CSS 552: Final Project

 

Due Times: Refer to our course web-site.

 

Objective

Based on everything we have learned about image synthesis in class, you will identify problem(s) in our rendering system, research existing solutions to the problem, identify and adapt a solution, implement the solution, and demonstrate your results.

 

There are five components to the final project:

1.       Project Proposal (1%): refer to due date on course website (bring print out to class).

2.       Research Presentation (7%): refer to due date on course website in class.

3.       Final Project Demo (5%): on the final’s day, in class.

4.       Final Project Report (2%): due on the final’s day, this is an electronic submission as part of your final project!!

5.       Final Project Correctness (5%): submit electronically.

 

In the following, we will first discuss approaches to identify “problems” or “topics” for your final project, follow by project groups, and then, finally, detailed descriptions of each of the above five components.

 

Project Topics:

One approach to identifying final project topic areas is by evaluating our MP system framework:

 

1.       Inadequacy in our current system: image quality and/or efficiency.

a.       Adaptive super sampling for primary rays and multipixel filtering for re-construction

b.       Acceleration structure: bounding box (e.g., bounding spheres or boxes), or spatial sub-division (e.g., Kd-tree)

c.        More complete interactive View support (warning: needs to work with XNA)

d.       More complete/effective interactive debugging support (any ideas? Warning: needs to work with XNA)

 

2.       Missing functionality in our current system:

a.       Support for general mesh object (should work with ray acceleration group!)

b.       Support for texture filtering (e.g., Mipmap)

c.        Support for volumetric primitives (e.g., volumetric fog like cone fog for street lamps)

d.       Support for environmental map, different texture types (marble, wood, cloud, etc.)

e.        More interesting shading/illumination/material models

f.        Other interesting effects (e.g., lens flare, Bloom, lens focus effect, motion blur, smoke, caustics, etc.): be careful, existing models of some of the effects are highly mathematical and may be difficult to understand.

 

Alternatively, you may want to think about doing something tangential to what we have been doing in class, for example:

·         Implementing a compositor to allow the compositing of graphically rendered objects rendered by our ray tracer.

·         Think about 3D view specification, think about you using your camera taking a photograph, think about how you can combine a photograph you have taken with graphical objects you have rendered into the same image while having the photograph being reflected in the 3D rendered object!

 

 

GROUP WORK: You should form groups of 2. You are highly discouraged from working alone, but you can if you insist. You will not receive any extra credit for working alone. In the contrary, single-person projects are expected to have similar quality. Your final projects into three tiers according to:

§  Technical difficulties

§  Solution correctness, and

§  Implementation completeness

All projects will receive grade according to the tiers that they are classified in.

 

 

 

Project Proposal:

Describe your topic area, you must include the followings:

1.       Describe the topic of your choice.

2.       Include at least 3 references you have consulted and will consult.

3.       Discuss what you believe to be the problem and if at all possible, some speculation at what the solution would be.

Your proposal should not be more than 3 pages.

 

 

 

Research Presentation:

Notice this presentation is a significant portion of your grade. Basically, your group will be in-charged with the responsibility of presenting/teaching your choice of topic to the class. You will be the teacher of this topic! Here are some details:

·         Your research presentation must be a 20 minute lecture with at least 15 slide power point slides that include:

·         Problem statement: what is/are the problem(s) you are trying to solve

·         Solution research: what are some of the existing solutions to your problem(s)

·         Choice of solution and implementation strategy: what is/are your choice of solution and your plans to implement the solution

·         Risk evaluation: describe what are the potential problems to your implementation strategy

·         Your peers will evaluate your presentation based on this evaluation form.

·         Notice: 3% of your course grade will be based on your peers’ evaluation of your research presentation!

·         Warning: As an evaluator, if your grade differs from mine by too much (either too high to too low), I will contact you and ask you to justify the grades you give to your peers.

 

After your research presentation, you will send me:

·         (1%) Exercise and Quiz questions for the class: You will send me one exercise and one quiz question that are design for the class. These questions should be based on concepts and not simple facts. If the class understood your presentation, then they should be able to answer the questions. Please send me your solution to your questions also, such that, at least I know what you think the solutions should be. Your exercise and quiz questions will be graded according to:

·         The questions are based on concepts pertaining to your topic of choice and not based on simple facts

·         The solution you provide is correct and complete.

·         (1%) Grading sheet for your final project: you will propose to me how your final project should be graded, how much percentage should be given to the correctness of which functionality. Your “grading sheet” will be graded according to:

·         you correctly identify challenging functionality to be implemented

·         you correctly distribute percentage according to difficulties of implementation

 

 

 

Final Project Demo:

Each group will have 3 to 5 powerpoint slides with 10 minutes to

1.       Remind the class of your problem

2.       Describe your implementation

3.       Demonstrate your results, if applicable, with before/after image comparisons

This is the evaluation form we will use.

 

 

 

Final Project Report: Electronic submission with your final project source code!

This should be a 1-page html page stating:

1.       Your problem

2.       Reference(s) to your solution

3.       Sample results (if appropriate with before/after image comparisons)

This must be a html page where I can cut/page to create a class demo page!!

 

Final Project Correctness:

Finally, I will test run your application and grade it based on the grade sheet you have submitted as part of your research presentation.

 

 

Please e-submit all your work, including documentations (proposals and final reports). This is so that I can post your work for future students to look at. Documentations must be in pdf format.

 

Your final project will count for 20% towards your final grade for this class.