Difference between revisions of "Tribute to Bill"
| Line 8: | Line 8: | ||
in later years contributing an extensive compendium of examples and code. He was also a driving force in converting the original book into Markdown and LaTeX (with Andrew Maclean and other community members). Bill could always be counted on to provide praise | in later years contributing an extensive compendium of examples and code. He was also a driving force in converting the original book into Markdown and LaTeX (with Andrew Maclean and other community members). Bill could always be counted on to provide praise | ||
and nag scofflaws who were slow to add software tests, or correct errors on the VTK dashboard. | and nag scofflaws who were slow to add software tests, or correct errors on the VTK dashboard. | ||
| + | |||
| + | === David Banks === | ||
| + | I met Bill when he visited UNC in the early 1990s. He gave a talk | ||
| + | about Marching Cubes and Dividing Cubes, and was tremendously affable | ||
| + | throughout his visit. Although his work in visualizing 3D MRI was | ||
| + | interesting, I didn't consider it particularly relevant to my own | ||
| + | efforts to display and manipulate mathematical surfaces in R4. More | ||
| + | than a year passed before I realized that surfaces in R4 arise as | ||
| + | level sets (Andrew Hanson at Indiana was simultaneously thnking along | ||
| + | the same lines). I worked with Chris Weigle to develop a 4-dimensional | ||
| + | version [1] of Marching Cubes, and then worked with Kevin Beason to | ||
| + | compute global illumination on heightfields as a pre-process [2] | ||
| + | before running Marching Cubes. Kevin demonstrated the results on 3D | ||
| + | MRI, bringing the work full-circle back to Bill's original | ||
| + | application-domain. Paul Stockmeyer (at William and Mary) visited my | ||
| + | lab to work out the group-theory details underpinning Marching Cubes | ||
| + | and its variants [3]. I ended up being very influenced by Bill and his | ||
| + | informal presentation at UNC Graphics Lunch. It was an honor to meet | ||
| + | him and discover his work. | ||
| + | |||
| + | [1] Weigle, Chris, and David C. Banks. "Complex-valued contour | ||
| + | meshing." In Proceedings of Seventh Annual IEEE Visualization'96, pp. | ||
| + | 173-180. IEEE, 1996. | ||
| + | |||
| + | [2] Banks, David C., and Kevin Beason. "Decoupling illumination from | ||
| + | isosurface generation using 4D light transport." IEEE transactions on | ||
| + | visualization and computer graphics 15, no. 6 (2009): 1595-1602. | ||
| + | |||
| + | [3] Banks, David C., Stephen A. Linton, and Paul K. Stockmeyer. | ||
| + | "Counting cases in substitope algorithms." IEEE Transactions on | ||
| + | Visualization and Computer Graphics 10, no. 4 (2004): 371-384. | ||
Revision as of 08:33, 6 January 2020
Bill was a major influence in the areas of computer graphics, visualization, medical computing, and software process. He was loved by many throughout these communities. Here we have captured some of the many tributes contributed by friends and family.
Obituary
Bill grew up near Troy, NY where this local obituary was posted.
VTK Discourse List
Bill was a significant contributor to the VTK software. He was one of the three original authors of the Visualization Toolkit textbook including the companion software. Bill contributed to VTK until the last weeks of his life, in later years contributing an extensive compendium of examples and code. He was also a driving force in converting the original book into Markdown and LaTeX (with Andrew Maclean and other community members). Bill could always be counted on to provide praise and nag scofflaws who were slow to add software tests, or correct errors on the VTK dashboard.
David Banks
I met Bill when he visited UNC in the early 1990s. He gave a talk about Marching Cubes and Dividing Cubes, and was tremendously affable throughout his visit. Although his work in visualizing 3D MRI was interesting, I didn't consider it particularly relevant to my own efforts to display and manipulate mathematical surfaces in R4. More than a year passed before I realized that surfaces in R4 arise as level sets (Andrew Hanson at Indiana was simultaneously thnking along the same lines). I worked with Chris Weigle to develop a 4-dimensional version [1] of Marching Cubes, and then worked with Kevin Beason to compute global illumination on heightfields as a pre-process [2] before running Marching Cubes. Kevin demonstrated the results on 3D MRI, bringing the work full-circle back to Bill's original application-domain. Paul Stockmeyer (at William and Mary) visited my lab to work out the group-theory details underpinning Marching Cubes and its variants [3]. I ended up being very influenced by Bill and his informal presentation at UNC Graphics Lunch. It was an honor to meet him and discover his work.
[1] Weigle, Chris, and David C. Banks. "Complex-valued contour meshing." In Proceedings of Seventh Annual IEEE Visualization'96, pp. 173-180. IEEE, 1996.
[2] Banks, David C., and Kevin Beason. "Decoupling illumination from isosurface generation using 4D light transport." IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics 15, no. 6 (2009): 1595-1602.
[3] Banks, David C., Stephen A. Linton, and Paul K. Stockmeyer. "Counting cases in substitope algorithms." IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 10, no. 4 (2004): 371-384.
