Rendering Techniques '97: Proceedings of the Eurographics Workshop in St. Etienne, France, June 16-18, 1997

The book contains the proceedings of the 8th Eurographics Rendering Workshop, which took place from 16th to 18th June, 1997, in Saint Etienne, France. After a series of seven successful events the workshop is now well established as the major international forum in the field of rendering and illumination techniques. It brought together the experts of this field. Their recent research results are compiled in this proceedings together with many color images that demonstrate new ideas and techniques. This year we received a total of 63 submissions of which 28 were selected for the workshop after a period of careful reviewing and evaluation by the 27 mem­ bers of the international program committee. The quality of the submissions was again very high and, unfortunately, many interesting papers had to be rejected. In addition to regular papers the program also contains two invited lectures by Shenchang Eric Chen (Live Picture) and Per Christensen (Mental Images). The papers in this proceedings contain new research results in the areas of Finite-Element and Monte-Carlo illumination algorithms, image-based render­ ing, outdoor and natural illumination, error metrics, perception, texture and color handling, data acquisition for rendering, and efficient use of hardware. While some contributions report results from more efficient or elegant algo­ rithms, others pursue new and experimental approaches to find better solutions to the open problems in rendering.