Preface

This special issue contains 38 papers presented at Pacific Graphics 2005, the Thirteenth Pacific Conference on Computer Graphics and Applications, held in Macao, China from 12–14 October 2005. Previous Pacific Graphics conferences were held in Seoul, Beijing, Taipei, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Canmore. Although Pacific Graphics has a Pacific Rim focus, it consistently attracts researchers from around the world. Pacific Graphics 2005 received a staggering 267 submissions, which were reviewed by 279 reviewers, including 133 Program Committee members. This process resulted in the 38 papers contained in this special issue, meaning that just one of every seven submissions was accepted, based on three or four technical reviews per paper. In addition, this issue contains two invited papers from leading graphics authorities: Prof. Hans-Peter Seidel of the Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, Saarbrucken and Prof. Nadia Thalmann of the University of Geneva. The themes of the papers cover all areas of computer graphics, sorted by their topics as follows: • Figure modeling and animation • Rendering techniques and global illumination • Image-based techniques • Digital geometry processing and meshes • Physically based simulation • Volume graphics and medical image processing • Textures • Non-photorealistic rendering • Geometric computing and processing