Project Name: Procedural Modeling

Project Leader

Pierre Poulin

Project Co-Leader

Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz

Researchers

• Stephen Brooks (Dalhousie)
• Roy Eagleson (Western)
• Eugene Fiume (Toronto)
• David Mould (Carleton)
• Pierre Poulin (Montreal)
• Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz (Calgary)
• Wolfgang Stuerzlinger (York)
• Brian Wyvill (UVic)
• Faramarz Samavati (Calgary)
• Victor Ostromoukhov (Montreal)
• Eric Paquette (ETS)

Theme Distribution

• Theme 2 : 20%
• Theme 3 : 80%

Project Description

Procedural models (PM) offer an unsurpassed capability of synthesizing complex scenes (e.g. plants and ecosystems with L-systems, terrains with fractals, or buildings and cities with grammar-based methods). Until now, however, PM have been used successfully in a relatively small number of well-crafted special cases. We propose to extend PM to reduce or eliminate their limits in order to respond to more general needs. The key challenges include: (i) Design of multi-scale, view-sensitive PM; (ii) Lazy evaluation of PM; (iii) User control of PM; and (iv) Extension of the range of current PM, and the introduction of new ones.

We propose to address these challenges with (1) diverse forms of deterministic tiling design to avoid solving complex constraint-based satisfaction problems, (2) an extension of L-systems allowing for the specification of multi-scale plant models, (3) memory management techniques compatible with the lazy evaluation and hierarchical organization of large PM, and (4) new interfaces for effective and intuitive interactive-procedural modeling. Our project will bridge the gap between interactive and procedural methods, and will result in tools and techniques adapted to the creation and management of unlimited size virtual worlds. The scope of our project will range from an advancement in the understanding of fundamental problems of PM to practical solutions for the next generation of video games.

Excellence of the Research

Development of Highly Qualified Personnel (HQP)

Grad students in Computer Science from: Calgary, Montreal, Carleton, Western, Toronto, Dalhousie. Training for grad students as researchers/developers in computer graphics, interfaces, and software, but also as as designers of video game content. This is of great value for the leading and prominent Canadian computer graphics industry in video games (EA, Ubisoft, etc.) and in creative graphics design (Autodesk, Houdini, etc.). Most of their graduate students have been hired by this industry.

Networking and Partnerships

Academic research team. NIs on this project are recognized international experts on Plant Modeling and computer graphics. Non academic support (in discussion) with Ubisoft, Montreal, and Autodesk, Montreal.

Knowledge and Technology Exchange and Exploitation

References to the Literature

Publications

Presentations

• 2 Minute Madness 2010