Animation 2000++

In the next millennium, computer animation will be both the same as now and also very different. Animators will always have tools that allow specifying and controlling - through manual interactive interfaces - every nuance of shape, movement, and parameter settings. But whether for skilled animators or novices, the future of animation will present a fantastically expanded palette of possibilities: techniques, resources, and libraries for creating and controlling movements

Interactive Extraction of High-Frequency Aesthetically-Coherent Colormaps

Color transfer functions (i.e. colormaps) exhibiting a high frequency luminosity component have proven to be useful in the visualization of data where feature detection or iso-contours recognition is essential. Having these colormaps also display a wide range of color and an aesthetically pleasing composition holds the potential to further aid image understanding and analysis. However producing such colormaps in an efficient manner with current colormap creation tools is difficult. We hereby demonstrate an interactive technique for extracting colormaps from artwork and pictures. We show how the rich and careful color design and dynamic luminance range of an existing image can be gracefully captured in a colormap and be utilized effectively in the exploration of complex datasets

Level-of-Detail Triangle Strips for Deforming Meshes

Applications such as video games or movies often contain deforming meshes. The most-commonly used representation of these types of meshes consists in dense polygonal models. Such a large amount of geometry can be efficiently managed by applying level-of-detail techniques and specific solutions have been developed in this field. However, these solutions do not offer a high performance in real-time applications. We thus introduce a multiresolution scheme for deforming meshes. It enables us to obtain different approximations over all the frames of an animation. Moreover, we provide an efficient connectivity coding by means of triangle strips as well as a flexible framework adapted to the GPU pipeline. Our approach enables real-time performance and, at the same time, provides accurate approximations

Dynamic Scalable Network Area of interest management for Virtual Worlds

A major performance challenge in developing a massively multi-user virtual world is network scalability. This is because the network over which entities communicate can quickly develop into a bottleneck. Three critical factors: bandwidth usage, packets per second, and network-related CPU usage, should be governed by the number of entities a given user is interested in, not the total number of entities in the world. The challenge then is to allow a virtual world to scale to any size without an appreciable drop in system performance. To address these concerns, this thesis describes a novel Area of Interest Manager (AOIM) built atop the NPSNET-V virtual environment system. It is a dynamically sized, geographical region based, senderside interest manager that supports dynamic entity discovery and peer-to-peer entity communication. The AOIM also makes use of tools provided by the NPSNET-V system, such as variable resolution protocols and variable data transmission rate. Performance tests have shown conclusively that these interest management techniques are able to produce dramatic savings in network bandwidth usage in a peer-to-peer virtual environment. In one test, this AOIM produced a 92% drop in network traffic, with a simultaneous 500% increase in world population.http://archive.org/details/dynamicscalablen109451616US Navy (USN) autho

Mapping Fingerprints to Unique Numbers

As automated fingerprint recognition systems gain popularity, the proliferation of information about unchangeable biometric characteristics causes serious privacy and security concerns. This information may enable an impostor to create a matching fingerprint, and the stored information should therefore be considered extremely sensitive. This thesis explores a novel method for generating cancellable fingerprint templates that will impede the reproduction of a fingerprint from the stored template, and at the same time allow the same fingerprint to be reused in the case of a compromise. During enrollment, the proposed method aligns the minutiae points of a fingerprint to a reference coordinate system using the core and principal direction, and creates a hash value based on the set of minutiae points. It then generates Reed-Solomon error correction codes which enable the reproduction of the full set of minutiae points if a certain number of minutiae points are known. It then performs an irreversible Cartesian block transformation on the minutiae points. During the matching process, the minutiae points of the candidate print are similarly aligned, and transformed using the same Cartesian transformation. A standard matching algorithm is performed on the minutiae sets in the transformed space, which allows the Cartesian transformation to be reversed for the matching minutiae points in the enrolled template. Using the Reed-Solomon error-correction codes generated during enrollment, the entire minutiae point set of the enrolled print can be recreated, provided enough minutiae points could be correctly reversed. Thus, a matching candidate fingerprint allows an otherwise irreversible transformation on the enrolled print to be reversed. The same hash value created for the fingerprint during enrollment can thus be re-generated when a matching fingerprint is presented. A proof-of-concept implementation of the method is presented and tested. Although the recognition accuracy of the proposed method was found to be inferior to comparable traditional fingerprint recognition methods, the method nonetheles

Collaborative Modeling of Business Processes on Co-Located TableTop Systems

Most current Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) refer to single users, working at a desktop PC individually. But especially, during the creation of process models, domain and modeling experts work together. Therefore, a collaborative BPMS offers possibilities to work in a team environment. The advantages of collaborative process modelling are improved quality and accuracy of process models. Thus, the user’s workload is reduced and the users learn from each other. This thesis presents Process-Touch, which is a collaborative BPMS, using a tabletop and additional tablets or smartphones to create process models collaboratively. Process-Touch offers an easy to use Natural User Interface (NUI), sketch-based input and the possibility to work with tablets or smartphones as a private interaction device. Users can create and edit parts of the process model on their tablets and smartphones and merge them on the tabletop using a tap gesture to transfer the process model from the mobile device to the tabletop. This thesis contributes a system for collaborative BPMS, general concepts and requirements and a prototypical implementation. Moreover, the concept is evaluated by experimental research, using the prototypical implementation. Hence, improvements of the gesture-set, interaction design and implementation are identified and discussed

3D Pointing with Everyday Devices: Speed, Occlusion, Fatigue

In recent years, display technology has evolved to the point where displays can be both non-stereoscopic and stereoscopic, and 3D environments can be rendered realistically on many types of displays. From movie theatres and shopping malls to conference rooms and research labs, 3D information can be deployed seamlessly. Yet, while 3D environments are commonly displayed in desktop settings, there are virtually no examples of interactive 3D environments deployed within ubiquitous environments, with the exception of console gaming. At the same time, immersive 3D environments remain - in users' minds - associated with professional work settings and virtual reality laboratories. An excellent opportunity for 3D interactive engagements is being missed not because of economic factors, but due to the lack of interaction techniques that are easy to use in ubiquitous, everyday environments. In my dissertation, I address the lack of support for interaction with 3D environments in ubiquitous settings by designing, implementing, and evaluating 3D pointing techniques that leverage a smartphone or a smartwatch as an input device. I show that mobile and wearable devices may be especially beneficial as input devices for casual use scenarios, where specialized 3D interaction hardware may be impractical, too expensive or unavailable. Such scenarios include interactions with home theatres, intelligent homes, in workplaces and classrooms, with movie theatre screens, in shopping malls, at airports, during conference presentations and countless other places and situations. Another contribution of my research is to increase the potential of mobile and wearable devices for efficient interaction at a distance. I do so by showing that such interactions are feasible when realized with the support of a modern smartphone or smartwatch. I also show how multimodality, when realized with everyday devices, expands and supports 3D pointing. In particular, I show how multimodality helps to address the challenges of 3D interaction: performance issues related to the limitations of the human motor system, interaction with occluded objects and related problem of perception of depth on non-stereoscopic screens, and user subjective fatigue, measured with NASA TLX as perceived workload, that results from providing spatial input for a prolonged time. I deliver these contributions by designing three novel 3D pointing techniques that support casual, "walk-up-and-use" interaction at a distance and are fully realizable using off-the-shelf mobile and wearable devices available today. The contributions provide evidence that democratization of 3D interaction can be realized by leveraging the pervasiveness of a device that users already carry with them: a smartphone or a smartwatch.4 month

Design for rapid manufacture : developing an appropriate knowledge transfer tool for industrial designers

Numerous works have been produced on the topic of Design for Manufacturing (DFM) to better educate the designers of products as to various methods of manufacturing and their specific requirements. It is the common aim of these works to eliminate so called "over the wall" product development in which procedurally ignorant designers pass largely un-producible design concepts to manufacturers, who are then required to make necessary refinements and changes. When applied correctly, DFM results in the efficient and economical production of well-designed products, whose forms have been attuned to the particular requirements of their final method of production at an early stage of development. However, one aspect of using such approaches is that design intent is frequently compromised for the sake of manufacturability and innovative design concepts are often dismissed as being unfeasible. Recent advances in additive manufacturing technologies and their use in the direct manufacture of end-use products from digital data sources has brought about a new method of production that is known as Rapid Manufacturing (RM). Unlike conventional subtractive machining processes, such as milling and turning which generate forms by removing material from a stock billet, RM parts are grown from an empty part bed using the controlled addition of specialised build materials. Additive manufacturing requires no forming tools, is unrestricted by many conventional process considerations and is capable of producing practically any geometry. The freedoms that are associated with this technology facilitate the design and realisation of product concepts that would be unachievable with any other method of production. This promotes an almost boundless design philosophy in which innovative product solutions can be designed to best meet the needs of specification criteria, rather than the production process with which they are to be made. However, unlike other forms of manufacturing, the newness of this technology means that there is no proven aid or tool to assist industrial designers in exploiting the freedoms that it offers. Using information that was collated in the literature review and case study projects, a systematic design approach was proposed and then tested in a series of user trials with groups of industrial design students and practicing industrial design professionals. The results of these trials are discussed, showing a common acknowledgement from both groups that the proposed DFRM tool was of assistance and that it had an influence upon their design work. However, whilst the student group were generally receptive toward tool uptake, the experienced designers showed more of a reluctance to abandon their own "tried and tested" methods in favour of the unknown and unproven approach. It is concluded that this attitude would be fairly representative of wider opinion and that the future uptake of any such tool would be reliant upon sufficient evidence of its successful application. Hence, suggestions are made for future work to continue tool development and for more validation trials to be conducted with its intended user group.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo