Worksheet Two

This worksheet was given just a week after worksheet one. It was aimed at narrowing down the area of research and focusing in on the research question. At this point I truly started looking in to the areas of research that were already being undertaken in voxels and volumetric data.

1. Formulate a research question for your project. Details on the research question can be found in presentation 1 in the module folder.

Using a voxel based approach to creating deformable and destructible objects what are the advantages over using traditional methods?
This is what I have in mind for my research question so far. It will definitely lie along these lines but may well change slightly as I may not need to do a study in to comparing with traditional techniques and may change it to an investigation into what ways voxels can be used to create deformable and destructible objects.

2. When developing a research question you must produce a question that can be answered by performing literature research, practical experimentation and critical analysis. The question should also focus the activities of your project.

a) What is the focus of your project?

The focus of my honours project is most definitely around the use of voxels in creating deformable and destructible objects in real time 3d applications. It seems that this is one of the advantageous characteristics.

b) What information do you need to find out about?

Having already started investigating their properties the first thing that I had to research was quad trees, octrees and KD tress. These types of data structures are fundamental to representing voxel data in a fast and efficient manner. I will also have to look into how to add normal maps and other shaders based effects to the data set to allow for more realistic looking models.
I will also need to look into the other side of the question and figure out how destroyable objects are created in traditional mesh methods.

c) What Experimental work do you need to perform?

So far I have began experimental work with quadtrees. I have created the data structures to allow the complete destruction of a quad. The next logical step for me after this is to extend it into 3 dimensions using an octree and then to optimise it using a KD tree if necessary. I will also need to look into being able to stream data from main memory onto the graphics cards memory as the data sets for the voxels can be very large, possibly as high as 10243. Also the use of threading may be required to keep everything happening in real time while the large data sets are recalculated. To help with this I may look into using SDK's that allow for calculations to be carried out on the graphics card rather than on the CPU. Once I have done this I will need to look into the traditional mesh methods and compare characteristics like speed, memory usage and realism as some examples.

3. How will the information that you obtain in 2 allow you to answer the research question?

The information that I obtain through the experimental work will allow me to draw up tables of data to compare performance of the two different methods and therefore draw conclusions from it to answer the research question.