The main object of this project is to study the effect that texture (and its orientation) has on the way the people see graphics. This includes studying whether the addition of texture improves the perception of a shape as well as studying what kind of textures and what kind of texture orientation improve perception. This project has been progressing over several years. I will be working with the graduate student currently working on the project, Haleh.

There is already a several large files of existing code for the project, including an interface (to be viewed in stereo) that shows a surface and a series of probes that the user manuvers to show how the user perceives the shape. What is being added is a second part of the interface that shows the user a silhouette of how the user has positioned the probes to hopefully help the user better understand the process.

There are many aspects of this project to work on. We need to create a program that will allow us to more easily define a family of surfaces. We will need to "pass" the vertices created to another program which will create a texture on the surface based on principle direction. There already exists a program which "grows" textures on surfaces by using a small piece of a texture and orientating in to follow the principle direction. In the future, another program possibly will be written that creates a different type of texture based on principle direction. The textured surfaces will be added to the interface to be used in the experiments. We need to finish up the new addition to the interface as well as work with the large body of existing code to get all the pieces to work together toward our goal.

Current Goals

• Learn OpenGL (finished the book)
• Debug interface program (completed - Haleh)
• Learn about splines and how to create them (completed)
• Create splines in OpenGL with a way for users to alter control points and overall shape: the program must be able to save vertices generated, (in a specified format) and be able to alter several or varied points at once. (completed-both)
• Improve the silhouette/ribbon part of the interface (Haleh)
• Create sides and a bottom to spline so valid input for Gabe's program (completed - but didn't fix problem)
• Change how vertices are written to file to be valid input for Gabe's program (completed - Haleh)
• Begin a new aspect of the project: a program that creates texture on the 3D surfaces using Line Integral Convolution. (completed)
• Create program that calculates texture coordinates and textures each triangle of surface separately. (completed)
• Create a random texture for each triangle and apply appropriate texture for each triangle. Work on accurate resolution (completed)
• Create numerous functions that will be needed for complete LIC (completed)
• Add implementation of LIC to texture program (completed)
• Polish and debug the LIC program (completed)

Overall Goals

• Create a silhouette that shows the result of the probe movement to make the interface a little more understandable to users.
• Define and create a way to make 3D surfaces to be used in the experiments/interface
• Texture the surfaces using principle direction
• After fitting all the pieces of code together, begin a series of experiments