OFFtoVRLM v0.3 released

Since many 3D models (especially CAD models) are stored in the STL format, I decided to include in OFFtoVRML prototype the capability to read from this type of file. Thus, among some other functionalities, such as reading OFF segmented models, and a few solved bugs, version 0.3 reads files in STL ASCII format. Bellow is a view of the VRML produced from a model extracted from the PRECISE Engineering Shape Benchmark. Another useful new feature is the possibility of including the reference axis in the VRML file.

The current stable version of the prototype is available for download [ZIP 136KB].

VRML model produced from an STL file.

Computing the Cord and Angle Histogram

As a first step during the development of a prototype for computing descriptors for 3D shapes, I implemented the Cord and Angle Histogram (CAH) descriptor. Below are the results of the computation for the dog model I often use (m87 from the PSB). Additionally, you can see the corresponding VRML model showing the estimated cords.

Estimated cords colored according to length and angles with reference planes.

Computed cord and angle histograms

OFFtoVRLM v0.2 released

After a couple of changes, this prototype is now able to generate VRML code with explicit edges and showing both vertex and face normal for models with a large number of triangles. For instance, the Stanford Bunny with 70K polygons is processed in less then ten seconds, generating a 16.5MB VRML file containing the mesh and showing its convex hull, bounding box and sphere, polygon edges and normals at faces and vertices. A larger file, the 345K polygons Armadillo, is processed in around fifty seconds, generating a 70MB VRML file.

For illustration purposes we processed the 'Dino' model from AIM@SHAPE shape repository. It has around 50K polygons and below I show a couple of snapshots of the resulting VRLM model, containing normals and explicit edges.

The current stable version of the prototype is available for download [ZIP 118KB].

VRML model of 'Dino'

Close-up illustrating the normals and polygon edges

Computation of vertex normals

Resuming the development of my OFF to VRML converter, I added one more feature: the computation of vertex normals. For this purpose I follow the method described in the Computer Graphics bible, Foley et.al "Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice in C" . In my approach I use the area of the adjacent polygons to determine the length of the normal vector.

Model with vertex normals and colored according to distance to barycenter

New version of QiQA prototype

After a few weeks of hard work, the core of the "Quick Quotation Assistant" (QiQA) prototype was redesigned from scratch. Although the interface remains unchanged (except for a minor detail on QiQA-Builder) the implementation of algorithms is now absolutely different. These are now independent from each other, whilst in the previous version all were implemented together,with several cross-dependencies and lots of unnecessary functionalities. The current version of the prototype and a small drawing collection are available at the QiQA software download page.

A long lasting bug was solved!

Since the beginning of the QiQA prototype development I have been battling with a weird problem. The application just ended unexpectedly while processing some drawings during database building. However, I never had the opportunity to study this problem properly. Instead I choose to skip the problematic drawings, flagging them as "nor processable".

Fortunately, thanks to recent improvements in the feature extraction algorithms, the drawing processing is much faster than before (at least ten times faster). Thus, I decided to focus on the above referred problem.

After identifying a drawing that triggers the above referred error, I patiently started to debug the code. After several boring hours of detailed analysis, I finally found the portion of the code that causes this damned error.

Code exit point.

It was during the access to a list within the CALI code, developed by Manuel João da Fonseca. When the given index value is outside the valid bounds, this library simply calls the C++ "exit" function. And that's it. But why and when does this happen? During the computation of convex hull of the "CIScribble".

The source of the problem

Indeed, it seems to be missing a test in the "while" sentence, which allows a variable with a unacceptably low value to be used as index to access a list. Therefore, for now the solution was just adding a test to the "while" test expression and voilá... it works fine.

Modular QiQA

The main problem with QiQA prototype was the time it took to process a collection. This was due to a unstructured design. Indeed, this prototype was built from my master thesis work, by simple adding functionalities. The result of this evolution was a complex program with lots of unnecessary code, used during the years for several purposes and never removed.

To improve its efficiency I redesigned the application from scratch, focusing now on modularity. Therefore, I produced a modular solution, based on a set of packages, shown below.

QiQA solution packages