Aaron Lefohn's Publications

Aaron Lefohn

High-Quality Interactive Rendering
GPU Programming Abstractions
Interactive Simulation

Last updated 11/8/07

Note: I finished my Ph.D. in spring 2006, joined Matt Pharr and Craig Kolb's computer graphics startup, Neoptica, as a Principal Engineer, and am now a Senior Graphics Architect at Intel after Intel acquired Neoptica in October 2007.

My Ph.D. research focused on high-quality interactive rendering and programming abstractions for graphics processors. My simultaneous work at Pixar focused on applying GPUs to the film production pipeline for both interactive preview and accelerated final-frame rendering. My Ph.D. thesis attacks the problem through programming language fundamentals. The goal is to enable significantly more complex interactive rendering solutions by creating a more expressive GPU data structure abstraction. The resulting GPU template library, Glift, has so far made it possible to implement real-time versions of Octree Textures and Adaptive Shadow Maps. Once the data structures are in place, we've found that moving these algorithms into the real-time domain challenges many of the original algorithms' assumptions. The result is a research process that iterates between data structure and rendering algorithm innovation.

On this page, you'll also find the research path that has led me to my current pursuits. This past research includes interactive GPU-accelerated level-set segmentation (my masters work), high-quality volume rendering, and macro- and micro- scale fluid simulations (my other masters work). My Ph.D. advisor is Professor John Owens.

	Ph.D. Dissertation
	Glift: Generic Data Structures for Graphics Hardware *2006 Best Doctoral Dissertation Award, UC Davis Computer Science Department* Aaron E. Lefohn September, 2006

	High-Quality Interactive Rendering
	Programmable Graphics--The Future of Interactive Rendering Matt Pharr, Aaron Lefohn, Craig Kolb, Paul Lalonde, Tim Foley, Geoff Berry Neoptica Technical Report, March 2007
	Resolution-Matched Shadow Maps Aaron Lefohn, S. Sengupta, J. Owens ACM Transactions on Graphics, 26 (4), pp. 20:1 - 20:17, Oct. 2007
	Multi-Fragment Effects on the GPU Using the k-buffer Louis Bavoil, Steven P. Callahan, Aaron Lefohn, Joao L. D. Comba, Claudio T. Silva ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games, pp. 97-104, 2007
	Interactive Depth of Field Using Simulated Diffusion M. Kass, A. Lefohn, J. Owens Pixar Animation Studios Technical Report #06-01, Jan. 2006
	Dynamic Adaptive Shadow Maps on Graphics Hardware A. Lefohn, S. Sengupta, J. Kniss, R. Strzodka, J. Owens Technical Sketch at ACM SIGGRAPH 2005
	Octree Textures on Graphics Hardware J. Kniss, A. Lefohn, R. Strzodka, S. Sengupta, J. Owens Technical Sketch at ACM SIGGRAPH 2005 * Note : Please also see Sylvain Lefebvre's excellent work on GPU Octree Textures (performed simultaneously with ours). Sylvain implemented a more traditional tree structure than we did, but we both came to the same conclusion that a shallow-branching solution is ideal on current hardware. The works are complimentary and I highly encourage you to look at his solution alongside ours.
	Lpics: A Hardware-Accelerated Relighting Engine for Computer Cinematography F. Pellacini, K. Vidimce, A. Lefohn, A. Mohr, M. Leone, J. Warren Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2005, pp. 464-470
	An Ocularist's Approach to Human Iris Synthesis A. E. Lefohn, R. T. Caruso, E. Reinhard, B. Budge, and Peter Shirley IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 23 (6), Nov./Dec., pp. 70-75, 2003
	Star-Ray Interactive Ray Tracing Demo Software Developer SGI Vendor Booth, ACM SIGGRAPH 2002

	GPU Programming Abstractions
	Glift : Generic, Efficient Random-Access GPU Data Structures A. Lefohn, J. Kniss, R. Strzodka, S. Sengupta, J. Owens ACM Transactions on Graphics, 25(1), pp. 60-99, Jan. 2006 (referred by ACM SIGGRAPH 2005 papers committee)
	GPU-Accelerated Shading in Pixar's PhotoRealistic RenderMan Announced at the Pixar RenderMan User's Group Meeting at ACM SIGGRAPH 2005
	A Survey of General-Purpose Computation on Graphics Hardware J. Owens, D. Luebke, N. Govindaraju, M. Harris, J. Kruger, A. E. Lefohn, and T. Purcell Eurographics Computer Graphics Forum, to appear, 2006 J. Owens, D. Luebke, N. Govindaraju, M. Harris, J. Kruger, A. E. Lefohn, and T. Purcell State of the Art Report #2, Eurographics 2005
	Implementing Efficient Parallel Data Structures on GPUs A. E. Lefohn, J. Kniss, J. Owens Chapter 33 in GPU Gems II: Programming Techniques for High-Performance Graphics and General-Purpose Computation Addison Wesley, pp. 521-545, 2005
	Mio: Fast Multipass Partitioning via Priority-Based Instruction Scheduling A. Riffel, A. E. Lefohn, K. Vidimce, M. Leone, J. D. Owens 1: Paper in Graphics Hardware, pp. 35-44, 2004 2: Poster at ACM Workshop on General-Purpose Computing on Graphics Processors 2004
	GPGPU: General-Purpose Computation on Graphics Hardware M. Houston, I. Buck, N. Govindaraju, M. Harris, J. Henseley, J. Kruger, A. E. Lefohn, J. D. Owens Course 24 at ACM SIGGRAPH 2007
	GPGPU: General-Purpose Computation on Graphics Hardware M. Harris, D. Luebke, I. Buck, N. Govindaraju, J. Kruger, A. E. Lefohn, T. Purcell, and C. Woolley Course 39 at ACM SIGGRAPH 2005 Course 32 at ACM SIGGRAPH 2004
	GPGPU: General-Purpose Computation on Graphics Processors A. E. Lefohn, I. Buck, P. McCormick, J. D. Owens, T. Purcell, R. Strzodka Tutorial 1 at IEEE Visualization 2005 Tutorial 3 at IEEE Visualization 2004

	Interactive Level-Set Segmentation
	Level Set and PDE Methods for Visualization D. Breen, M. Kirby, A. E. Lefohn, K. Museth, T. Preusser, G. Sapiro, R. Whitaker Tutorial at IEEE Visualization 2005
	Interactive Computation and Visualization of Level-Set Surfaces: A Streaming Narrow Band Algorithm M.S. Thesis A. E. Lefohn School of Computing University of Utah, 2004
	GIST: An Interactive, GPU-Based Level-Set Segmentation Tool for 3D Medical Images Invited Paper (due to Best Paper nonimation at MICCAI 2003) J. E. Cates, A. E. Lefohn, R. T. Whitaker 1: Paper in Medical Image Analysis, pp. 217-231, 2004 2: University of Utah School of Computing Technical Report, UUCS-04-007, 2004
	A Streaming Narrow-Band Algorithm: Interactive Deformation and Visualization of Level Sets *Invited Paper (due to Best Paper nomination at IEEE Visualization 2003)* A. E. Lefohn, J. M. Kniss, C. D. Hansen, R. T. Whitaker IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 10 (40), Jul./Aug., pp. 422-433, 2004
	Interactive Deformation and Visualization of Level Set Surfaces Using Graphics Hardware Nominated for Best Paper Award Proceedings Cover Image A. E. Lefohn, J. M. Kniss, C. D. Hansen, R. T. Whitaker 1: IEEE Visualization, pp. 75-82, 2003 2: University of Utah School of Computing Technical Report, UUCS-03-005, 2003
	Interactive, GPU-Based Level Sets for 3D Segmentation Nominated for Best Paper Award Oral presentation A. E. Lefohn, J. E. Cates, R. T. Whitaker 1: Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), pp. 564-572, 2003 2: University of Utah School of Computing Technical Report, UUCS-03-004, 2003
	A GPU-Based, Three-Dimensional Level Set Solver with Curvature Flow A. E. Lefohn, R. T. Whitaker University of Utah School of Computing Technical Report, UUCS-02-017, 2002

	Volume Rendering
	Deferred Filtering: Rendering from Difficult Data Formats J. Kniss, A. E. Lefohn, N. Fout Chapter 41 in GPU Gems II: Programming Techniques for High-Performance Graphics and General-Purpose Computation Addison Wesley, pp. 669-677, 2005
	High Quality Rendering of Compressed Volume Data Formats N. Fout, H. Akiba, K. Ma, A. E. Lefohn, J. Kniss EuroVis (Eurographics/IEEE-VGTC Symposium on Visualization), 2005
	Real-Time Volume Graphics K. Engel, M. Hadwiger, J. Kniss, A. E. Lefohn, C. Rezk-Salama, and D. Weiskopf Course 28 at ACM SIGGRAPH 2004
	Volume Rendering Techniques M. Ikits, J. Kniss, A. E. Lefohn, C. Hansen Chapter 39 in GPU Gems: Programming Techniques, Tips and Tricks for Real-Time Graphics Addison Wesley, pp. 667-692, 2004
	Gaussian Transfer Functions for Multi-field Volume Visualization J. M. Kniss, S. Premoze, M. Ikits, A. E. Lefohn, C. D. Hansen, E. Praun IEEE Visualization, pp. 497-504, 2003
	Closed Form Solution to the Volume Rendering Integral with Gaussian Transfer Functions J. Kniss, S. Premoze, M. Ikits, A. E. Lefohn, C. Hansen University of Utah School of Computing Technical Report, UUCS-03-013, 2003
	Dynamic Volume Computation and Visualization on GPUs a presentation in the course, Interactive Visualization of Volumetric Data on Consumer PC Hardware K. Engel, M. Hadwiger, J. Kniss, A. E. Lefohn, and D. Weiskopf Tutorial #1 at IEEE Visualization 2003

	Physical Simulation
	Particle-Based Simulation of Fluids S. Premoze, T. Tasdizen, J. Bigler, A. E. Lefohn, R. T. Whitaker Eurographics, Computer Graphics Forum, pp. 401-410, 2003
	An Improved Polarflex Water Model J. Jeon, A. E. Lefohn, G. A. Voth The Journal of Chemical Physics, 118 (16), pp. 7504-7518, 2003
	A Multistate Empirical Valence Bond Approach to a Polarizable and Flexible Water Model A. E. Lefohn, M. Ovchinnikov, G. A. Voth The Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 105 (28), pp. 6628-6637, 2001
	Polarflex: An MS-EVB Approach to a Polarizable and Flexible Water Model A. E. Lefohn, M. Ovchinnikov, G. Voth Poster at the West Coast Theoretical Chemistry Conference, Salt Lake City, UT, June, 2000
	Comparison of Pulsed and Continuous Wave Deposition of Thin Films from Acetonitrile and Acrylonitrile Inductively Coupled Plasmas A. E. Lefohn, N. M. Mackie, and E. R. Fisher Journal of Plasma Polymers, 3, pp. 197-209, 1998
	A Comparison of the Molecular Dynamics and the Instantaneous Normal Modes of a Solvated Diatomic Molecule A. E. Lefohn, M. A. Leich, S. J. Schvaneveldt Poster at the 213th American Chemical Society National Meeting, San Francisco, April 13-17, 1997

	Interactive Level-Set Segmentation
	Level Set and PDE Methods for Visualization D. Breen, M. Kirby, A. E. Lefohn, K. Museth, T. Preusser, G. Sapiro, R. Whitaker Tutorial at IEEE Visualization 2005
	Interactive Computation and Visualization of Level-Set Surfaces: A Streaming Narrow Band Algorithm M.S. Thesis A. E. Lefohn School of Computing University of Utah, 2004
	GIST: An Interactive, GPU-Based Level-Set Segmentation Tool for 3D Medical Images Invited Paper (due to Best Paper nonimation at MICCAI 2003) J. E. Cates, A. E. Lefohn, R. T. Whitaker 1: Paper in Medical Image Analysis, pp. 217-231, 2004 2: University of Utah School of Computing Technical Report, UUCS-04-007, 2004
	A Streaming Narrow-Band Algorithm: Interactive Deformation and Visualization of Level Sets *Invited Paper (due to Best Paper nomination at IEEE Visualization 2003)* A. E. Lefohn, J. M. Kniss, C. D. Hansen, R. T. Whitaker IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 10 (40), Jul./Aug., pp. 422-433, 2004
	Interactive Deformation and Visualization of Level Set Surfaces Using Graphics Hardware Nominated for Best Paper Award Proceedings Cover Image A. E. Lefohn, J. M. Kniss, C. D. Hansen, R. T. Whitaker 1: IEEE Visualization, pp. 75-82, 2003 2: University of Utah School of Computing Technical Report, UUCS-03-005, 2003
	Interactive, GPU-Based Level Sets for 3D Segmentation Nominated for Best Paper Award Oral presentation A. E. Lefohn, J. E. Cates, R. T. Whitaker 1: Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), pp. 564-572, 2003 2: University of Utah School of Computing Technical Report, UUCS-03-004, 2003
	A GPU-Based, Three-Dimensional Level Set Solver with Curvature Flow A. E. Lefohn, R. T. Whitaker University of Utah School of Computing Technical Report, UUCS-02-017, 2002