Projects and Interests  (last update: summer'06)

Open Undergraduate or Graduate Projects:

Incremental Modal Analysis on Slowly Changing Shapes.
GOALS:   For a fully tetrahedralized object, determine the vibrational modes of that object.
                 Find out how on can efficiently calculate the changes in these modes, if the shape of the object changes slightly.
 OPEN - TO BE DONE

Escher-like Tilings on Higher-Genus Surfaces
GOALS:   Create an efficient texture mapping module for Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces.
                  Use that module to design and display some intricate Escher-like motifs on a Tetrus surface.
                  Create a module to output the solid shape of these tiles to a Rapid-Prototyping machine.
                  Assemble tiles of different color into an overall Tetrus shape.
OPEN - TO BE DONE

Design Modular Architectural Wall Elements
GOALS:   Use a subdivision surface to design a stackable wall-element in the form of an open higher-genus brick inspired by the work of Erwin Hauer.
                 Enhance that element so it might have some internal channels that properly connect and then can serve as conduits for aircontitioning or illumination.
                 Make a models of such elements on one of our Rapid-Prototyping machines.
OPEN - TO BE DONE

Modeling of Urban Landscapes
GOALS:   Connect billions of 3D surface samples into a hierarchy of best fitting surface representations capturing different LOD (levels of detail).
                 Create visualization schemes that can move seamlessly through this hierarchical representation without popping artifacts.
OPEN - TO BE DONE

Find Hamiltonian Two-Manifolds on the Regular 4D Polytopes
GOAL:   Build a good data structure and exploit symmetry to the fullest to solve this NP-complete problem.
OPEN - TO BE DONE

Evaluate the properties and applications of L1-Splines
GOALS:   Study the literature on L1-splines, and investigate them on a few good test cases that evaluate their capabilities to properly reproduce irregularly sampled arcs.
                 Enhamce that formalism to 2-manifolds of higher genus.
 OPEN - TO BE DONE

SliderSave & MultiViews for SLIDE
 GOAL:  Capture promising intermediate design decision points with all parameter settings.
OPEN - TO BE DONE

Currently Active Projects:

Surface Optimization
GOAL:  Creating the best-looking surfaces from only the truly relevant constraints by using energy functionals.
Pushkar Joshi

Fair Curves for Font-Design
GOAL:  Exploring Minimum-Variation curves's and Cornu spirals as the most effective way to model perfect outline fonts.
Raph Levien

Sound Analysis and Synthesis of Solid Objects
GOALS:   Analytically determine the sounds of shells struck in different ways.
                 Construct virtual and physical bells with new and interesting sound qualities.
Cynthia Bruyns

Advanced Sweep-Morph Constructions and Spline Warping of Objects
GOALS:  B-spline-type blending between multiple specified cross sections.
                Warp geometry contained in a cylinder around the z-axis along path specified by a spline.
Funshing Sin

Parameterized Bell Model in  SLIDE
 GOAL:  Capture the shape of a 9-inch bronze bell and design modifications to it for different sounds.
Amy Wang

Mapping Hyperbolic Tessellations to the Poincare Disc
GOAL:   Provide a smooth mapping of an arbitrary N-gon and a given valence number into the hyperbolic map on the Pincare disc.
Allen Lee

General Interests and Ongoing Projects:

Former Projects, Now Inactive: