Marc Levoy
| Marc Levoy | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born |
1953 New York City |
| Residence | United States |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Computer Graphics, Computer Vision |
| Institutions | Stanford University |
| Alma mater |
Cornell University University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| Known for |
Volume rendering Light fields 3D scanning Stanford Bunny |
| Notable awards | Siggraph Computer Graphics Achievement Award (1996) |
Marc Levoy is a computer graphics researcher and Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He is noted for pioneering work in volume rendering.
Levoy first studied computer graphics as an architecture student under Donald P. Greenberg at Cornell University. He received his B.Arch. in 1976 and M.S. in Architecture in 1978. He developed a 2D computer animation system as part of his studies, receiving the Charles Goodwin Sands Memorial Medal for this work. Greenberg and he suggested to Disney that they use computer graphics in producing animated films, but the idea was rejected by several of the Nine Old Men who were still active. Following this, they were able to convince Hanna-Barbera Productions to use their system for television animation. Despite initial opposition by animators, the system was successful in reducing labor costs and helping to save the company, and was used until 1996.[1] Levoy worked as director of the Hanna-Barbera Animation Laboratory from 1980 to 1983.
He then did graduate study in computer science under Henry Fuchs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and received his Ph.D. in 1989. While there, he published several important papers in the field of volume rendering, developing new algorithms (such as volume ray tracing), improving efficiency, and demonstrating applications of the technique.[2]
He joined the faculty of Stanford's Computer Science Department in 1990. In 1991, he received the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award. In 1994, he co-created the Stanford Bunny, which has become an icon of computer graphics. In 1996, he and Pat Hanrahan coauthored the paper, "Light Field Rendering," which forms the basis behind many image-based rendering techniques in modern-day computer graphics. In the 2000s, his lab has worked on applications of light fields, developing technologies such as a light-field camera and light-field microscope.
For his pioneering work in volume rendering, Levoy was the recipient of the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award in 1996. In 2007 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Notable publications
- Marc Levoy (May 1988). "Display of Surfaces from Volume Data". IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 8 (3).
- Philippe Lacroute and Marc Levoy. "Fast Volume Rendering Using a Shear-Warp Factorization of the Viewing Transformation". Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 1994.
- Brian Curless and Marc Levoy. "A Volumetric Method for Building Complex Models from Range Images". Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 1996.
- Marc Levoy and Pat Hanrahan. "Light Field Rendering". Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 1996.
- Marc Levoy, Kari Pulli, Brian Curless, Szymon Rusinkiewicz, David Koller, Lucas Pereira, Matt Ginzton, Sean Anderson, James Davis, Jeremy Ginsberg, Jonathan Shade, and Duane Fulk. "The Digital Michelangelo Project: 3D scanning of large statues". Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2000.