Rendering Pen-drawings of 3D scenes on networked processors

The subject of the paper is the computer-based rendering of bi-tonal images of 3D scenes looking alike pen-and-ink drawings generated manually. Traditional pen drawings consist of thousands of pen-strokes, implying their generation can be a time consuming process. Especially when animated sequences of this kind of drawings are to be generated, manual techniques can become really time-consuming and cumbersome. Hence, computer-generated renderings of these types of images are well-worth investigating. THe paper refers to related work in this field and explains the various principles and techniques utilized in our work on this topic. Various aspects of tone and texture on the pen-and-ink drawings as well as the relevant aspects of the bi-tonal ´shadiing´-patterns are described. The various algorithms of the hybrid 2D/3D rendering process are given and commented. The realization of a networked rendering process - for single images as well as for animated sequences- is discussed. The influence of various parameters on the rendering process (resolution, use of compression, number of processors involved in the calculations) are elucidated. Results, conclusions and directions of future research are given.