Point-Based Graphics

The most fundamental and pioneering technical contributions of Prof. Gross relate to the scientific understanding of point samples as primitives for computer graphics. For more than 10 years he has pursued research on point primitives and investigated the utility of point samples for various graphics computations, such as the representation of 3D objects, geometric modeling, geometry processing, filtering, animation, and rendering. This new way of graphics representation challenges the classical graphics pipelines that mostly focus on triangles. In a sequence of highly cited scientific publications on this subject, Gross and his collaborators have demonstrated that many graphics operations can by accomplished very efficiently on point sampled representations. Prof. Gross continues to drive research in this field and recent examples of his work include a dedicated graphics architecture based on points or mathematical methods for the continuous representation of point clouds. Further information as well as the full list of his publications on points can be found at graphics.ethz.ch/points and the results of 10 years of research in this field are summarized in a published book (M. Gross, H.-P. Pfister (Eds.): Point-Based Graphics, Morgan-Kaufmann, 2007). Further courses and tutorials on this subject evidence his expertise. His research on point-based graphics also led to the creation of PointShop3D, an open source software that has been used by researchers worldwide.