igl | Interactive Geometry Lab | ETH Zurich | Shape Modeling and Geometry Processing

course no.: 252-0538-00
semester: Spring 2021
lecturer: Olga Sorkine-Hornung
assistants: Floor Verhoeven, Guirec Maloisel, Shihao Wu, Philipp Herholz
lecture: Wed 10-12; Zoom link
exercise: Fri 11-12; Zoom link
ECTS credit: 8 credits

announcements

10.02.21: Course webpage updated. Welcome!; All live stream lectures will take place in Zoom without video recording.

overview

Recent advances in 3D digital geometry processing have created a plenitude of novel concepts for the mathematical representation and interactive manipulation of geometric models. This course covers the fundamentals and some of the latest developments in geometric modeling and digital geometry processing. Topics include surface modeling based on polygonal meshes, surface reconstruction, mesh improvement, discrete differential geometry, interactive shape editing, skinning animation, architectural and structure-aware geometric modeling, geometry for 3D computational fabrication.

Course objectives

The students will learn how to design, program and analyze algorithms and systems for interactive 3D shape modeling and digital geometry processing.

Course work and performance assessment

There will be 5 mandatory programming assignments and one slightly larger programming group project. A code framework will be provided that allows you to experiment with various algorithms without having to bother much about software infrastructure. The weight of the homework assignments in the final grade will be 100%. There will be no written exam this year.

Prerequisites

Introduction to Computer Graphics or Visual Computing or a similar course, experience with C++ programming. Some background in geometric computing is helpful, but not necessary.

schedule and course notes

Note: Course notes and homework materials are only accessible within the ETH network (addresses 129.132.*). Use VPN to access from outside.

The course schedule is tentative and will be adjusted along the way.

24.02.21: Introduction.
Shape representations.
26.02.21: [Exercise 1 handout]
03.03.21: Geometry acquisition. Meshes.
05.03.21: Intro to libigl.
10.03.21: Surface reconstruction.
12.03.21: [Exercise 2 handout]
17.03.21: Normal estimation and PCA.
Discrete differential geometry - Curves, part I.
19.03.21: 3D Point set processing.
24.03.21: Discrete differential geometry - Curves, part II.
Discrete differential geometry - Surfaces, part I.
26.03.21: [Exercise 3 handout]
31.03.21: Discrete differential geometry - Surfaces, part II.
Mesh smoothing.
02.04.21: Easter holiday.
07.04.21: Easter holiday.
09.04.21: Easter holiday.
14.04.21: Parameterization I.
16.04.21: [Grading of Exercise 2]
21.04.21: Parameterization II.
Written notes.
23.04.21: [Exercise 4 handout].
28.04.21: Introduction to mesh editing. Variational surface based deformation I.
30.04.21: [Exercise 5 handout].
05.05.21: Variational surface based deformation II. ARAP surface modeling.
07.05.21: Exercise 5 Q&A.
12.05.21: Space deformations. Skeletal animation and skinning.
14.05.21: [Exercise 6 handout]
19.05.21: No lecture, work on projects.
21.05.21: [Grading of Exercise 5]
26.05.21: Guest lecture from industry: Dr. Thabo Beeler (Google)
28.05.21: TBD.
02.06.21: [Grading of Exercise 6]
04.06.21: TBD.

homework assignments

For the purposes of this class we will be using GitHub. You can find all instructions on the repository's webpage, please follow them carefully.

Note: Course notes and assignment slides are only accessible within the ETH network (addresses 129.132.*). Use VPN to access from outside.

Exercise 1: Mesh "Hello World"

In this exercise you will familiarize yourself with the provided code framework and perform some basic operations on a mesh.

Due Date :: 12.03.2021, 10:00
Slides:: Exercise Session 26.02.21
Assignment:: Assignment 1

Exercise 2: Surface reconstruction

In this exercise you will compute a water-tight surface mesh by fitting an implicit function to point cloud.

We will check your demos via Zoom.

Due Date :: 16.04.2021, 11:00
Slides:: Exercise Session 12.03.21
Assignment:: Assignment 2

Exercise 3: Discrete differential properties and smoothing

In this exercise you will experiment with various fundamental discrete differential quantities and implement mesh smoothing flows.

Due Date :: 23.04.2021, 10:00
Slides:: Exercise Session 26.03.2021
Assignment:: Assignment 3

Exercise 4: Mesh parameterization

In this exercise you will parameterize a mesh by minimizing four different distortion measures, with fixed or free boundaries. Visualize the distortion by color coding.

Due Date :: 14.05.2021, 10:00
Slides:: Exercise Session 23.04.2021
Assignment:: Assignment 4

Exercise 5: Shape deformation

In this exercise, you will implement an algorithm to interactively deform 3D models. You will construct a two-level multi-resolution surface representation and use naive Laplacian editing to deform it.