UMBC researchers develop better techniques to
render video game characters with realistic skin

Researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) have developed a new solution to render an essential detail in many video games: human skin. The research is published in the Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques [1]. Marc Olano, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering at UMBC, led this research alongside Tiantian Xie, Ph.D. ’22, computer science. Xie, under the guidance of Olano, has worked with researchers Brian Karis and Krzysztof Narkowicz at the gaming company Epic Games, developing a keen understanding of gamers’ user experience, including the precise level of realism and detail that players are looking for in human characters.

Game developers seek to create visuals that are as realistic as possible without stepping into the “uncanny valley.” This term describes when the graphics in a game attempt to portray a human as closely as possible, and gets close to mimicking real life, but not quite close enough, in a way users find disturbing. This creates an unpleasant feeling in users that might distract from their enjoyment of the game.

In many games, human skin is rendered in such a way that it looks like a plastic object. This plastic look can occur because animators aren’t accounting for subsurface scattering – a key element of how light interacts with a textured 3D surface. Subsurface scattering is animators’ main priority when it comes to transforming skin from looking like plastic to looking truly real.

Olano’s method builds upon research developed by large gaming companies to create realistic depictions of human skin that will also load quickly within a gaming interface. “Our method adds an ability to adaptively estimate how many samples you actually need to get the look that you want without having to do a lot of additional computation to get a smooth image,” explains Olano.

The method minimizes the amount of computation needed to create photo-realistic images. Previous techniques were either not realistic enough, or ran too slowly for use in games, negatively affecting the gaming experience. The new method is based on techniques developed for offline film production rendering. Xie, the first author of the paper, states, “Offline rendering techniques are not suitable for real-time rendering because adding the technique itself in real-time introduces a large overhead. Our technique eliminates this overhead.”

Olano and his team created an algorithm to determine the pixels that would need to be rendered differently than the others due to light gradient change. Their sampling method uses temporal variance to lower the overall number of changes within each frame while still maintaining a realistic depiction of subsurface scattering. Since fewer changes are needed per frame, the method creates an efficient way of rendering realistic skin within the capabilities of today’s computing power.

The algorithm used by Olano’s team is built upon a foundation of research that is known and accessible to game developers. This offers a promising path for the gaming industry to pursue realism while maintaining an awareness of the computational ability of an average gaming system. Developers may be able to begin using this technique soon to create more realistic human figures in games, growing the gaming market even more.

[1] Tiantian Xie, Marc Olano, Brian Karis, and Krzysztof Narkowicz. 2020. Real-time subsurface scattering with single pass variance-guided adaptive importance sampling. Proc. ACM Comput. Graph. Interact. Tech. 3, 1, Article 3 (Apr 2020), 21 pages. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3384536

Adapted from a press release written by Morgan Zepp that appeared in EurikAlert.

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Dr. Vonhoff (Biological Sciences), and his mentee, Steve Park, show how easy it is to apply for an Undergraduate Research Award (URA), even in quarantine.

URAs provide up to $1,500 to undergraduate students to support their research, scholarship, or creative work with a UMBC faculty mentor on an original project. UMBC students of all years and disciplines are invited to apply, as long as they remain enrolled at UMBC long enough to complete the proposed work.

Deadline: May 15, 2020

Applications require a research proposal and mentor statement of support.

Speciality URAs will be awarded to Social Scientists and Entrepreneurs.

See:

ur.umbc.edu/ura

for more details.

Kaitlyn is a junior Social Work major and is a student staff member at the Women’s Center.

Are you feeling isolated? Lonely? Lost in a chaotic world that doesn’t make sense anymore? Me too! At a time where we feel more out of control than ever, video games are something that I know many of us are using to keep us going. I asked some of my friends what games they were playing, and how it’s been helping them cope with the chaos. Everyone agreed that the games they were playing functioned as a distraction, and something that brought them joy. Others felt that it brought a sense of control.

In terms of control, I feel like we’re lacking a lot of that right now during this pandemic. I don’t get to visit people, go out to movies or restaurants, or even just stop by a Yankee Candle to get too many candles (when you think about it, the scented candle industry is hit pretty hard here). In Animal Crossing, I can feel control… I get to decide what I want to do, where I want to go, what flowers I’m going to plant, and even if I want to sell my prized oarfish or give it to the museum. Really, I just want to keep it forever. Regardless of my fish-mongering tendencies, it’s nice to build a world all your own where animals are neighbors and you have no-interest loans. It’s like a lucid daydream in some ways.

-Amelia

Rosie had some more…unique hopes for the games.

If I make my island in animal crossing perfect, then maybe one day I’ll get sucked into my switch and live out the rest of my existence on this island where I can play with cute animals.

-Rosie

Games can also be a great way to connect to friends during a time where a lot of us are feeling isolated.

animal crossing is my heart and soul. i can dress however i want, talk to the cutest little islander characters, and visit my friend’s islands! it helps me stay connected to the people i hold close in my life.

-Scout

While animal crossing is a popular choice during this pandemic, there are some other games that are getting people through too! Kay has been playing a lot of Stardew Valley in recent weeks.

Stardew Valley is a game you can’t rush through. It guides me in being patient and taking time to enjoy the game.You can slowly build relationships with the other characters in Stardew Valley. Every CPU character has their own personality, daily routine, likes and dislikes. Over time you learn more about the townsfolk!

-Kay

Autumn has been playing a lot of old school runescape. Her favorite part? The grind. They also find the game to be a good distraction.

It’s a massive time sink that I can play without thinking about much else.

-Autumn

Not only are video games a fun way to distract yourself from the terrifying reality that we’re facing, they can be really affirming too! In Animal Crossing for example, clothing and hairstyle choices aren’t confined to binary gendered options. You can design your character however you like, and have fun designing your character to be whatever feels best for that day. There are endless possibilities!

In ACNH, they default to they/them pronouns for everyone. That feels really really good.

-Amelia

I’ve been playing a ton of Animal Crossing lately. Hanging out with my cute islanders, listening to the calming music, and decorating the island all bring a little more peace to my life. It’s a strange and scary world right now, and it’s okay to feel every bit of that confusion or grief or fear. And, when all that feeling gets a little too overwhelming, it’s okay to escape for a while into whatever world makes you happy.  

The Esperanza Center is hosting virtual ESOL sessions for community members in the Summer 2020.  This is a great opportunity to stay involved with the community and learn valuable skills while at home!

Participating students can enroll in the Community Service & Learning  Practicum 096 through The Shriver Center! Please see the info below and email elgrose1@umbc.edu to enroll and for more details!

Opportunity info!

We invite you to sign up now to volunteer for our next online adult ESOL session, May 18-June 25 (only training first week). The major change is that you will be paired with one student for the whole 5-week session. Please read on for the details.

Adult ESOL Online May/June Session Details:

Trainings: May 18-21 (Attendance at one online training required for new and returning volunteers)

Session: May 26 – June 25, 2020 (5 weeks)

Schedule:          

Monday, Wednesday 10am-11:30am

Tuesday, Thursday 6:30pm-8:00pm

(Volunteers, choose one or more of these 4 days when you sign up)

Cost to students: $20

Location: Zoom

Technology expectations:

Volunteers must have a computer, stable internet connection, and the ability to use the following features of Zoom during your teaching: share screen, annotate, and chat. If, after the training, you are not fully comfortable with using these features, we invite you to wait until we’re back in person to continue volunteer-teaching. 

Class length:

Classes will be 90 minutes long instead of 1 hour, based on feedback from some students and volunteers.

Please use this link to sign up to volunteer.

CyberCorps SFS Spring Meeting at UMBC

10:00am-2:00pm Friday, 22 May 2020
Open to the public
via: https://umbc.webex.com/meet/sherman

UMBC’s Spring CyberCorps Scholarship for Service meeting will take place from 10 am to 2 pm on Friday, 22 May 2020. It will feature a discussion with Dr. Dan Guernsey (NSA) on Ghidra, Software Reverse Engineering, and Cybersecurity Careers at NSA, presentations by SFS students, and a hands-on Capture the Flag exercise.

10:00-10:30 Student presentations
Scholarship for Service (SFS) students from UMBC, Montgomery College (MC), and Prince George’s Community College (PGCC) will present their results solving IT security problems for their universities, county governments, and local companies. This activity is part of a pioneering program centered at UMBC to extend SFS scholarships to community college students. In January 2020, all SFS scholars at UMBC, PGCC, and MC worked collaboratively to analyze the security of a custom shadow-IT software application to query research grant information

10:30-11:30 Discussion with Dr. Dan Guernsey (NSA)
Learn about Ghidra, software reverse engineering, and cybersecurity careers at NSA. Ghidra is a software reverse engineering framework developed by NSA’s Research Directorate for NSA’s cybersecurity mission. It helps analyze malicious code and malware like viruses, and can give cybersecurity professionals a better understanding of potential vulnerabilities in their networks and systems (GitHub).

11:30-12:30 Lunch and discussion among attendees

12:30-2:00 Hands-on cyber defense exercise
Sharpen your cybersecurity skills by participating in a hands-on Capture the Flag exercise developed by the UMBC Cyber Dawgs and Cyrus Bonyadi, an SFS scholar and a member of the Cyber Dawgs, whose cyberdefense team won first place at the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (MACCDC) in April 2020 and is competing in the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NCCDC).

Participants and organizers

Dr. Dan Guernsey earned the Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of Tulsa. Since 2011, he worked at the Department of Defense as a Computer Scientist and Architectures Researcher. During his studies at Tulsa, Dr. Guernsey contracted with the DoD Office of the Inspector General, the U.S. Secret Service, and local law firms. He performed reverse engineering and authored software analysis tools for product evaluation and digital forensics. His work helped solve criminal cases and helped resolve civil disputes involving software copyrights. Dr. Guernsey is an Adjunct Instructor at UMBC in the graduate Cybersecurity Program.

Host Alan T. Sherman (*protected email*) is a professor of computer science and Director of the UMBC Center for Information Security and Assurance, which center is responsible for UMBC’s designation as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education and Cyber Defense Research.

Richard Forno is a senior lecturer, Director of the UMBC Graduate Cybersecurity Program, and Assistant Director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity.

Casey W. O’Brien is Executive Director and Principal Investigator of the National CyberWatch Center, Prince George’s Community College.

Joe Roundy is the Cybersecurity Program Manager at Montgomery College, Germantown.

Support for this event is provided in part by the National Science Foundation under SFS grant DGE-1753681 and by the Department of Defense under CySP grant H98230-19-1-0308.

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