Assignment 2: MeshEdit

In this assignment, you will explore topics on geometric modeling covered in lecture. You will build Bezier curves and surfaces using de Casteljau algorithm, manipulate triangle meshes represented by half-edge data structure, and implement loop subdivision. For possible extra credit, you can optionally enter a mesh competition and design your own polygon mesh using 3D modeling programs, such as Blender.

Deadlines

Checkpoint Quiz	Tuesday 02/25, 11:59PM
Assignment 2	Tuesday 03/03, 11:59PM

You have a total of 5 slip days to use on assignments throughout the entire semester, but you do not have slip days for checkpoint quizzes. Assignments submitted after 11:59PM are considered as a full day late. There is no late minutes or late hours. After you have used all 5 slips days, you will lose 10% for each day you submit an assignment late.

Your final assignment submission must include both your final code and final write-up. Please consult this article on how to submit assignment for CS184.

Assignment Structure

This assignment has 7 parts, divided into 3 sections, and is worth a total of 90 possible points. Some parts require only a few lines of code, while others are more substantial.

Section I: Bezier Curves and Surfaces

• Part 1: Bezier curves with 1D de Casteljau subdivision (10 pts)
• Part 2: Bezier surfaces with separable 1D de Casteljau (15 pts)

Section II: Triangle Meshes and Half-Edge Data Structure

• Part 3: Area-weighted vertex normals (10 pts)
• Part 4: Edge flip (15 pts)
• Part 5: Edge split (15 pts)
• Part 6: Loop subdivision for mesh upsampling (25 pts)

Section III: Mesh Competition (optional, possible extra credit)

• Part 7: Design and edit your own mesh!

This assignment requires you to use vectors to compute various values, e.g., normals to triangles on a mesh. Instead of implementing vector functions yourself, check out this primer to quickly get started on using vectors and matrices provided by the CGL library.

Getting Started

As in Assignment 1, you should accept this assignment on your CS184 website profile, follow the instructions on GitHub Classroom, and clone the generated repo (not the class skeleton). Make sure you enable GitHub Pages for your assignment.

$ git clone <YOUR_PRIVATE_REPO>

Please consult this article on how to build assignments for CS184.

We recommend that you accumulate deliverables into your write-up as you work through each part this assignment. We have included write-up instructions at the end of each part of this assignment, as well as a compilation of all write-up instructions at the end.

Running the Executable

The general command for running the executable meshedit is the following:

./meshedit <PATH_TO_FILE>

Important Note: You must provide an input file to meshedit, or else the executable will crash.

Note that meshedit expects different file formats for different parts of this assignment, as detailed in the table below:

Part / Section	Expected File Format
Section I Part 1	Bezier Curves (.bzc)
Section I Part 2	Bezier Surfaces (.bez)
All Parts in Section II and III	COLLADA Mesh Files (.dae)

As an example, for Section I Part 1, you must load a Bezier curve as the following:

./meshedit ../bzc/curve1.bzc

Using the Graphical User Interface (GUI)

The following details how you can use the GUI provided by the executable meshedit. You may want to skim through them on your first read-through; and read them in more detail when you have implemented parts of this assignment and are ready to use the GUI.

Section I Part 1

When you run meshedit with a Bezier curve (.bzc) for Section I Part I, you will see control points that define the curve rendered on screen, as shown below.

For this part only, the GUI is different. Below is the full specification on keyboard controls.

Key	Action
E	Perform one call to BezierCurve::evaluateStep(...) and cycle through levels
C	Toggle whether or not the fully evaluated Bezier curve is drawn to the screen

To verify your implementation is correct, you can repeatedly press E to cycle through each level of the de Casteljau subdivision. You can press C to toggle the Bezier curve to check if it is generated correctly based on the control points.

You can also use your mouse to:

• Click and drag the control points to move them and see how your Bezier curve, along with all intermediate control points, changes accordingly.
• Scroll to move the evaluated point along the Bezier curve and see how the intermediate control points move along with it. This is essentially varying $t$ between 0.0 and 1.0.

Section I Part 2 and Onwards

When you run meshedit from Section I Part 2 and onwards, you will see a triangle mesh rendered on screen, as shown below.

As you hover the cursor around the screen, you will notice that mesh elements (half-edges, vertices, edges,, and faces) under the cursor are highlighted in purple or white, such as an edge in the image above. You can click on one of these elements to select it and the GUI will display some information about the element and its associated data.

Below is the full specification on keyboard controls.

Key	Action
Q	Toggle using vertex normals (Part 3)
F	Flip the selected edge (Part 4)
S	Split the selected edge (Part 5)
L	Upsample the current mesh (Part 6)
N	Select the next half-edge
T	Select the twin half-edge
W	Toggle wireframe
I	Toggle information overlay
SPACE	Reset camera to default position
0 - 9	Switch between GLSL shaders
R	Recompile shaders

You can also use your mouse to:

• Click and drag a vertex to change its position.
• Click and drag background or right click and drag anywhere to rotate the camera.
• Scroll to adjust the camera zoom.

You will implement area-weighted vertex normals (Q), local edge flip (F), local edge split (S), and loop subdivision (L) in Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6, respectively. Therefore, these four key commands will do nothing until you have completed their respective part.

Starter Code Structure

Before you start, here is some basic information on starter code structure.

For Bezier curves and surfaces (Section I), you will be filling in member functions of the BezierCurve and BezierPatch class, defined in bezierCurve.h and bezierPatch.h.

For triangle meshes (Section II), you will be filling in member functions of the Vertex, HalfedgeMesh, and MeshResampler class, defined in halfEdgeMesh.h.

We have put dummy definitions for all the functions you will need to modify within student_code.cpp. You will implement all parts of this assignment only in this file!

Section I: Bezier Curves and Surfaces

In computer graphics, Bezier curves and surfaces are frequently used to model smooth and infinitely scalable curves and surfaces, such as in Adobe Illustrator (a curve drawing program) and in Blender (a surface modeling program).

A Bezier curve of degree $n$ is defined by $(n + 1)$ control points. It is a parametric curve based on a single parameter $t$, ranging between 0 and 1.

Similarly, a Bezier surface of degree $(n, m)$ is defined by $(n + 1)\times(m + 1)$ control points. It is a parametric surface based on two parameters $u$ and $v$, both ranging between 0 and 1.

In Section I, you will use de Casteljau algorithm to evaluate Bezier curves and surfaces for any given set of control points and parameters, such as the Beizer curve below. In the image, white squares are the given control points, blue sqares are the intermediate control points evaluated at the given parameter by de Casteljau algorithm, and the red square is the final evaluated point that lies on the Bezier curve.

Part 1: Bezier Curves with 1D de Casteljau Subdivision (10 pts)

Relevant Lecture: 7

In Part 1, you will implement Bezier curves. To get started, take a look at bezierCurve.h and examine the member variables defined in the class. Specifically, you will primarily be working with the following:

• std::vector<Vector2D> controlPoints: A std::vector of original control points that define the Bezier curve, initialized from input Bezier curve file (.bzc).
• float t: A parameter at which to evaluate the Bezier curve, ranging between 0 to 1.

Recall from lecture that de Casteljau algorithm gives us the following step:

Given $n$ (possibly intermediate) control points $p_1, ..., p_n$ and the parameter $t$, we can use linear interpolation to compute the $n-1$ intermediate control points at the parameter $t$ in the next subdivision level, $p_1', ..., p_{n-1}'$, where

$p_i' = lerp(p_i, p_{i+1}, t) = (1 - t)p_i + tp_{i+1}$

When we apply this step to the resulting $n-1$ intermediate control points, we obtain $n-2$ intermediate control points at the next subdivision level. Applying this step successively, we will eventually arrive at a final, single point and this point, by definition, lies on the Bezier curve at the given paramter $t$.

You will need to implement this single step of de Casteljau algorithm in BezierCurve::evaluateStep(...) in student_code.cpp. This function takes as input a std::vector of $n$ points and outputs a std::vector of $n-1$ intermediate control points at the parameter $t$ in the next subdivision level. Each call to this function should perform only one step of the algorithm, i.e., one level of subdivision. Note that the parameter $t$ is a member variable of the BezierCurve class, which you have access to within the function.

Correction: An earlier version of the description claimed that BezierCurve::evaluateStep(...) was recursive. This is incorrect and you do not need to call the function within itself.

Implementation Notes

std::vector is similar to Java's ArrayList class. You should use the push_back(...) method to add elements to a std::vector. This is analogous to the append(...) method of ArrayList. You can view this page for more information on push_back(...).

Sanity Check

To check if your implementation is likely correct, you can run meshedit with a Bezier curve file (.bzc) and view the generated Bezier curve on screen. Refer back here for a list of controls only for Section I Part 1.

For example, you can run the following command:

./meshedit ../bzc/curve1.bzc    

where bzc/curve1.bzc is a cubic Bezier curve. The provided bzc/curve2.bzc is a degree-4 Bezier curve. Feel free to create your own .bzc files and explore other Bezier curves.

Functions to Modify: Part 1

• BezierCurve::evaluateStep(...)

For Your Write-Up: Part 1

• Briefly explain de Casteljau's algorithm and how you implemented it in order to evaluate Bezier curves.
• Take a look at the provided .bzc files and create your own Bezier curve with 6 control points of your choosing. Use this Bezier curve for your screenshots below.
• Show screenshots of each step / level of the evaluation from the original control points down to the final evaluated point. Press E to step through. Toggle C to show the completed Bezier curve as well.
• Show a screenshot of a slightly different Bezier curve by moving the original control points around and modifying the parameter $t$ via mouse scrolling.

Part 2: Bezier Surfaces with Separable 1D de Casteljau (15 pts)

Relevant Lecture: 7

In Part 2, you will adapt what you have implemented for Bezier curves to Bezier surfaces. To get started, take a look at bezierPatch.h and examine the member variables defined in the class. Specifically, you will primarily be working with the following:

• std::vector<std::vector<Vector3D>> controlPoints: A 2D std::vector that has $n \times m$ grid of original control points. controlPoints is of size $n$ and each inner std::vector, i.e., controlPoints[i], contains $m$ control points at the $i$th-row. For example, controlPoints[0] and controlPoints[n-1] each have $m$ control points at the bottom row and the top row, respectively.

Recall from lecture that separable 1D de Casteljau algorithm works as the following:

The inputs to the algorithm are (1) a $n \times m$ grid of original control points, $P_{ij}$, where $i$ and $j$ are row and column index, and (2) the two parameters $u$ and $v$.

We first consider that each row of $m$ control points, $P_{i0}, ..., P_{i(m-1)}$, define a Bezier curve parameterized by $u$. We can successively apply a single step of de Casteljau algorithm to evaluate the final, single point $P_i$ that lies on this Bezier curve at the parameter $u$.

We then consider that $P_i$ for all $n$ rows define a Bezier curve parameterized by $v$. (These $n$ points lie roughly along a column. This lecture slide may help you visualize.) We can again successively apply a single step of de Casteljau algorithm to evaluate the final, single point $P$ that lies on this Bezier curve at the parameter $v$. This point $P$, by definition, lies on the Bezier surface at the given parameter $u$ and $v$.

You need to implement the following functions in student_code.cpp:

• BezierPatch::evaluateStep(...): Very similar to BezierCurve::evaluateStep(...) in Part 1, this function takes as inputs a std::vector of $n$ points and a parameter $t$. It outputs a std::vector of $n-1$ intermediate control points at the parameter $t$ in the next subdivision level.
• BezierPatch::evaluate1D(...): This function takes as inputs a std::vector of $n$ points and a parameter $t$. It outputs directly the final, single point that lies on the Bezier curve at the parameter $t$. This function does not output intermediate control points. You may want to call BezierPatch::evaluateStep(...) within this function.
• BezierPatch::evaluate(...): This function takes as inputs the parameter $u$ and $v$; and it outputs the point that lies on the Bezier surface, defined by the $n \times m$ controlPoints, at the parameter $u$ and $v$. Note that controlPoints is a member variable of the BezierPatch class, which you have access to within this function.

Correction: An earlier version of the description claimed that BezierPatch::evaluateStep(...) was recursive. This is incorrect and you do not need to call the function within itself.

Sanity Check

To check if your implementation is likely correct, you can run meshedit with a Bezier surface file (.bez) and view the generated Bezier surface on screen.

For example, you can run the following command and you should see a teapot:

./meshedit ../bez/teapot.bez

Functions to Modify: Part 2

• BezierPatch::evaluateStep(...)
• BezierPatch::evaluate1D(...)
• BezierPatch::evaluate(...)

For Your Write-Up: Part 2

• Briefly explain how de Casteljau algorithm extends to Bezier surfaces and how you implemented it in order to evaluate Bezier surfaces.
• Show a screenshot of bez/teapot.bez (not .dae) evaluated by your implementation.

Section II: Triangle Meshes and Half-Edge Data Structure

Important Notes:

• In Section II, you will be working extensively with the half-edge data structure, as well as the provided HalfedgeMesh class, which implements the data structure.
• Before diving into this section, we recommend that you read this introduction to half-edge data strucutre to reinforce your understanding of it from Lecture 8.
• We also highly, highly recommend that you carefully read through this primer on how to navigate meshes using the HalfedgeMesh class. The primer will help you get familiar with the provided HalfedgeMesh class quickly and present many examples, complete with code, that you may find very helpful for this section!
• Finally, we encourage you to read and understand the documentation at the beginning of halfedgeMesh.h, which provides supplementary information to the primer.

In Section I, you have implemented Bezier surfaces, which are parametric surfaces defined by a 2D grid of control points. As discussed in lecture, we can also represent surfaces using triangle meshes. While Bezier surfaces are better at representing smooth surfaces than triangle meshes and require less memory, Bezier surfaces are much more difficult to render directly. (Can you reason why this is the case?) In fact, Bezier surfaces are often converted into triangle meshes before being rendered to screen.

As a result, triangle meshes are sometimes the preferred way to represent 3D geometric models in computer graphics. One way to store a triangle mesh is as a list of vertices and a list of triangles indexing the vertices, illustrated in this lecture slide. Unfortunately, such simple data structure does not allow for meaningful traversal of meshes required by many geometry processing tasks. For example, to find all triangles neighbouring a given triangle, we must iterate through the entire list of triangles, which can be prohibitively expensive if the mesh has millions of triangles.

To help answer the neighbouring triangle query and many others more efficiently, the half-edge data structure explicitly stores the connectivity information among mesh elements, i.e., vertices, edges, and faces. Throughout this section, you will use the half-edge data structure to implement a few commonly used geometric operations; and we hope you will get to appreciate the simplicity and flexibility of this data structure.

Part 3: Area-Weighted Vertex Normals (10 pts)

Relevant Lecture: 8

In Part 3, you will implement area-weighted normal vectors at vertices. Recall from lecture that these vertex normals can be used for Phong shading, which provides better shading for smooth surfaces than flat shading (image credit: Wikipedia).

To get started, take a look at the Vertex class defined in halfedgeMesh.h, along with the very helpful comments within the class. In short, a Vertex object encapsulates a single mesh vertex and has member variables such as the following (the list is not exhaustive):

• Vector3D position: The 3D coordinate of this vertex.
• HalfedgeIter& halfedge: A reference to the half-edge rooted at this vertex.
• HalfedgeCIter halfedge: The same half-edge as above, except this variable is const (i.e., constant) and cannot be modified.

To compute an area-weighted normal at a given vertex, you should use the half-edge data structure to iterate through faces (triangles) incident to the vertex, i.e., faces that have the given vertex as one of its vertices. For each such face, you weight its normal by its area. Finally, you normalize the sum of all area-weighted normals.

You need to implement this part in Vertex::normal() in student_code.cpp. This function takes no input and outputs the area-weighted vertex normal. Since normal() is a member function of the Vertex class, you have access to the class member variables, such as Vector3D position, within the function. To understand how to iterate through faces incident to a vertex, you may find the example printNeighborPositions(...) in this primer helpful. (Hint: A face in the half-edge data structure only points to its associated half-edge. To compute the area and normal of a face, what you really need are its three vertices instead of the face itself.)

Implementation Notes

For Part 3 only, you are implementing a const (i.e., constant) member function, which requires that no code within this function modifies any member variables. This just means that you should use HalfedgeCIter and not HalfedgeIter in Vertex::normal().

For more information on the differences between Halfedge *, HalfedgeIter, and HalfedgeCIter, check out this short article on Iterators vs Pointers.

Sanity Check

To check if your implementation is likely correct, you can run meshedit with a COLLADA mesh file (.dae). Once the model is loaded, press Q to toggle the area-averaged normals, which calls Vertex::normal() you have implemented, and the shading of the model should become smoother and no longer flat. Refer back here for a list of controls for Section I Part 2 and onwards.

For example, you can run the following command:

./meshedit ../dae/teapot.dae

After you press Q, the shading of the teapot should look smooth like the image below. If your shading differs from the image, your implementation of Vertex::normal() is likely incorrect. One common mistake is that the computed normals point towards the interior of the model, as opposed to the exterior required by computer graphics. The oppositely oriented normals lead to very dark shading, which can be fixed by reversing the normals.

Functions to Modify: Part 3

• Vertex::normal()

For Your Writeup: Part 3

• Briefly explain how you implemented the area-weighted vertex normals.
• Show screenshots of dae/teapot.dae (not .bez) comparing teapot shading with and without vertex normals. Use Q to toggle default flat shading and Phong shading.

Part 4: Edge Flip (15 pts)

Relevant Lecture: 8

In Part 4, you will implement a local remeshing operation on an edge, called a flip. Given a pair of triangles $(a,b,c)$ and $(c,b,d)$, a flip operation on their shared edge $(b,c)$ converts the original pair of triangles into a new pair $(a,d,c)$ and $(a,b,d)$, as shown below:

You need to implement this part in HalfedgeMesh::flipEdge(...) in student_code.cpp. This function takes as input an EdgeIter to an edge that needs to be flipped, e.g., edge $(b,c)$ above, and outputs an EdgeIter to the now flipped edge, e.g., edge $(a,d)$ above.

To properly implement any remeshing operations, you need to take extra care to make sure that, in the modified mesh, all pointers of all mesh elements still point to the righ elements. A mesh element is a half-edge, vertex, edge, or face. Here is a refresher on what each mesh element points to. We recommend that you perform the following steps to ensure that all pointers of all elements are still valid after remeshing operations, such as edge flips in this part or edge splits in the next part:

1. Draw a simple mesh, such as the pair of triangles $(a,b,c)$ and $(c,b,d)$ above, and write down a list of all elements, i.e., half-edges, vertices, edges, and faces, in this mesh.
2. Draw the mesh after the remeshing operation and again write down a list of all elements in the now modified mesh.
3. If the remeshing operation adds new elements in the modified mesh, create these new elements. An edge flip does not add new elements, but an edge split in Part 5 does.
4. For every element in the modified mesh, set all of its pointers to the correct element in the modified mesh, even if the element being pointed to has not changed:
   • For each vertex, edge, and face, set its halfedge pointer.
   • For each half-edge, set its next, twin, vertex, edge, and face pointer to the correct element. You can use Halfedge::setNeighbors(...) to set all pointers of a half-edge at once.
   • We recommend setting all pointers of all elements in the modified mesh, not just the ones that have changed, because it is very easy to miss a pointer and get errors that are very difficult to debug. Once you are sure that your implementation works, you can remove the unnecessary pointer assignments if you wish.

Your implementation of HalfedgeMesh::flipEdge(...) should do the following:

• Never flip a boundary edge. The function should simply return immediately if either neighbouring face of the edge is on a boundary loop. Every mesh element has a useful isBoundary() function that returns true if the element is on the boundary.
• Perform only a constant amount of work. The cost of flipping a single edge should not be proportional to the mesh size.
• Do not add or delete any mesh elements. There should be exactly the same number of elements before and after the edge flip. You only need to reassign pointers.

Implementation Notes

Given any mesh element, you can use the provided check_for(...) debugging function to check which other elements in the mesh point to it. For example, you can use this function to confirm if an element is pointed to by the right number of other elements. Please read the Debugging Aid section in this primer on the HalfedgeMesh class for more information.

Sanity Check

After loading a model from a .dae file, you can click to select an edge and press F to flip it. Refer back here for a list of controls for Section I Part 2 and onwards. Sometimes, your implementation may seem to work when you flip an edge only once. We recommend that you flip an edge a few more times to be more certain that your code really works as expected. Part 6 will require you to have a working implementation of edge flips.

Functions to Modify: Part 4

• HalfedgeMesh::flipEdge(...)

For Your Writeup: Part 4

• Briefly explain how you implemented the edge flip operation and describe any interesting implementation / debugging tricks you have used.
• Show screenshots of a mesh before and after some edge flips.
• Write about your eventful debugging journey, if you have experienced one.

Part 5: Edge Split (15 pts)

Relevant Lectures: 8

In Part 5, you will implement a different local remeshing operation on an edge, called a split. Given a pair of triangles $(a,b,c)$ and $(c,b,d)$, a split operation on their shared edge $(b,c)$ inserts a new vertex $m$ at its midpoint and connects the new vertex to each opposing vertex $a$ and $d$, yielding four triangles as shown below:

You need to implement this part in HalfedgeMesh::splitEdge(...) in student_code.cpp. This function takes as input an EdgeIter to an edge that needs to be split, e.g., edge $(b,c)$ above, and outputs a VertexIter to the newly inserted vertex, e.g., vertex $m$ above.

Because an edge split adds new mesh elements, e.g., a new vertex, two new triangles, three new edges, and etc, you will have more pointers to keep track of and may find that an edge split is a little trickier to implement than an edge flip. We encourage you to again follow our recommendation in Part 4 to ensure that all pointers of all mesh elements point to the right elements in the modified mesh.

Your implementation of HalfedgeMesh::splitEdge(...) should do the following:

• Ignore requests to split boundary edges, unless you are trying for extra credit. The function can simply return immediately if either neighbouring face of the edge is on a boundary loop. Note that splitting a boundary edge does make sense, but flipping a boundary edge does not make sense. (Can you reason why this is the case?)
• Assign the position of the new vertex to the midpoint of the original edge. Remember from Part 3 that the Vertex class has a member variable Vector3D position.
• Perform only a constant amount of work. The cost of splitting a single edge should not be proportional to the mesh size.
• Create only as many new elements as needed. The mesh should not have any elements that is not connected to the rest of the mesh.

Extra Credit: Support edge splits for boundary edges. For this, you will need to carefully read the Section "Mesh Boundary in the HalfedgeMesh class" in this primer. In short, you will split the edge in half, but only split in half the face that is non-boundary.

Sanity Check

After loading a model from a .dae file, you can click to select an edge and press S to split it. Refer back here for a list of controls for Section I Part 2 and onwards. To verify that your implementation is likely correct, you can flip some edges that you have split and then split some edges that you have flipped. You can also alternate between flipping and splitting edges many times in mesh regions that are nearby and far apart; and check if the mesh changes correctly. Part 6 will require you to have a working implementation of edge splits.

Functions to Modify: Part 5

• HalfedgeMesh::splitEdge(...)

For Your Writeup: Part 5

• Briefly explain how you implemented the edge split operation and describe any interesting implementation / debugging tricks you have used.
• Show screenshots of a mesh before and after some edge splits.
• Show screenshots of a mesh before and after a combination of both edge splits and edge flips.
• Write about your eventful debugging journey, if you have experienced one.
• If you have implemented support for boundary edges, show screenshots of your implementation properly handling split operations on boundary edges.

Part 6: Loop Subdivision for Mesh Upsampling (25 pts)

Relevant Lecture: 8

Sometimes, we may wish to convert a coarse polygon mesh into a higher-resolution one for better display, more accurate simulation, and etc. Such conversion requires an upsampling algorithm that nicely interpolates or approximates the original mesh vertices.

Unfortunately, the techniques we have learned to upsample 2D images, such as bilinear filtering in Lecture 5, do not easily translate to upsampling 3D meshes. Among many reasons, a mesh often has vertices at irregular locations, as opposed to a regular grid like an image. (Can you think of other reasons?)

In Part 6, you will implement a mesh upsampling method, called loop subdivision. In short, loop subdivision upsamples a mesh by (1) subdividing each of its triangles into four smaller triangles and (2) updating all vertices of the subdivided mesh based on some weighting scheme.

You need to implement these two steps of loop subdivision, outlined in more details below, in MeshResampler::upsample(...) in student_code.cpp. This function has no outputs and takes as input a mesh that will be subdivided. The input mesh is passed into the function as a reference, i.e., HalfedgeMesh&. Therefore, any changes made to the input mesh within MeshResampler::upsample(...) will still be visible outside this function.

A single iteration of loop subdivision consists of the following two steps. If we repeatedly apply these two steps, we will converge to a smooth approximation of our original mesh.

1. Subdivide each triangle in the mesh into four by connecting edge midpoints, as shown below. This is called a 4-1 subdivision. To perform 4-1 subdivisions over the entire mesh, you can use the edge flip and edge split operations you have already implemented. Specifically, you can do the following: [1] Split every original edge of the mesh in any order.

   Important Note: You should only split edges that are in the original, coarse mesh. You should not split any new edges created by edge split operations. Otherwise, you will be splitting edges forever and this step will never terminate! :(

   [2] Flip any new edge that connects an old vertex and a new vertex.

   Important Note: After the previous step, in addition to some brand new edges created by the edge split operations, every original edge will now also be represented by 2 edges. You should not flip these edges that are on the original edges. (Can you reason why?) More concretely, in the figure above, you should only flip blue edges that connect an old vertex and new vertex. You should not flip any new, black edges.

2. Update vertex positions as weighted average of neighboring vertex positions.

   The figure below shows the weights we use to [1] compute the position of a newly added vertex or to [2] update the position of an existing vertex. The new vertex and old vertex are depicted as the white circle in their respective mesh.

   

   [1] The position of a new vertex splitting the shared edge $(A, B)$ between a pair of triangle $(A, C, B)$ and $(A, B, D)$ is

   3/8 * (A + B) + 1/8 * (C + D)
   

   [2] The updated position of an old vertex is

   (1 - n * u) * original_position + u * original_neighbor_position_sum
   

   where n is the vertex degree, i.e., number of edges connected to the vertex, u is the constant shown in the figure, original_position is the original position of the old vertex, and original_neighbor_position_sum is the sum of all original positions of the neighboring vertices. Look here for an example of degree-6 vertex.

Implementation Notes

While you can implement loop subdivision exactly as described above, we actually recommend that you pre-compute the updated vertex positions before performing 4-1 subdivisions over the entire mesh. More pecifically, you may want to follow the steps below:

• Step A: Pre-compute the updated positions of both new and old vertices using the original, coarse mesh.
• Step B: Subdivide the original mesh via edge splits and edge flips as described.
• Step C: Update all vertex positions in the subdivided mesh using the pre-compute values from Step A.

We recommend pre-computing updated vertex positions before subdivision because traversing a coarse mesh is much easier than traversing a subdivided mesh with more elements. For example, for the new vertex in the figure above, how would you traverse the original mesh with 2 triangles to find vertex $A$, $B$, $C$, and $D$? Now how would you traverse the subdivided mesh with 8 triangles to find the same four vertices?

If you choose to follow our recommendation, you may consider using the following member variables of the Vertex and Edge class to facilitate your implementation:

• Vector3D Vertex::newPosition temporarily stores the updated position of a new or old vertex.
• Vector3D Edge::newPosition temporarily stores the position of a new vertex that will ultimately be inserted at the edge midpoint.
• bool Vertex::isNew flags whether a vertex exists in the original mesh or is a new vertex inserted at an edge midpoint by subdivision. This flag may help you determine if an edge should be split or flipped in Step B.
• bool Edge::isNew flags whether an edge exists in the original mesh or is a new edge added by subdivision. This flag may help you determine if an edge should be flipped in Step B.

Important Notes:

• You must initialize Vertex::isNew and Edge::isNew yourself. The input mesh may not have these values initialized for its vertices and edges.
• While pre-computing the updated vertex positions in Step A, you should not change the value of member variable Vector3D Vertex::position because the weighted average is based on vertex positions in the original mesh. (Please take a moment to understand why.) You will, however, need to update Vertex::position in Step C for the now subdivided mesh.

Extra Credit: Support subdivisions with sharp creases. Sharp creases are often desired in 3D polygon meshes, but are not supported by the basic loop subdivision algorithm. You can follow this lecture slide to incorporate creases into subdivision. You may find that the layer of geometric sophistication added by creases would make your subdivided mesh an even stronger contender for the mesh competition in Part 7.

Extra Credit: Support meshes with boundary. You will first need to make sure that your edge split function appropriately handles boundary edges. You do not need to change your edge flip function. You will also need a different weighted average for boundary vertices. See "A Survey of Subdivision-Based Tools for Surface Modeling" for more information.

Extra Credit: Implement additional subdivision schemes. There exist many alternatives to loop subdivision. Triangle subdivision schemes include the Butterfly scheme, the modified Butterfly scheme, and $\sqrt{3}$-Subdivision. One of the most popular subdivision schemes for quadrilateral meshes is Catmull-Clark. There are also special subdivision schemes, such as polar subdivision for handling meshes with vertices of high degree.

Sanity Check

After loading a model from a .dae file, you can press L to subdivide it. Refer back here for a list of controls for Section I Part 2 and onwards. Examples below illustrate the correct behavior of the loop subdivision algorithm. Your implementation should work for other meshes as well, e.g., dae/teapot.dae and dae/cow.dae.

Functions to Modify: Part 6

• MeshResampler::upsample(...)

For Your Writeup: Part 6

• Briefly explain how you implemented the loop subdivision and describe any interesting implementation / debugging tricks you have used.
• Take some notes, as well as some screenshots, of your observations on how meshes behave after loop subdivision. What happens to sharp corners and edges? Can you reduce this effect by pre-splitting some edges?
• Load dae/cube.dae. Perform several iterations of loop subdivision on the cube. Notice that the cube becomes slightly asymmetric after repeated subdivisions. Can you pre-process the cube with edge flips and splits so that the cube subdivides symmetrically? Document these effects and explain why they occur. Also explain how your pre-processing helps alleviate the effects.
• If you have implemented any extra credit extensions, explain what you did and document how they work with screenshots.

Section III: Mesh Competition (Optional, Possible Extra Credit)

Part 7: Design and Edit Your Own Mesh!

In Part 7, you will design your own polygon mesh using the free program Blender and save it as a COLLADA mesh file (.dae). For a baseline starting point, we recommend designing a humanoid mesh with a head, two arms, and two legs. We have created a video tutorial and an article on Blender to guide you through the basics of making a simple humanoid mesh.

Once you have designed your mesh and saved it as a .dae file, you should load it into the meshedit program and subdivide it to smooth it out. The figure below shows the simple humanoid mesh before and after subdivisions, as well as with a shader of environment map reflection applied.

Here are a few ways you can express your creativity:

• Add additional detail to your mesh - fingers, facial features.
• Google "box modeling" (images and videos) to get inspired.
• Investigate additional functionality in Blender to design alternative shapes.
• Programmatically generate a mesh that approximates a 3D fractal or other complex shape.
• Implement loop subdivision while preserving sharp creases, as shown in this lecture slide
• Write a super cool custom shader that makes your mesh look awesome!
• Implement additional geometric operations and demonstrate them on your mesh.

For Your Writeup: Part 7

• Save your best polygon mesh as competition.dae in your docs folder and show us a screenshot of the mesh in your write-up.
• Include a series of screenshots showing your original mesh and your mesh after one and two rounds of subdivision. If you have used custom shaders, include screenshots of your mesh with those shaders applied as well.
• Describe what you have done to enhance your mesh beyond the simple humanoid mesh described in the tutorial.

Friendly Advices From Your GSIs

• Start early. This assignment has multiple parts and you want to manage your time accordingly. Remember that pesky bugs can waste your time like no other; and always keep in mind Hofstadter's Law.
• Part 1 and 2 should be relatively straightforward to implement once you understand Bezier curves and surfaces and de Casteljau algorithm.
• Part 3 to 6 will be more difficult to implement correctly right away since they involve managing pointers, which are exposed to you as iterators. Make sure you test these parts, especially Part 4 and 5, together on a few different meshes. While correct behaviors do not imply correct code, incorrect behaviors do imply incorrect code.
• The optional Part 7 for possible extra credit involves learning how to use Blender, which takes time even with video tutorials. We recommend starting early, in case you have questions. Learning Blender does not depend on any other part of this assignment, so you can do it anytime, perhaps as a nice break from chasing pointers, :).
• Make sure you allocate enough time to do a good job on the write-up!

Submission

Please consult this article on how to submit assignments for CS184. You will submit your code and some deliverables (see below) in a webpage project write-up.

Project Write-Up Guidelines and Instructions

We have provided a simple HTML skeleton in index.html found within the docs folder to help you get started and structure your write-up.

You are also welcome to create your own webpage report from scratch using your own preferred frameworks or tools. However, please follow the same overall structure as described in the deliverables section below.

The goals of your write-up are for you to (1) think about and articulate what you have built and learned in your own words and (2) have a write-up of the project to take away from the class. Your write-up should include the following:

• An overview of the project, including your approach to and implementation for each of the parts, as well as what problems you have encountered and how you solved them. Strive for clarity and succinctness.
• For each part, make sure to include the results described in the corresponding Deliverables section, in addition to your explanation. If you failed to generate any results correctly, provide a brief explanation on why.
• The final, optional part for the mesh competition is where you have the opportunity to be creative and individual! Be sure to provide a good description on what you were going for, what you did, and how you did it, :).
• Clearly indicate any extra credit items you have completed; and provide a thorough explanation and illustration for each of them.

The write-up is one of our main methods to evaluate your work, so it is important to spend the time to do it correctly and thoroughly. Plan ahead to allocate time for the write-up well before the deadline.

Project Write-Up Deliverables and Rubrics

This rubric lists the basic, minimum requirements for your write-up. The content and quality of your write-up are extremely important. You should make sure to at least address all the points listed below. The extra credits are intended for students who want to challenge themselves and explore methods beyond the fundamentals. They are not worth a lot of points, so do not necessarily expect to use extra credit points to make up for lost points elsewhere.

Overview

Give a high-level overview of what you have implemented in this assignment. Think about what you have built as a whole. Share your thoughts on what interesting things you have learned from completing this assignment.

Part 1

• Briefly explain de Casteljau's algorithm and how you implemented it in order to evaluate Bezier curves.
• Take a look at the provided .bzc files and create your own Bezier curve with 6 control points of your choosing. Use this Bezier curve for your screenshots below.
• Show screenshots of each step / level of the evaluation from the original control points down to the final evaluated point. Press E to step through. Toggle C to show the completed Bezier curve as well.
• Show a screenshot of a slightly different Bezier curve by moving the original control points around and modifying the parameter $t$ via mouse scrolling.

Part 2

• Briefly explain how de Casteljau algorithm extends to Bezier surfaces and how you implemented it in order to evaluate Bezier surfaces.
• Show a screenshot of bez/teapot.bez (not .dae) evaluated by your implementation.

Part 3

• Briefly explain how you implemented the area-weighted vertex normals.
• Show screenshots of dae/teapot.dae (not .bez) comparing teapot shading with and without vertex normals. Use Q to toggle default flat shading and Phong shading.

Part 4

• Briefly explain how you implemented the edge flip operation and describe any interesting implementation / debugging tricks you have used.
• Show screenshots of a mesh before and after some edge flips.
• Write about your eventful debugging journey, if you have experienced one.

Part 5

• Briefly explain how you implemented the edge split operation and describe any interesting implementation / debugging tricks you have used.
• Show screenshots of a mesh before and after some edge splits.
• Show screenshots of a mesh before and after a combination of both edge splits and edge flips.
• Write about your eventful debugging journey, if you have experienced one.
• If you have implemented support for boundary edges, show screenshots of your implementation properly handling split operations on boundary edges.

Part 6

• Briefly explain how you implemented the loop subdivision and describe any interesting implementation / debugging tricks you have used.
• Take some notes, as well as some screenshots, of your observations on how meshes behave after loop subdivision. What happens to sharp corners and edges? Can you reduce this effect by pre-splitting some edges?
• Load dae/cube.dae. Perform several iterations of loop subdivision on the cube. Notice that the cube becomes slightly asymmetric after repeated subdivisions. Can you pre-process the cube with edge flips and splits so that the cube subdivides symmetrically? Document these effects and explain why they occur. Also explain how your pre-processing helps alleviate the effects.
• If you have implemented any extra credit extensions, explain what you did and document how they work with screenshots.

Part 7

• Save your best polygon mesh as competition.dae in your docs folder and show us a screenshot of the mesh in your write-up.
• Include a series of screenshots showing your original mesh and your mesh after one and two rounds of subdivision. If you have used custom shaders, include screenshots of your mesh with those shaders applied as well.
• Describe what you have done to enhance your mesh beyond the simple humanoid mesh described in the tutorial.

Website Tips and Advices

• Your main report page should be called index.html.
• Be sure to include and turn in all of the other files, such as images, that are linked in your report!
• Use only relative paths to files, such as "./images/image.jpg".
• Do not use absolulte paths, such as "/Users/student/Desktop/image.jpg".
• Pay close attention to your file extensions. Remember that on UNIX systems, such as the instructional machines, capitalization matters (.png != .jpeg != .jpg != .JPG).
• Be sure to adjust the permissions on your files so that they are world readable. For more information, please see this tutorial.
• Start assembling your webpage early to make sure you have a handle on how to edit the HTML code to insert images and format sections.