Media Technology

Prof John Fitch, Dr Peter Hall, Dr Claire Willis, Prof Phil Willis, Dr Darren Cosker, Dr Matt Brown, Dr Adrian Evans (Electronic and Electrical Engineering)

The University’s Media Technology Research Centre (Director, Prof PJ Willis) is based in the Department of Computer Science. There is a strong interest in developing theory and testing it with practice. Much of what we do overlaps strongly with the Centre for Digital Entertainment.

We develop algorithms and representation for applications in:

• Animation: 2D cel animation, 3D facial animation, emotion representation, physical modeling for virtual reality
• Visual descriptions and interpretations: content based video retrieval, image understanding, non-linear camera models, non-photorealistic rendering from images and video, graphics-vision convergence.
• Digital effects and audio: computer sound, music synthesis, image compositing

Our “pure” Computer Graphics research includes Photorealistic rendering. Animation uses artificial intelligence to drive facial models to express emotions. Advanced compositing generalises current colour models and seeks to unify various rendering techniques.

In “pure” Computer Vision, we research in Content-Based Video Retrieval, in which sketches are to be used as queries. Image understanding involves the use of Gestalt principles to parse photographs into meaningful parts.

In addition to the above two themes, MTRC is well known for bringing together Vision and Graphics. We run the national Vision, Video and Graphics network of excellence. Our research includes cameras that can “see around corners” and processing photographs and video into artwork.

Computer Music is represented by research into electronic music synthesis, notation and playing systems, and composers’ assistants, but increasingly interest is in algorithmic composition. We are the distributors of various internationally known synthesis systems, and provide software support to a growing community of composers.

Recent publications

Russell Bradford, Richard Dobson and John ffitch (2008). Sliding with a Constant Q. Proc. of the 11th Int. Conf. on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-08), 363—369.

D. Cosker, D. Marshall, P. Rosin, S. Paddock, S. Rushton, ``Towards Perceptually Realistic Talking Heads: Models, Metrics and McGurk'', ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, vol. 2, no. 3, pp 270-285, 2005.

J. P. Collomosse, D. Rowntree and P. M. Hall. Stroke Surfaces: Temporally Coherent Non-photorealistic Animations from Video. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 11(5), pp.540-549. IEEE. ISSN: 1077-2626. (September 2005)

P.M. Hall, J.P. Collomosse, Y-Z. Song, P-Y. Shen and C. Li, RTcams: a new perspective on non-photorealistic rendering IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 13(5), 966-979, 2007

P. J. Willis, P.Y. Shen, M. Chen, M.W. Jones, S.J. Walton, D. Silver, C. Correa and S. Islam, Manipulating, Deforming and Animating Sampled Object Representations, Computer Graphics Forum, 26(4), pp 824-852.