Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces Commons^™

Conditional Product Sampling For Gaussian Process Implicit Surfaces, Song Shi

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Gaussian Process Implicit Surfaces (GPISes) provide a powerful and unified stochastic geometry representation for rendering surfaces, volumes, and the rich continuum between them. Recent work has shown that GPISes can model a broad space of visual appearances under a unified light transport framework. However, practical rendering with GPISes remains challenging: existing estimators can become inefficient for particular correlation structures, and highly anisotropic or heightfield-like GPISes require specialized treatment to obtain robust variance reduction.

This thesis extends recent work on GPIS rendering by introducing a new next-event estimation (NEE) technique for anisotropic GPISes.We show that standard NEE provides diminishing benefits as …

From Physical Correlation To Emotional Connection: The Role Of Passive Haptics On Empathy In Virtual Reality, Jemely Robles

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Virtual reality is increasingly explored as a tool for cultivating empathy, and haptic feedback as a tool for enhancing immersion. This paper investigates the effects of combining the two.  Fifty-two participants experienced a custom-built VR scene in which a character was shown packing up a room. Participants were assigned to either a haptic condition, receiving passive haptic feedback corresponding to the character's actions, or a non-haptic control condition that did not receive any haptic input. Trait empathy was measured beforehand, and state empathy and engagement were measured after the experience. Thematic analysis was conducted on post-study interviews, and headset recordings …

Visionglow: Evaluating Minimal-Disruption Smart-Home Control In Apple Vision Pro, Hongxiao Zheng

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Smart-home control in mixed-reality environments like Apple Vision Pro often relies on disruptive, application-based paradigms, such as using a smartphone or a windowed virtual interface. These methods create a “mode switch” that imposes cognitive load and pulls users from their primary tasks. We present VisionGlow, a minimal-disruption spatial interaction technique for Vision Pro. VisionGlow represents devices as spatially-anchored “orbs.” To control a device, the user looks at its orb and performs a pinch gesture, which invokes a compact, contextual control panel. We conducted a within-subjects study (N=18) comparing VisionGlow against two baselines: the standard Apple Home app on a smartphone …

Multi-Level Differentiable Moving Particles With Partition Of Unity, Jinjin He

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Representing implicit geometry with intricate features has long been a challenge. Recent advances in Implicit Neural Representations (INRs) have shown great promise in applications such as 3D reconstruction, inverse rendering, and dynamic surface evolution. These methods leverage neural networks to model complex shapes continuously, offering advantages in resolution and flexibility over traditional discrete representations. Despite their success, efficiently handling fine geometric details and evolving dynamic scenes remains an open problem.

We introduce a differentiable moving particle representation based on the multi-level partition of unity (MPU) to model dynamic implicit geometries efficiently. Our approach employs two types of particles—feature particles and …

Heartdj - Music Recommendation And Generation Through Biofeedback From Heart Rate Variability, Egemen Şahin

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This study investigates the integration of real-time physiological data with AI-generated music to enhance emotional well-being, stress regulation, and focus, using Heart Rate Variability (HRV) as a biomarker of autonomic function. Conducted in two phases—Stable Audio Open (SAO) and Suno (SUNO)—the research evaluates biofeedback-driven music interventions across varying daily music-listening habits.

In the SAO phase, short AI-generated instrumental tracks were compared with Spotify recommendations and guided meditation. Modest HRV improvements were observed in biofeedback conditions, but participants noted emotional limitations, citing short track lengths and abrupt transitions.

The SUNO phase addressed these limitations with longer, more complex AI-generated compositions combined …

Openmuse: Integrating Open-Source Models Into Music Creation Workflows, Tyler K. Vergho

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This master's thesis introduces OpenMUSE (Open Multimodal Unified Sound Engine), a platform that demonstrates the potential of open-source AI music generation by integrating state-of-the-art deep learning models into a unified system. By unifying ten different open-source models, including MusicGen, AudioLDM2, and custom-trained text-to-symbolic music generation models, OpenMUSE aims to create a user-friendly interface that empowers artists to produce complex, adaptive musical compositions. The system enhances accessibility by providing a simple web interface and natural language controls, while improving controllability through features like melody conditioning and semantic audio editing. Specifically, OpenMUSE offers a digital audio workstation (DAW)-inspired interface that lowers the …

Eulerian Smoke Simulation With Multiple Fields, Diyang Zhang

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Fluid simulation is a cornerstone of computer graphics, enabling the realistic depiction of dynamic phenomena such as smoke, fire, and other gaseous behaviours. This thesis focuses on advancing Eulerian smoke simulation techniques, with a particular emphasis on grid-based simulations that capture intricate vortical structures and fine visual details.

We propose several detail-preserving frameworks that incorporate various scalar and vector fields within the simulation pipeline, including velocity, impulse, and Lamb vectors, along with their decompositions and transformed representations. By mathematically analyzing the properties of impulse, we derive its scalar fields decomposition (ImpSFD), which introduces an alternative numerical interpretation, and Vortex-Particles in …

Polarimetric Capture And Differentiable Rendering, Katherine Anne Salesin

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Many scientific fields rely on the capture and modeling of light to extract underlying information about the world. Often, more information can be extracted by capturing more about the nature of the light, such as its spectral shape or polarization state. While polarization is a relatively unexplored topic in computer graphics, when used in tandem with other recent advancements in the field it has enormous potential to improve both forward and inverse models in other scientific disciplines. We demonstrate this potential in two distinct settings in this thesis.

First, we apply the capture of polarized light to an inverse problem …

An Efficient Fourier Caching Algorithm For Walk On Spheres, Zihong Zhou

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Walk on Spheres (WoS) is a grid-free Monte Carlo method for solving elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs).
Rather than discretizing the domain, WoS leverages the mean-value principle to obtain Monte Carlo estimates by recursively averaging the solution over the largest contained sphere, terminating upon reaching the boundary.
Unfortunately, WoS requires many independent estimates to achieve noise-free results.

We propose an acceleration technique for WoS, inspired by irradiance caching methods, that computes the solution at a sparse set of locations, and extrapolates these cached values to local neighborhoods. A key insight is that WoS can be extended to compute not only …

Curating Familiarity Within The Unfamiliar: Exploring Non-Native Mobile App Experiences To Create Cross-Cultural Design Frameworks, Hanna Hong

Computer Science Senior Theses

Global mobility and markets are expanding, and as a result, countries are becoming less and less monocultural. With multiple cultural affinity groups to cater towards, companies often will deploy different versions of a website or app based on the country a user is accessing it from. This strategy of catering to geographic location results in a lack of accommodation for people living within a culture that is different from their native one. In order to increase accessibility and equal ease-of-use for all audiences, designers should understand and work towards the needs of a multicultural user base. This study investigates how …

Impact Of Similarities In Gender And Physical Appearance Between User And Embodied Conversational Agents On Trustworthiness, Empathy, And Service Evaluation, Sookyoung Park

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) have significantly enhanced human-machine interactions and show considerable potential in various industries such as customer service, education, healthcare, entertainment, and finance [1, 2]. This study explores the impact of similarities in gender and physical appearance between ECAs and users on the perceptions of trustworthiness, empathy, and service evaluation within the context of counselor ECAs. We conducted a within-subject experiment (n=50), using a 2x2 factorial arrangement, that varied the gender and the physical appearance of four distinct AI avatars. Participants interacted with each avatar, completing a post-experiment survey and participating in semi-structured interviews. Our findings indicate that …

Embodied Visions: Interactive Installations That Reimagine Bodily Presence In Digital Imaging Apparatuses As Shadows, Yunzi Shi

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Contextualized within a history of technological development, the evolution of imaging devices and technologies is accompanied by the abstraction of spatial relationships between the body of the observer, the apparatus, and physical reality, which leads to disembodying experiences for the observing subject. Compared with devices and interactive experiences, critical reflection on the epistemological impact of digital imaging devices has less priority in computational imaging and human-computer interaction research. Taking an artistic approach, this thesis describes Embodied Visions, an exhibition featuring three interactive installations exploring the technical infrastructure for imaging and reflecting on the (dis)embodied experiences in the digital age. …

Simulating Cross-Scale Solid-Fluid Interaction Phenomena, Jinyuan Liu

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Solid-fluid interactions are ubiquitous in nature, and accurate simulation methods are essential for realistic animation, industrial design, and engineering analysis. Com- pared to large-scale coupling phenomena, simulating fine-scale interactions poses extra challenges due to factors such as surface tension, material wettability, and geometric complexity. In this thesis, we pursue novel methodologies to accurately model in- terfacial dynamics between surface-tension fluids and codimensional solids, involving capillary interactions, controllable wettability, and robust contact behaviors. Our ini- tial approach involves developing a novel three-way coupling method, which utilizes a thin liquid membrane, modelled as a simplicial mesh, to facilitate accurate momen- tum transfer, …

Automated Cinematographer For Vr Viewing Experiences, Zihan Wu

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

As the virtual reality (VR) industry continues to evolve, the question of how to effectively capture VR experiences for an audience remains a challenge. The predominant method of showcasing VR applications through first-person recordings lacks cinematic interest, failing to capture other viewpoints and the essence of the moment. Meanwhile, manually setting up cameras and editing videos requires technical expertise on behalf of the user. In this paper, we propose the use of machine learning (ML) to automatically select the most compelling predefined viewpoint in a VR environment, at any given moment. Our models, trained on actor motion and voice volume, …

3-D Reconstruction For Underwater Robots With A Monocular Camera And Lights, Monika Roznere

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Before a robot can act, it must perceive its environment. Though, this is not a simple task when considering the challenges in underwater domains -- poor visibility conditions, limited sensor configurations, and lack of readily accessible localization. Underwater robots have, nevertheless, improved dramatically with more extensive sensor and navigation equipment. Robot and sensor use have enabled us to explore all reaches of our oceans. On the other hand, these same robots are not easily accessible or transferable to many practical tasks, including fishery management, infrastructure maintenance, disaster response, site conservation, and ecological surveys. There is a growing need for robots …

Poster, Performed: Understanding Public Opinions Of Authorship In Generative Artificial Intelligence Models Via Analogy, Wylie Z. Kasai

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Over the last decade, generative artificial intelligence models have advanced significantly and provided the public with several tools to create new works of art. However, the true authorship of these works has been debated due to their training on web-scraped data. Serving as an analogy to these larger models, Poster, Performed is an interactive artificial intelligence exhibition project that uses image assets submitted by the public to create poster compositions with custom image processing algorithms. During the course of a four-day exhibition, visitors were asked to identify the exhibition’s primary artist from five options: (1) participants who submitted image assets, …

(Meta-)Physical Artworks: Digital Augmentation In Art Observation, Macy A. Toppan

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Augmented art— the subgenre of art that incorporates physical and digital artwork— is a rapidly growing field driven by advancing technology and a new generation for whom that tech is a given. Yet the presence of media like augmented and virtual reality in exhibition remains a controversial subject. Rather than focusing on the many theoretical debates about whether digital pieces can qualify as "good" art, we study it in practice through the eyes of the casual art observer. This paper highlights the audience in a within-participant study that asked viewers to take in a physical sculpture intentionally built with virtual …

Consistent Monte Carlo Methods For Non-Linear Applications In Light Transport, Zackary T. Misso

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

The study of light transport focuses on describing the propagation of light from emitters to sensors through accurately describing the interactions light can undergo with everything in between. Physically-based rendering is the process of applying the laws of light transport to formulate practical algorithms which simulate the flow of light for the purpose of synthesizing images of virtual environments.

Unfortunately, there are very few interesting scene configurations which can be computed analytically. Instead, modern solutions predominantly rely on Monte Carlo integration to stochastically estimate the transfer of light since the process is both unbiased and consistent. Meaning, it is expected …

Random Walk Methods For Geometry Representation Agnostic Transport, Dario R. Seyb

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

In computer graphics, we use geometry representations to model a wide range of virtual scenes—from the fantastical worlds shown in animated movies to intricate mechanical parts.
These representations provide the context for transport problems—light transport is used to produce images of virtual scenes and diffusive transport to simulate distributions of quantities like heat.

There are many types of representations each with their own advantages.
For example, explicit ones make it easy to directly manipulate surfaces, while implicit representations allow for intuitive modeling by non-technical users and straightforward integration into machine learning systems.
Unfortunately, many algorithms that work on these digital …

Triple Helix: Ai-Artist-Audience Collaboration In A Performative Art Experience, Xuedan Zou

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Imagine an art exhibition that morphs its content according to the audience’s experience like a chameleon, reflecting the audience’s mind and culture and turning the artist’s exhibition into the viewer’s. But when the viewers leave, the work fades back to the creator’s original work and waits for the next audience. In this project, my team introduced an interactive exhibition called "Triple Helix," where audience members were provided the opportunity to alter the artworks created by the artist, thus imbuing them with their own perspectives. This interactive exhibition was held at three physical-locations and online, and a comprehensive user study was …

Anatoview: Using Interactive 3d Visualizations With Augmented Reality Support For Laypersons’ Medical Education In Informed Consent Processes, Michelle Chen

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

AnatoView is an interactive multimedia educational application that visualizes medical procedures in three-dimensional (3D), augmented reality (AR) space. By providing visual and spatial information of medical procedures, AnatoView acts as a learning supplement for laypersons/patients in informed consent (IC) processes — wherein instructional content is traditionally limited to purely spoken explanations that lead to poor patient comprehension. We design a mixed study and conduct a randomized, controlled trial with 15 laypersons as participants: administering a traditional IC process to a control group, and an IC process supplemented by the use of AnatoView to experimental groups. As a primary outcome, medical …

Expressive Marks: Art In The Age Of Augmented Reality, Carson G. Levine

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Augmented reality (AR) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) introduce new considerations for the long-standing debate of what it means for digital art to be “real.” However, the ability to create AR experiences is limited to those who are technically skilled or who can afford to consult someone else. This paper addresses the need for an accessible tool that enables artists of all technical backgrounds to expressively create marks in AR. The solution includes a mobile application called CrayonAR. The system was designed to be modular, minimal, and physically engaging, and was developed in Unity using ARFoundation and Firebase Storage and Realtime …

Sprout: Using A Garden Metaphor To Visualize And Support Customizable And Collaborative Health Tracking, Pape Sow Traoré

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Self-tracking tools have become increasingly popular, especially with the advent of wearable technology and smartphone applications. However, traditional tracking tools often display data in a quantitative format that can be overwhelming and cause users to abandon their tracking efforts. Additionally, these tools typically provide a generic user experience and are designed from a single-user perspective, lacking external support. To overcome these limitations, we develop Sprout, a mobile data-tracking application that offers a more qualitative, customizable, and collaborative experience for health monitoring and management. Sprout uses a garden metaphor to visually represent health information and allows users to tailor their …

An Interactive System For Generating Music From Moving Images, Hanlin Wang

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Moving images contain a wealth of information pertaining to motion. Motivated by the interconnectedness of music and movement, we present a framework for transforming the kinetic qualities of moving images into music. We developed an interactive software system that takes video as input and maps its motion attributes into the musical dimension based on perceptually grounded principles. The system combines existing sonification frameworks with theories and techniques of generative music. To evaluate the system, we conducted a two-part experiment. First, we asked participants to make judgements on video-audio correspondence from clips generated by the system. Second, we asked participants to …

Simulating Incompressible Thin-Film Fluid With A Moving Eulerian-Lagrangian Particle Method, Yitong Deng

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

In this thesis, we introduce a Moving Eulerian-Lagrangian Particle (MELP) method, a mesh-free method to simulate incompressible thin-film fluid systems: soap bubbles, bubble clusters, and foams. The realistic simulation of such systems depends upon the successful treatment of three aspects: (1) the soap film's deformation due to the tendency to minimize the surface energy, giving rise to the bouncy characteristics of soap bubbles, (2) the tangential fluid flow on the thin film, causing the thickness to vary spatially, which in conjunction with thin-film interference creates evolving and highly sophisticated iridescent color patterns, (3) the topological changes due to collision, separation, …

Designing Narrative-Based Interfaces For Collective Action: A Case Study Using Amazon, Climate Change, And Consumer Behavior, Catherine Parnell

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

Climate change is the most pressing issue facing future generations. Amongst expanses of the population there is a lack of collective action on environmental issues, as there is a large gap between awareness and behavior change. This study suggests persuasive design that utilizes a narrative framing as a solution to reduce barriers to engaging in issues of collective action. Through extensive need-finding studies to understand target users, this thesis uses online-shopping via Amazon as a context for arguing that narrative can support actionable change in behavior. The technical artifact resulting from this research is a developed chrome extension and web …

A Bidirectional Formulation For Walk On Spheres, Yang Qi

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Poisson’s equations and Laplace’s equations are important linear partial differential equations (PDEs)
widely used in many applications. Conventional methods for solving PDEs numerically often need to
discretize the space first, making them less efficient for complex shapes. The random walk on spheres
method (WoS) is a grid-free Monte-Carlo method for solving PDEs that does not need to discrete the
space. We draw analogies between WoS and classical rendering algorithms, and find that the WoS
algorithm is conceptually identical to forward path tracing.
We show that solving the Poisson’s equation is equivalent to solving the Green’s function for every
pair of …

Automated Filament Inking For Multi-Color Fff 3d Printing, Eammon Littler

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

We propose a novel system for low-cost multi-color Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) 3D printing, allowing for the creation of customizable colored filament using a pre-processing approach. We developed an open-source device to automatically ink filament using permanent markers. Our device can be built using 3D printed parts and off-the-shelf electronics. An accompanying web-based interface allows users to view GCODE toolpaths for a multi-color print and quickly generate filament color profiles. Taking a pre-processing approach makes this system compatible with the majority of desktop 3D printers on the market, as the processed filament behaves no differently from conventional filaments. Furthermore, inked …

Temporally Sliced Photon Primitives For Volumetric Time-Of-Flight Rendering, Yang Liu

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Traditional steady-state rendering assumes that the light transport has already reached equilibrium. In contrast, time-of-flight rendering removes this assumption and recovers the pattern of light at extremely high temporal resolutions. This novel rendering modality not only provides a way to visualize the propagation of light, but can also empower the advances in time-of-flight imaging and its corresponding applications.

Building on previous work in steady-state volumetric rendering, this thesis introduces a novel framework for deriving new Monte Carlo estimators for solving the time-of-flight rendering problem in participating media. Conceptually, our method starts with any steady-state photon primitive, like a photon plane …

Correlations And Reuse For Fast And Accurate Physically Based Light Transport, Benedikt Bitterli

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Light transport is the study of the transfer of light between emitters, surfaces, media and sensors. Fast simulations of light transport play a pivotal role in photo-realistic image synthesis, and find many applications today, including predictive manufacturing, machine learning, scientific visualization and the movie industry. In order to accurately reproduce the appearance of real scenes, light transport must closely approximate the physical laws governing the flow of light. Physically based rendering is a set of principles for codifying these laws into a mathematical model, and is the predominant rendering methodology today.

The representational power of this model is limited to …