CPSC 645/VIZA 675 Geometric Modeling

Course Project

A major portion of the grade in this course will be determined by a course project. This describes some of the key information about the course project.

Important Due Dates

Thursday, September 19, 12:45 p.m. – Project proposal

Thursday, October 17, 12:45 p.m. – First update report

Tuesday, November 19, 12:45 p.m. – Second update report

Wednesday, December 18, 10:00 a.m. – Final report

Topic

The choice of topic is up to you. The only specific requirement is that it should relate to modeling and have a strong geometric component. It does not have to directly involve topics that we cover in class. Since you will spend a significant amount of time working on this project, you should choose something both interesting and challenging to you.

Integration with Research: You are strongly encouraged to pick a topic that ties in closely with your research work; however, your topic should not be the same thing you are being paid for doing as a GAR. This project might give you a chance, for example, to initially explore a potential thesis topic. Or, you might use it as a chance to explore some idea you came up with while performing research but haven’t been able to work on.

Originality: Your project does not have to be a completely new idea, but the originality of your work will play a part in your grade. An example of less original work would be implementing a method or algorithm described in a paper. More original work would include merging topics found in several papers, or exploring a completely new topic.

Possible Topics: Attached to this page is a list of possible topics. This list is meant to give you ideas, not to be a comprehensive list of topics. If you are uncertain whether your topic would be appropriate, please check with the instructor.

Grading

• 10% Originality of Work
• 20% Quality of Presentations (proposal, updates, final report – 5% each)
• 70% Quality of Work

Reports

Four written reports will be required. The first will be a project proposal. Two progress reports will be required. You will be expected to have made some progress on your project by each of these dates. A final report will be due at the time scheduled for the final exam in the class. The format of these reports is described below. Please be sure to include all the information asked for below. Grades on the reports will be based on how well you address each of the items asked for – not on the specific accomplishments on the project overall.

Project Proposal

Your project proposal should consist of no more than two printed pages, and should be turned in at the beginning of class on the due date. Your proposal should include the following items:

• Title for project
• Your Name
• Summary – You should summarize the following items:
• Description of Problem – What is it you are trying to solve/address?
• Importance of Problem – Why is this an important/interesting problem?
• Previous Work on Problem – What previous work on this topic are you aware of? You are not expected to have performed a thorough literature search on the topic (this might be part of your proposal), but you should have a basic idea of what’s been done on the problem before.
• Your Proposal – What is it you plan to do?
• Originality – What is new (if anything) about the work you are proposing?
• Relationship to Geometric Modeling (optional) – If it is not obvious how your topic relates to geometric modeling, you should explain it here.
• List of Goals – You should give a list of intermediate and final goals, specifying what you hope to accomplish by each of the following due dates (the two update points and the final point). Your goals should be as specific as possible. You are welcome to include more intermediate goals, as well as additional goals that you might achieve if your work proceeds better than expected.

Project Updates

Each project update should consist of no more than three printed pages, and should be turned in at the beginning of class on the due date. Each progress report should include the following items:

• Your Name and the project Title
• Summary of Work to Date – You should state exactly what work you’ve completed to this point. Summarize any results you’ve achieved, including unexpected complications that have come up. Feel free to include tables or figures if you feel they would help.
• Analysis of Work – You should refer to the intermediate goals listed on your proposal or previous update. State whether these goals have been met. If they have not been met, explain why not.
• Plan for Completion – You should update your original plan, including your intermediate and final goals, to describe how you plan to complete your project on time. If you are on schedule so far, state whether you anticipate remaining on schedule for the rest of the project. If you are behind schedule, describe what you will do to catch up. If you have encountered unexpected difficulties and feel that your overall goals will need to be modified, describe what your new goals will be and justify why you need to change them.

Be honest in your description. The update is primarily meant to help you, and your grade on the report is not related to what you’ve accomplished. If you have accomplished little, I would expect less writing in the summary section and more in the plan section. If you are on schedule, I would expect more in the summary and less in the plan. You should not try to change your project at this point unless you’ve encountered significant unexpected problems with your work to date and have discussed these with the instructor. “I haven’t spent much time on it and don’t think I can finish” is not a valid reason for changing your project at this point!

Final Report

There are three options for submitting your final report. The grade on the report will only be on the quality of the report itself (rather than what you accomplished). Even though this is not a large portion of your project grade, remember that it is the only thing I have to use to evaluate your work. So, it is very important that you clearly and specifically state what you have accomplished – if you did great work but I couldn’t tell, you might receive a low grade overall. Finally, be concise. I do not want to see code listings (except maybe brief sections to demonstrate a point), and I don’t need to know every detail of the process you went through.

Option 1: HTML Project Report

The first option is to prepare your report as an HTML document. You should send me by email the URL at which I can find your report. If you need web space to put this report together, let me know well in advance, and I should be able to get you some course web space. In general, I recommend that you use this option, as it will allow you to more easily include pictures, video clips, links to supporting information or code, etc. For whatever you submit, please make sure that no special plugins or libraries are needed to view your report. You should not make changes to the report after the deadline, although you may make changes up until deadline, even if you submit the URL earlier.

Your final report should be well organized and should contain the following information, though the format and organization is totally up to you:

• Your Name and project Title
• Problem summary – Briefly summarize the problem you are dealing with and why it is important. This is likely to be a modification of your proposal.
• Previous work – You should summarize and reference the relevant previous work in this area which you are aware of or which you consulted. Remember to cite any libraries or utilities you used in creating your program.
• Description of work – Describe the work you performed. Include any major “dead end” paths of research and why they failed, and any major challenges you encountered. Do not go into every detail of everything you’ve done.
• Results – Describe exactly what was achieved. State exactly what you have accomplished, giving concrete information (e.g. by charts, pictures, etc.) about what has been done.
• Analysis of work – You should analyze the work done from the standpoint of how successful you were on the project. You should include the following information:
• New results – What have you accomplished that is new, if anything? If you claim novel contributions, you should have thoroughly researched the previous work on the problem.
• Meeting goals – How well did you meet the original goals you set out? If you did not meet these goals, why not?
• Future work – If you (or someone else) were to continue working in this area, what would be the next steps in both the short and long term? Do you feel that more work on this topic would yield interesting research results?

Option 2: Written Paper

The second option is to turn in a written document. You should turn in document as a .pdf, .ps, or .doc file emailed to me (if it’s too large to email, let me know ahead of time and we’ll ftp or something) by the deadline. The entire report should be self-contained in the paper (i.e. do not include web links – if you need to do so, then just format the report as an HTML document). The content of the document should be similar to that of the HTML description, as described above, though you can emphasize or deemphasize certain parts. In most cases, I would recommend against this option unless it is a far better suited to your results. For example, if the bulk of your project is a literature review, then it might make more sense to use this option as opposed to one of the others. In that case, you might format the review as a standalone document, with the project-specific parts (such as the analysis) as a one-page appendix. Generally, the only reason to use this approach is if the report itself is the primary result of your work, rather than just a report of the results.

Option 3: Journal/Conference Paper

The final option is to prepare your report in the format of a journal or conference submission. That is, you should write the paper as if it were being submitted to a conference or journal (you don’t have to actually submit it), rather than to me. You should submit your report as either a .pdf, .ps, or .doc file by emailing it to me before the deadline.

While this option may allow you to eliminate parts of the format included in option 1 (e.g. meeting goals), many of the same topics will still need to be addressed. Also, although the journal model format might be shorter, it is expected that it will be written in a more precise and compact manner than option 1.

Note that most journals/conferences have limits on the number of pages and guidelines as to the format. You should state in the email that you send the conference/journal format you have followed for formatting/page guidelines. You do not need to follow every minor formatting guideline, but your submission should look and read like a submission to a journal/conference

Ideas for Project Topics

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of topics, but rather to be a source of ideas. To get other ideas, you might consider looking through journals/conference proceedings such as (these are just a few of the publications that might be good sources for ideas):

Computer Aided Design

Computer Aided Geometric Design

ACM Symposium on Solid Modeling

Proceedings of SIGGRAPH

Proceedings of Eurographics

Proceedings of Pacific Graphics

ACM Transactions on Graphics

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics

IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation

Here are a few specific project ideas:

• Highly accurate or robust computations
• Exact intersections of curves/surfaces
• Degeneracy analysis
• Representations and operations with non-manifold data
• Storage/memory analysis of exact representations of objects
• Consistent rounding methods
• Modeling deformations or changes in objects’ geometry/topology
• From natural physical processes (e.g. wind, erosion, etc.)
• In response to external forces (user-defined or collision-defined)
• Modeling of difficult-to-model objects
• Objects with fine geometric detail/detail at many scales
• Objects with high topological complexity
• Things with difficult to define boundaries (e.g. clouds)
• Modeling biological structures
• Conversion between various modeling paradigms
• Segmentation of objects from volume data
• Medial axis extraction
• Standards for data transfer
• Converting point cloud/range data
• Motion of objects
• Envelopes of sweep paths
• Tool path generation
• Determining physical properties (mass, moments of inertia)
• Collision detection
• Motion planning
• Rendering of models
• Faster rendering (generating levels-of-detail, triangle stripping, etc.)
• Exploiting structured data (e.g. terrain meshes)
• User Interface issues for model creation/modification
• Procedural model generation
• Mapping/parameterizing on surfaces