28/07/2021

At the Colloquium, Visgraf presents visualization tools.

With sophisticated visualization tools, computer graphics can leverage major discoveries in pure mathematics, making it easier to prove theorems that are difficult to imagine. In the advanced course "Intrinsic Visualization of Thurston Geometries," which is part of the 33rd Brazilian Mathematics Colloquium (CBM), a group of researchers from Visgraf (the Computer Graphics Laboratory of IMPA) will show how immersive visualization of three-dimensional manifolds works, using the latest advances in virtual reality and ray tracing.

Taught by Luiz Velho , lead researcher at Visgraf; Tiago Novello , postdoctoral fellow at the laboratory; and Vinicius da Silva, postdoctoral fellow at PUC-Rio and collaborator at Visgraf; the course consists of five classes, which are already available on the Colloquium's YouTube channel . Next Tuesday (3), during the official week of the event, the group will meet with course participants via the Zoom platform at 11:15 am to discuss the main issues on the topic.

“The RTX platform, launched in late 2018 with NVIDIA Turing graphics card architecture, enabled real-time ray tracing, which was highly anticipated and considered the holy grail of computer graphics. In this course, we will use the power of this tool to develop virtual reality applications and experience complete immersion in three-dimensional environments,” explains da Silva in the course's promotional video .

Throughout the classes, the professors demonstrate how it is possible to have an interior view of non-Euclidean spaces modeled by Thurston's eight geometries. "To do this, we will study recent methods of visualizing three manifolds based on curved ray tracing," Novello pointed out.

The course has its own webpage , which includes links to the classes, the promotional video, projects from Visgraf and other research groups in the field, as well as a forum where students can post questions and comments about the content taught. "The idea behind the website is that enrolled students, who have consumed the course content, can interact with us through different channels and participate in a more engaging way," says Velho.

Subscribe to the Colloquium's YouTube channel to follow the event's courses and lectures!