Xin Tong童欣
Lead Researcher

 

Internet Graphics Group, Microsoft Research Asia

 

5th Floor, Sigma Center, No. 49 ZhiChun Road, HaiDian,

Beijing, 100190, P. R. China

Email: xtong at microsoft.com

Tel:  86-10-58965745

 

About Me

I am now is a lead researcher in Internet Graphics Group, Microsoft Research Asia.

Xin Tong joined Microsoft Research China as an associate researcher in 1999. Before that, he received his Ph.D. Degree in Computer Graphics from Tsinghua University, Beijing. His Ph.D thesis is about hardware assisted volume rendering. Xin received B.S. Degree and Master Degree in Computer Science from Zhejiang University in 1993 and 1996 respectively.

 

Research Interests

Appearance modeling and rendering, texture synthesis, and graphics architecture and system.

 

Professional Activities

Program Committee Member:

Pacific Graphics 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009; Eurographics 2007; Computer Graphics International 2006 and 2008; SIGGRAPH ASIA 2008;

Paper Reviewer:

ACM SIGGRAPH, IEEE Visualization, EGWR, EGSR, ACM TOG, IEEE TVCG, IEEE CG&A, PAMI

 

Publications

2009

SubEdit: A Representation for Editing Measured Heterogeneous Subsurface Scattering

Ying Song, Xin Tong, Fabio Pellacini, Pieter Peers,

We present SubEdit, a representation for editing the BSSRDF of heterogeneous subsurface scattering acquired from real-world samples. Directly editing measured raw data is difficult due to the non-local impact of heterogeneous subsurface scattering on the appearance. Our SubEdit representation decouples these non-local effects into the product of two local scattering profiles defined at respectively the incident and outgoing surface locations. This allows users to directly manipulate the appearance of single surface locations and to robustly make selections. To further facilitate editing, we reparameterize the scattering profiles into the local appearance concepts of albedo, scattering range, and profile shape. Our method preserves the visual quality of the measured material after editing by maintaining the consistency of subsurface transport for all edits. SubEdit fits measured data well while remaining efficient enough to support interactive rendering and manipulation. We illustrate the suitability of SubEdit as a representation for editing by applying various complex modifications on a wide variety of measured heterogeneous subsurface scattering materials.

ACM SIGGRAPH 2009 (To appear), [Paper 10MB] [Video 20MB] [Supplemental Material] [Talk Slides]

 

Kernel Nystrom for Light Transport

Jiaping Wang, Yue Dong, Xin Tong, Zhouchen Lin, Baining Guo

We propose a kernel Nystrom method for reconstructing the light transport matrix from a relatively small number of acquired images. Our work is based on the generalized Nystrom method for low rank matrices. We introduce the light transport kernel and incorporate it into the Nystrom method to exploit the nonlinear coherence of the light transport matrix. We also develop an adaptive scheme for efficiently capturing the sparsely sampled images from the scene. Our experiments indicate that the kernel Nystrom method can achieve good reconstruction of the light transport matrix with a few hundred images and produce high quality relighting results. The kernel Nystrom method is effective for modeling scenes with complex lighting effects and occlusions which have been challenging for existing techniques.

ACM SIGGRAPH 2009 (To appear), [Paper] [Video] [Talk Slides]

 

 

2008

Modeling Anisotropic Surface Reflectance with Example-based Microfacet Synthesis

Jiaping Wang, Shuang Zhao, Xin Tong, John Snyder, Baining Guo,

We present a new technique for the visual modeling of spatially varying anisotropic reflectance using data captured from a single view. Reflectance is represented using a microfacet-based BRDF which tabulates the facets’ normal distribution (NDF) as a function of surface location. Data from a single view provides a 2D slice of the 4D BRDF at each surface point from which we fit a partial NDF. The fitted NDF is partial because the single view direction coupled with the set of light directions covers only a portion of the half-angle” hemisphere. We complete the NDF at each point by applying a novel variant of texture synthesis using similar, overlapping partial NDFs from other points. Our similarity measure allows azimuthal rotation of partial NDFs, under the assumption that reflectance is spatially redundant but the local frame may be arbitrarily oriented. Our system includes a simple acquisition device that collects images over a 2D set of light directions by scanning a linear array of LEDs over a flat sample. Results demonstrate that our approach preserves spatial and directional BRDF details and generates a visually compelling match to measured materials.

ACM SIGGRAPH 2008, [Paper 14MB] [Video 31MB] [Data] [Talk Slides]

 

Lazy Solid Texture Synthesis

Yue Dong, Sylvain Lefebvre, Xin Tong, George Drettakis,

Existing solid texture synthesis algorithms generate a full volume of color content from a set of 2D example images. We introduce a new algorithm with the unique ability to restrict synthesis to a subset of the voxels, while enforcing spatial determinism. Our key idea is to synthesize a volume from a set of pre-computed 3D candidates, each being a triple of interleaved 2D neighborhoods. We present an efficient algorithm to carefully select in a pre-process only those candidates forming consistent triples. This significantly reduces the search space during subsequent synthesis. The result is a new parallel, spatially deterministic solid texture synthesis algorithm which runs efficiently on the GPU. Our approach generates high resolution solid textures on surfaces within seconds. Memory usage and synthesis time only depend on the output textured surface area.

Eurographics Symposium on Rendering 2008,  [Paper 12MB] [Video 46MB] [Data] [Talk Slides]

 

Image based Material Weathering

Su Xue, Jiaping Wang, Xin Tong, Qionghai Dai, Baining Guo,

In this paper, we present a technique for modeling and editing the weathering effects of an object in a single image with appearance manifolds. In our approach, we formulate the input image as the product of reflectance and illuminance. An iterative method is then developed to construct the appearance manifold in color space (i.e., Lab space) for modeling the reflectance variations caused by weathering. Based on the appearance manifold, we propose a statistical method to robustly decompose reflectance and illuminance for each pixel. For editing, we introduce a "pixel-walking" scheme to modify the pixel reflectance according to its position on the manifold, by which the detailed reflectance variations are well preserved. We illustrate our technique in various applications, including weathering transfer between two images that is first enabled by our technique.

Eurographics 2008, [Paper 24MB] [Video 5MB] [Talk Slides]

 

Modeling and Rendering Heterogeneous Translucent Materials using Diffusion Equation

Jiaping Wang, Shuang Zhao, Xin Tong, Stephen Lin, Zhouchen Lin, Yue Dong, Baining Guo, Heung-Yeung Shum,

In this paper, we propose techniques for modeling and rendering of heterogeneous translucent materials that enable acquisition from measured samples, interactive editing of material attributes, and real-time rendering. The materials are assumed to be optically dense such that multiple scattering can be approximated by a diffusion process described by the diffusion equation. For modeling heterogeneous materials, we present the inverse diffusion algorithm for acquiring material properties from appearance measurements. This modeling algorithm incorporates a regularizer to handle the ill-conditioning of the inverse problem, an adjoint method to dramatically reduce the computational cost, and a hierarchical GPU implementation for further speedup. To render an object with known material properties, we present the polygrid diffusion algorithm, which solves the diffusion equation with a boundary condition defined by the given illumination environment. This rendering technique is based on representation of an object by a polygrid, a grid with regular connectivity and an irregular shape, which facilitates solution of the diffusion equation in arbitrary volumes. Because of the regular connectivity, our rendering algorithm can be implemented on the GPU for real-time performance. We demonstrate our techniques by capturing materials from physical samples and performing real-time rendering and editing with these materials.

ACM Transaction on Graphics, Vol. 27, No.1, 2008, [Paper 20MB] [Video 46MB] [Talk Slides]

 

1999~2007

Rendering from Compressed High Dynamic Range Textures on Programmable Graphics Hardware

Lvdi Wang, Xi Wang, Peter-Pike Sloan, Li-Yi Wei, Xin Tong, Baining Guo,

ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games 2007, [Paper 2MB]

 

Hardware Accelerated Parallel Texture Optimization

Haoda Huang, Xin Tong, Wencheng Wang,

Journal of Computer Science and Technology,22(5), 2007,[Paper 4MB]

 

Incremental Wavelet Importance Sampling for Direct Illumination

Haoda Huang, Yanyun Chen, Xin Tong, Wencheng Wang,

ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST)(Short Paper) , 2007, [Paper 2MB]

 

Appearance Manifolds for Modeling Time-Variant Appearance of Materials

Jiaping Wang, Xin Tong, Stephen Lin, Minghao Pan, Chao Wang, Hujun Bao, Baining Guo, Heung-Yeung Shum,

ACM Transaction on Graphics Vol. 25, No. 3, 2006 (ACM SIGGRAPH 2006), [Paper 18MB][Video 95MB][Slides 16MB]

 

Shell Radiance Texture Functions

Ying Song, Yanyun Chen, Xin Tong, Stephen Lin, Jiaoying Shi, Baining Guo, Heung-Yeung Shum,

The Visual Computer, Vol. 21, No. 8~10, 2005 (Pacific Graphics 2005), [Paper 5MB]

Capturing and Rendering Geometry Details for BTF-mapped Surfaces

Jiaping Wang, Xin Tong, John Snyder, Yanyun Chen, Baining Guo, Heung-Yeung Shum,

The Visual Computer, Vol. 21, No. 8~10, 2005 (Pacific Graphics 2005), [Paper 1MB]

Visual Simulation of Weathering by Gamma–ton Tracing

Yanyun Chen, Lin Xia, Tien-Tsin Wong, Xin Tong, Hujun Bao, Baining Guo, Heung-Yeung Shum,

ACM Transaction on Graphics, Vol. 24, No. 3, 2005 (ACM SIGGRAPH 2005), [Paper 1.2MB]

Modeling and Rendering of Quasi-homogeneous Materials

Xin Tong, Jiaping Wang, Stephen Lin, Baining Guo, Heung Yeung Shum,

ACM Transaction on Graphics, Vol. 24, No. 3, 2005 (ACM SIGGRAPH 2005), [Paper 3MB]

Real Time Rendering of Ocean Waves

Yaohua Hu, Luiz Velho, Xin Tong, Baining Guo, Heung-Yeung Shum,
Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, 2004, [Paper]

Generalized Displacement Maps

Xi Wang, Xin Tong, Stephen Lin, Shimin Hu, Baining Guo, Heung-Yeung Shum,

Eurographics Symposium on Rendering, 2004, [Paper 5MB]

Shell Texture Functions

Yanyun Chen, Xin Tong, Jiaping Wang, Stephen Lin, Baining Guo, Heung-Yeung Shum,
ACM Transaction on Graphics, Vol. 23, No. 3, 2004 (ACM SIGGRAPH 2004), [Paper 2MB]

 

View-Dependent Displacement Mapping

Lifeng Wang, Xi Wang, Xin Tong, Stephen Lin, Shimin Hu, Baining Guo, Heung-Yeung Shum,
ACM Transaction on Graphics, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2003 (ACM SIGGRAPH 2003), [Paper 9MB]

Lighting and shadow interpolation using Intrinsic Lumigraphs

Yasuyuki Matsushita, Sing Bing Kang, Stephen Lin, Heung-Yeung Shum, Xin Tong,
International Journal of Image and Graphics, 2003.

 

Synthesis of Bi-directional Texture Functions on Arbitrary Surfaces

Xin Tong, Jingdan Zhang, Ligang Liu, Xi Wang, Baining Guo, Heung-Yeung Shum,

ACM Transaction on Graphics, Vol. 21, No. 3, 2002(ACM SIGGRAPH 2002), [Paper 3MB]

Layered Lumigraph with LOD Control

Xin Tong, JinXiang Chai, Heung-Yeung Shum,

Journal of Visualization and Computer Animation, Vol. 13, No. 4, 2002, [Paper 4MB]

Rendering by Manifold Hopping

Heung-Yeung Shum, Lifeng Wang, JinXiang Chai, Xin Tong,
International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV), Vol. 50, No. 2, 2002.

 

Lighting Interpolation by Shadow Morphing Using Intrinsic Lumigraphs
Yasuyuki Matsushita, Sing Bing Kang, Stephen Lin, Heung-Yeung Shum, Xin Tong,
Pacific Graphics, 2002.

 

Diffuse-Specular Separation and Depth Recovery from Image Sequences
Stephen Lin, Yuanzhen Li, Sing Bing Kang, Xin Tong, Heung-Yueng Shum,
Proceeding of European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2002. [Paper 400KB]

Locally Reparameterized Light Fields
Xin Tong, Heung-Yeung Shum, Sing Bing Kang, Tao Feng, Rick Szeliski,
Technical Sketch, ACM SIGGRAPH 2001, Aug. 2001, [Paper 400KB]

Artistic Image Generation by Deviation Mapping

Wenyin Liu, Xin Tong, Yingqing Xu, Heung-Yeung Shum,
International Journal of Image and Graphics, Vol. 1, No.4, 2001.

 

Plenoptic Sampling
JinXiang Chai, Xin Tong, Shing-Chow Chan, Heung-Yeung Shum,
ACM SIGGRAPH 2000, Annual Conference Series, 2000, [Paper 11MB]

 

Efficiently Rendering Large Volume Data Using Texture Mapping Hardware
Xin Tong, Wenping Wang, Wai-Wan Tsang, Zesheng Tang,
Joint Eurographics - IEEE TCVG Symposium on Visualization (VisSym), 1999, [Paper 2MB]

 

 

Last Modified: 2008-06-23