Paul Debevec

Paul Ernest Debevec is a researcher in computer graphics at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies.

Debevec's more recent research has included methods for recording real-world illumination for use in computer graphics; a number of novel inventions for recording ambient and incident light have resulted from the work of Debevec and his team, including the light stage, of which five or more versions have been constructed, each an evolutionary improvement over the previous.

In addition Debevec and his team produced several short films that have premiered at SIGGRAPH's annual Electronic Theater, including Fiat Lux (1999) and The Parthenon (2004).

Debevec, along with Tim Hawkins, John Monos and Mark Sagar, was awarded a 2010 Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the design and engineering of the Light Stage capture devices and the image-based facial rendering system developed for character relighting in motion pictures.

[5] In 2024 Debevec and Corridor Digital recreated the sodium vapor process, which had fallen out of use due to the difficulty in creating the necessary beam splitter.