CS 348C Project Presentation

CS 348C - Modeling in Computer Graphics
Fall quarter, 1995
Coordinator: Apostolos Lerios

The project presentation is a public 25 minute exposition of a student project, summarizing the project goal, simulation method and results, lessons learned and problems encountered. It is followed by a 5 minute question and answer session.

Content

The following is the suggested format of a project presentation. Students may deviate from this outline in terms of structure and timing, but not basic content, as their individual projects demand. For example, the presentation parts below might be interspersed in time, in order to

motivate audience interest, e.g. by showing real world footage of a natural phenomenon early on,
maintain audience interest, which wanes if a technical discussion lasts too long, e.g. by showing simulation results during the presentation of the simulation method, or
elucidate a complex simulation method, again by showing simulation results early on.

Introduction, or What and Why? (2 minutes)

The students state the project area and concrete goal. In this part of the presentation, the speakers excite the audience, so that it will attentively listen to the next part.

Simulation method, or How? (12 minutes)

The students discuss the work they did for the project. This may be done in the form of a detailed timeline, covering initial brainstorming, successes, failures, lessons learned, and final approach. Depending on the project, the following issues are addressed during this part:

What is the fundamental simulation method, e.g. a particle system, a finite-element method?
Which aspects of the natural phenomenon does the model reproduce reliably? In what ways does the model reflect the real phenomenon, e.g. which forces are taken into account during a simulation?
What are the limitations of the model, e.g. which forces does it ignore?
What parameters does the model require the user to provide? How intuitive are they?
In what steps does the simulation proceed, e.g. what happens at each time step of a particle system simulation?
How long does it take to run the model on average data sets? On what hardware? Does the implementation contain any algorithmic optimizations, e.g. are bounding boxes used to optimize collision calculations?

This part is not overly technical. While a fundamental equation or two may be presented, details such as the data structures used in the implementation are not covered (unless the concrete goal of the project is the design of such data structures in order to improve performance).

Results, or Ta daa! (10 minutes)

The students present the final results of their project. The format of this part depends on the project and may comprise any of the following:

Animations showing the results of simulations. While students may composite the results of their simulations on top of hand-animated or filmed imagery, they carefully distinguish the two elements: to this end, two animations are presented, one with and one without composited elements. Animations are transferred on VHS videotape using the Abekas system in the CIS laboratory; MPEG animation are low quality and too small to be comfortably viewed by a large audience.
Filmed video footage of the natural phenomenon, possibly borrowed from Stanford's large collection of videotapes.
A collection of still images, showing the results of simulations. Still images, like animations, may be transferred on VHS videotape for easier viewing.
A live demonstration of the simulator's GUI, which allows the user to interactively experiment with the model's parameters. The Lyon Lamb video scan converter system in the CIS laboratory may be used to generate record demo sessions on VHS videotape.

It is important to acknowledge any commercial software used to generate images and animations, as well as libraries used in the implementation (e.g. Open Inventor for the GUI or Numerical Recipes in C for the computational core).

Acknowledgments, or Thank you! (1 minute)

The students list the individuals or organizations who helped them significantly in their projects. For example, the students may mention organizations who provided computing equipment or data sets, or authors of relevant papers who took the time to provide insights, suggestions, or clarifications on their research.

Questions and answers, or Huh? (5 minutes)

The students take questions from the audience. Students should be prepared to address critical remarks on their models, and justify their decisions. As some members of the audience will have a lot of experience with related work, possibly even published work in the area themselves, students should be courteous in their criticisms of past work, and freely admit ignorance when appropriate.

Reminders

The project presentations are open to the general public, and are sufficiently well advertised that a significant number of potential employers, potential research advisors, and fellow students will attend. Although the audience understands that students have pulled all-nighters the night before the presentations, they expect a well-planned talk. The following equipment is available to the students during their presentations, in order to facilitate and encourage high-quality presentations:

Overhead transparency projector and screen.
VHS VCR and TV.
SGI Indigo workstations.

Last update: 13 December 1995 by Apostolos "Toli" Lerios

tolis@cs.stanford.edu