MAT 334 — Graphics, Modeling and Animation

20 — 24 March 2006

Old Main 403 Canisius College: 5:00 — 8:00pm Daily

Instructor:    Jorg Peters
Professor
CISE Department
CSE Building
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-6120
jorg@cise.ufl.edu
http://www.cise.ufl.edu/˜jorg

Course Abstract: What gives Pixar’s characters their looks? How does one simulate a flock of birds? The course participants will discover the power and beauty of affine invariant representations of geometry based on barycentric coordinates, the use of control structures and curved geometry via refinement. (To create digital worlds, Computer Graphics borrows tools ranging from algebraic geometry to differential topology.)

Course participants will create and modify shapes to match tasks and look at programs for graphical interaction with geometry using OpenGL, the lingua franca of graphic programming.

The modules of study include:

  • Bézier representations
  • B-splines
  • Box-splines
  • Subdivision curves and surfaces
  • Manipulation of large meshes
Prerequisites:

  • Minimally; a good background in calculus together with some exposure to linear algbebra and/or discrete mathematics.
Biographical Information: Jorg Peters obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Madison-Wisconsin (1990). He is now Professor for Computer Graphics and Geometric Modeling in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering (CISE) at the University of Florida, Gainesville FL. Prior to this, Peters was faculty at Purdue University (1992-98) and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1991-92) and he was a Post Doctoral Fellow at the IBM, T.J. Watson Research Center (1990-91).

Since 1990, Jorg Peters’ SurfLab has been continuously funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), including a prestigious National Young Investigator award. Moreover, SurfLab has mentored a number of students through REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) programs. Some of these students were subsequently placed into renowned graduate programs at elite American universities.

Jorg Peters’ areas of research specialization span graphics; geometric modeling; visualization; and scientific computing and he has published in venues stretching from the Siggraph conference to the journal Constructive Approximation. His core interest is in devising and characterizing geometry representations. Peters’ main theoretical contributions are to the theories of Geometric Continuity and of Subdivision Surfaces and, most recently, to the constructive characterization of one-sided approximation (so as for a smooth path to stay to one side of an obstacle). Peters has designed a number of algorithms, including N-patches put into hardware by ATi, a leading supplier of graphics cards, and surface splines, used e.g. by Simsurgery, a Norwegian company pioneering haptic feedback surgery simulation for medical training. One of his recent projects is to create a 3D haptic authoring environment for surgeons.