Viewing progress in non-photorealistic rendering through Heinlein's lens

Abstract

The field of non-photorealistic rendering is reaching a mature state. In its infancy, researchers explored the mimicry of methods and tools used by traditional artists to generate works of art, through techniques like watercolor or oil painting simulations. As the field has moved past mimicry, ideas from artists and artistic techniques have been adapted and altered for performance in the media of computer graphics, creating algorithmic aesthetics such as generative art or the automatic composition of objects in a scene, as well as abstraction in rendering and geometry. With these two initial stages of non-photorealistic rendering well established, the field must find new territory to cover. In this paper, we provide a high level overview of the past and current state of non-photorealistic rendering and call to arms the community to create the areas of research that make computation of non-photorealistic rendering generate never before realized results.