MANAO

The manao project aims at studying how light, matter and shape act together in synergies, at the convergence of Optical Science and Computer Graphics, providing for more powerful representations of appearance. Such a high-level approach is to contrast with the main trend of modern Computer Graphics that study these light, shape and matter separately. The manao project aims also to take into account the communication processes from real world to virtual world (acquisition), from computer to observer (restitution). The resulting representations, algorithms and unified optical/digital systems decrease the required computational resources in order to provide fast communication between the real world (original data, human users and sensors) and the digital 3D world and in order to develop new uses of Computer Graphics for scientists (mostly from Optical Science), artists, and industrial.