performance. Additionally the amount of required training data is investigated, the influence of the network architecture and the importance of providing depth data as part of the networks input. This should provide an insight into how relevant this approach could be for its adoption in future products.

In no field of computer science has the hardware developed as rapidly as in the field of computer graphics. Today, we can display complex, geometric scenes in real time in immersive systems and also integrate elaborate simulations. The aim of this work is to realize the simulation of paint splashes in a virtual world. For this purpose, an application will be implemented with the help of Unity, that uses three different techniques to color the environment with the help of paint splashes. Based on this application, the limits and possibilities of the techniques in virtual environments are examined more closely. This examination shows that an inverse projection produces the best results.

Using physics simulations natural phenomena can be replicated with the computer. The aim is to calculate a physical feature as correclty as possible in order to draw conclusions for the real world. Fields of Application are, for example, medicine, industry, but also games or films. Snow is a very complex natural phenomenon due to its physical structure and properties. To simulate snow, different material properties have to be considered. The most important method that deals with the simulation of snow and its dynamics is the material point method. It combines the Lagrangian particles based on continuum mechanics with a Cartesian grid. The grid enables communication between the snow particles, which are not actually connected. For calculation of particles data is transferred from these particles to the grid nodes. There, calculations are carried out with information about neighboring particles. The results are then transferred back to the original particles. Using GPGPU techniques, physical simulations can be implemented on the graphics card. Procedures like the material point method can be parallelized well with these techniques. This paper deals with the physical basics of the material point method and implements them on the graphics card using compute shaders. Then performance and quality are evaluated.

This work describes a novel software tool for visualizing anatomical segmentations of medical images. It was developed as part of a bachelor's thesis project, with a view to supporting research into automatic anatomical brain image segmentation. The tool builds on a widely-used visualization approach for 3D image volumes, where sections in orthogonal directions are rendered on screen as 2D images. It implements novel display modes that solve common problems with conventional viewer programs. In particular, it features a double-contour display mode to aid the user's spatial orientation in the image, as well as modes for comparing two competing segmentation labels pertaining to one and the same anatomical region. The tool was developed as an extension to an existing open-source software suite for medical image processing. The visualization modes are, however, suitable for implementation in the context of other viewer programs that follow a similar rendering approach. The modified code can be found here: soundray.org/mm-segmentation-visualization.tar.gz.

The mitral valve is one of four human heart valves. It is located in the left heart and acts as a unidirectional passageway for blood between the left atrium and the left ventricle. A correctly functioning mitral valve prevents a backflow of blood into the pulmonary circulation (lungs) and thus constitutes a vital part of the cardiac cycle. Pathologies of the mitral valve can manifest in a variety of symptoms with severity ranging from chest pain and fatigue to pulmonary edema (fluid accumulation in the tissue and air space of lungs), which may ultimately cause respiratory failure. Malfunctioning mitral valves can be restored through complex surgical interventions, which greatly benefit from intensive planning and pre-operative analysis. Visualization techniques provide a possibility to enhance such preparation processes and can also facilitate post-operative evaluation. The work at hand extends current research in this field, building upon patient-specific mitral valve segmentations developed at the German Cancer Research Center, which result in triangulated 3D models of the valve surface. The core of this work will be the construction of a 2D-view of these models through global parameterization, a method that can be used to establish a bijective mapping between a planar parameter domain and a surface embedded in higher dimensions. A flat representation of the mitral valve provides physicians with a view of the whole surface at once, similar to a map. This allows assessment of the valve's area and shape without the need for different viewing angles. Parts of the valve that are occluded by geometry in 3D become visible in 2D. An additional contribution of this work will be the exploration of different visualizations of the 3D and 2D mitral valve representations. Features of the valve can be highlighted by associating them with specified colors, which can for instance directly convey pathology indicators. Quality and effectiveness of the proposed methods were evaluated through a survey conducted at the Heidelberg University Hospital.

The aim of this work is to develop a simple concept for monitoring dogs that are alone at home for several hours. The prototypical implementation of such a "DogCam" can be considered as proof of concept. The basis for the prototype‘s implementation are the requirements identified within a conducted requirement analysis. Furthermore, the present work shows which improvements and extensions of the prototypical "DogCam" are possible and which similar projects already exist.

Photo realistic rendering of fur is a common problem in computer graphics and is often needed in animation films. This work presents two illumination models, originally presented for human hair rendering. The first model is from Marschner et al. presented in 2003, which is the basis of many other models. The second model is from d’Eon et al., which was presented in 2011. Both models are implemented into a path tracer, which simulates global illumination. The special features of fur fibers in contrast to human hair fibers will be shown and an explanation, to why both models can also be used for fur rendering, will be given. The main point of interest is a realistic visualization of fur. In addition to that the performance of both models will be compared and a suggestion to improve the performance will be given and evaluated in form of the use of a cylindrical intersection object for path tracing.