CSCE 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
September
22, 11:10 a.m. – Project proposal
October 22, 11:10 a.m. – First
update report
November 12, 11:10 a.m. – Second update report
December 8, 11:10 a.m. – First Set of Oral Presentations
December 11, 3:00 p.m. – Second Set of Oral Presentations; Final Report Due
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.
This is meant to be open-ended, and allow you to pursue
almost any related topic.
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 exact same thing you are being paid for doing as a GAR. It can be
really close, though – e.g. if your GAR work is focused on modeling neurons,
you could try to develop a new geometric representation for neuron geometry, or
a model of one neuron part not currently modeled. 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)
- 5%
Final Oral Presentation
- 65%
Quality of Work
Reports
All reports will be submitted via web pages. Before the
first report is due, you are to send the URL of a web site that will be used as
your project web page. Your project web page should include links to
each of the reports, and should be up and accessible by the due time. Note that other students will be able to view
your project pages. Your page does not need to contain
more than links to the various reports, but I would encourage you to keep it up
as the semester goes along – in that way the final report will be much easier
to write. Your reports should not be edited after the time they are due, and you should leave them up
afterward. If you need web space to
put your reports on, let me know well in advance, and I should be able to get
you some course web space.
Four 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 the equivalent 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 progress report should be the equivalent of no more
than about 3 printed pages, and 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
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 also a key part of my evaluation of
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. In all cases, your final project report
should be made available via a link on your web page (or the web page itself
can be the report).
You should prepare your report as an HTML document – I would
prefer not to have a .doc, .pdf, etc. file – use an HTML document that allows you to
include relevant links to supporting information or code, pictures, video
clips, etc. For whatever you submit, please make sure
that no special plugins or libraries are needed to
view your report.
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?
Final Oral Presentation
You will present
your work in an oral presentation. The time
for this is anticipated to be the time
scheduled for the final exam, though a different time
might be selected with consensus of the class. The final presentations should be about 15
minutes each. More details on specific time and location will be given during the semester.
Like the reports,
grading for the presentation will be on the quality of the presentation itself
(independent of the content). However, along with the final report, the
presentation will be the primary source used to provide the information used to
determine the final grade. It is important to do a good job with the presentation
(and the final report) so that your “quality” grade will be reflective of the
work you have done.
Ideas for Project Topics
The following page 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
Proceedings of ACM Symposium on Solid and Physical Modeling
Proceedings of Symposium on Geometry Processing
Proceedings of Shape Modeling and Applications
Proceedings of SIGGRAPH
Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia
Proceedings of Eurographics
Proceedings of Pacific Graphics
Proceedings of IEEE Visualization
ACM Transactions on Graphics
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation
International Journal of Computational Geometry and
Applications
Journal of Computing and Information Sciences in Engineering
The Visual Computer
Graphical Models
Here are a few slightly more specific project ideas. Again, you
are encouraged to choose a topic that will fit well with your graduate research
work.
- Modeling
deformations or changes in objects’ geometry/topology
- From
natural physical processes (e.g. fracture, pressure, wind/water, etc.)
- In
response to external forces (user-defined or collision-defined)
- Preserving
details
- 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, fracture patterns)
- Modeling
biological structures
- Conversion
between various modeling paradigms
- Segmentation
of objects from volume data
- Medial
axis extraction
- Standards
for data transfer
- Storing
features and functionality with 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)
- Rendering
volumetric information
- Generation
of grids or other structures to support computation across geometric
objects
- Reconstructing
models from scanned or sampled data
- User
Interface issues for model creation/modification
- Procedural
model generation
- Mapping/parameterizing surfaces