OBJECTIVE/DESCRIPTION:

Purpose:

The objective of this course is to study the state of the art in rendering 3D images over the web. The course will discuss contemporary client-server technologies on the web, nascent techniques for scalable vector graphics, and will investigate replacements for Quicktime-VR using methods that use scalable techniques.

Course Description and Goals:

Quicktime VR is now well-established as a method for immersion in a virtual environment over a web browser. Quicktime VR consists of techniques both to capture a virtual world as well as techniques for representing scenes and for delivery to the user, who is provided with navigation controls.

The smallest element in a Quicktime VR system is a pixel, or a sample of a color and depth in space. Such a representation of a virtual world has the serious drawbacks that the user cannot magnify the image beyond a predetermined resolution and that the data transferred often far exceed those needed for rendering.

We shall investigate how scalable vector images represented using a planar graph embedded on the surface of a sphere may be a superior method for scene representation and navigation. It will remain desirable to deliver to the client only salient portions of the planar graph, which will be investigated using level-of-detail graph simplification.

Course Plan:

The final objective of delivering scalable 3D graphics over the web will be reached by incrementally building an experimental system during the term. The objective of the assignments is to build such a system.

GRADING:

TEXTBOOK and REFERENCES:

• Nef Polyhedra and BSP trees
1. M. Olano and T. Greer, Triangle Scan Conversion Using 2D Homogeneous Coordinates, Siggraph/Eurographics Workshop on Graphics Hardware, pp. 89--96, 1997. pdf
2. A. Lerner and D. Cohen-Or and Y. Chrysanthou, Breaking the Walls: Scene Partitioning and Portal Creation, Pacific Graphics 2003. pdf
3. Naylor, Constructing Good Partitioning Trees, Graphics Interface 1996. pdf
4. S. Ar, G. Montag, A. Tal, Deferred, Self-Organizing BSP Trees, 2002. pdf
5. C. Wiley et al., Multiresolution BSP Trees Applied to Terrains, Transparency, and General Objects, Graphics Interface 1997. pdf
6. M. Seel, Planar Nef Polyhedra and Generic Higher-Dimensional Geometry, Universitaet des Saarlandes, August 2001. pdf
• Graphics queries over the web -- XML
1. G. Taentzer, Towards Common Exchange Formats for Graphs and Graph Transformation Systems, Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 44, num. 4, 2001. pdf
2. F. Bry and S. Schaffert, Towards a Declarative Query and Transformation Language for XML and Semistructured Data: Simulation Unification, Proceedings of the Intl. Conf. on Logic Programming (ICLP02), LNCS 2401, Springer-Verlag, 2002. pdf
3. G. J. Badros and J. J. Tirtowidjojo and K. Marriott and B. Meyer and W. Portnoy and A. Borning, A constraint extension to scalable vector graphics, World Wide Web, pp. 489-498, 2001. pdf
4. J. van Ossenbruggen and J. Geurts and L. Rutledge and L. Hardman, Towards a multimedia formatting vocabulary, WWW 2003. pdf
5. H. C. Techbyte, Displaying Linear Programs and Their Solutions With XML and SVG. Australasian Symposium on Information Visualization, Christchurch, 2004. pdf
6. J. Mendling, A Survey on Design Criteria for Interchange Formats. pdf
7. S. Battiato and G. Gallo and G. Messina, SVG Rendering of Real Images Using Data Dependent Triangulation, Spring Conference on Computer Graphics, Proceedings of the 20th spring conference on Computer graphics, pp. 185--192, 2004. html
8. D. Duce and I. Herman and B. Hopgood, Web 2D Graphics File Formats, Computer Graphics Forum, vol. 21, num. 1, 2002. pdf
9. Thomas Brinkhoff, A Portable SVG-Viewer on Mobile Devices Supporting Geographic Applications. Proceedings of the 6th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science, pp. 87-96, 2003. pdf
10. I. Zaslavsky, A New Technology for Interactive Online Mapping with Vector Markup and XML, Cartographic Perspectives, # 37 (Fall 2000), pp. 65-77, 2000. pdf
• Javascript
1. David Betz, JavaScript Graphics Development, 07/16/2005 html
2. Walter Zorn, High Performance JavaScript Vector Graphics Library html
3. Javascript 3D (a tutorial) html
4. NASA, Javascript 3D Data Map Tool html
5. Javascript raytraycer html
6. Canvascape 3D Walker html
7. WDVL: 3D graphics for the WWW html
8. Web3D Consortium html
9. 3D Graphics Information Center html
10. Ajax3D html