Functions of two variables can be visualized in many ways: heat maps in 2D, contour curves in 2D, wireframes in 3D, surfaces in 3D. We begin by defining a function of two variables, building an array ...

So first his system renders a 3D reconstruction of the 2D image in very low resolution. You can still get a lot from that — for example, that the outer third of the whole volume appears to be empty.

This allowed them to precisely control how light is reflected, so that a 2D surface reflects light just as a 3D object would. Borrowing a technique from 3D computer graphics called Normal Mapping, ...