User:NyahCh3ck20/Proposal

Personal Information

NAME : Check Nyah Watad Wallah EMAIL: check.nyah@gmail.com IRC: Ch3ck

Background Information

I am a freshman Computer Engineering Student at the University of Buea, South West Region,Cameroon. After wining the 1st prize for Programming among the freshman year students at my university. I have founded a programmers club to help develop the coding skills among members of my university community

Project Information

MATRIX PULL ROUTINE FOR PERFORMING THE OPPOSITE OF THE MATRIX

              PUSH ON GEOMETRY.

Brief Project summary

The pull routine takes a specific node on a CSG tree, walking down to the primitive shapes restoring the geometric transformations(scaling, translation or rotations) at each stage down the CSG tree traversal based on reversing all the geometric transformations that occured on the primitive shapes located at the leaf. Pull routine also stores the local coordinate systems ate each point during the traversal from the primitives up to the given initial node. All transformation matrices visited along the tree will be set to their original tranformation matrices. This command will fail if no changes occured to the primitive shapes at the leaves of the csg tree.

Detailed Project Description

Introduction

The Pull/unpush command/routine is a high priority project for BRL-CAD. The pull command seeks to restore the original state of the csg tree from any particular node after the push command has been executed. However, the Push command is used to walk the geometry tree from a specified top to the primitive level, collecting the matrix transformations such as (translations, rotations or scales) applied to new assemblies using matrix edits(oed command). The push then applies the matrix tranformation parameters to the primitives, eliminationg the need for storing the various matrix transformations thereby setting them to identity matrices. This process however looses any local coorrdinate system used in constructing the geometric objects. The pull routine seeks to restore the original tree state by reversing any tranformation operations performed on the primitive shapes from a designated top node on the csg tree. Here, I would like to show my detailed proposal in solving this summer's project. My code patch will have a sample routine that takes as argument a designated node(such as a primitive) and performs the Inverse of any rotation, Inverse of any translation and the inverse of a scale.) and performs the matrix inverse the primitive matrix.

The Working of the Pull Routine

Syntax pull <objects>

arguments <objects> valid brlcad objects currently in database.

The Pull routine takes as arguments a valid object, moves down the tree and performs an inverse rotation which is stored in a list, inverse scale and inverse translation which is stored on the list and transforms the primitive object by the Inverse transformations and recursively inserts the original matrix transformations on the tree as it moves up from the primitive

Matrix Transformations BRL-CAD uses three main transformations on objects stored in a 4x4 matrix defined by 'mat_t' data type Assuming the 4x4 matrix is represented as shown below [0 ][ 1][ 2][ 3] [4 ][ 5][ 6][ 7] [ 8][9 ][10][11] [12][13][14][15]

The rotation operation is represented by the 3x3 matrix [0 ][ 1][2 ] [3 ][ 4][ 5] [6 ][ 7][ 8]

The scale transformation is represented by the diagonal matrix [0][4][ 8] or [0] 0 0 0 0 [4] 0 0 0 0 [8] 0 0 0 0 1

The translation transformation is represented by 1 0 0 [3] 0 1 0 [7] 0 0 1 [11] 0 0 0 1

The Inverse of the various transformations will be computed by the routine

/**************************************************************** void InverseTransform(mat_t transf); shown in the code patch

     **********        or  ***************
   a preprocessor directive
#define InverseTransform(transf)   //so as to increase speed of execution.
 **************************************************************************/

The Mathematics of the Inverse Transformation

Inverse Rotation: In Euclidean geometry, a rotation is an example of an isometry, a transformation that moves points without changing the distances between them. Rotations are distinguished from other isometries by two additional properties: they leave (at least) one point fixed, and they leave "handedness" unchanged. Since BLR-CAD represents a rotation by the 3x3 matrix, an Inverse of a rotation would be the transpose of the 3x3 matrix so if RotA(3x3 rotation), Inverse(RotA) = Transpose(RotA).

Inverse Scale: Scaling transformations stretch or shrink a given coordinate system and as a result change lengths and angles. So, scaling is not an Euclidean transformation. The meaning of scaling is making the new scale of a coordinate direction p times larger. In other words, the x coordinate is "enlarged" p times. This requirement satisfies x' = p x and therefore x = x'/p. Scaling can be applied to all axes, each with a different scaling factor. For example, if the x-, y- and z-axis are scaled with scaling factors p, q and r, respectively, the inverse transformation matrix is: Inv(SclA) = 1/p 0 0 0 1/q 0 0 0 1/r

Inverse Translation: A translation is an affine transformation with no fixed points. Matrix multiplications always have the origin as a fixed point. Nevertheless, there is a common workaround using homogeneous coordinates to represent a translation of a vector space with matrix multiplication: Write the 3-dimensional vector w = (wx, wy, wz) using 4 homogeneous coordinates as w = (wx, wy, wz, 1). so the Inverse of a translation is simply the reverse of the matrix. if TrnA = (a, b ,c , d) Inverse(TrnA) = (-a, -b, -c, -d)

Overall Structure Pull routine

The pull routine will use the inverse transformations to restore the primitive back to its original state, taking note of the local geometric transformations after each inverse transformation which will be stored together with the original matrix transformations as it moves back up the tree.

However,brlcad already has the functionality for performing matrix operations on objects as in(src/libged/push.c, xpush.c). I can use the InverseTransf() as a subroutine in the pull operation and simply use the MAT_COPY directive to copy the various 4x4 original matrix transformations to the corresponding node up the tree from the leaf. So, here is a summary of the pull command

*. create a structure to hold the original matrix and corresponding local coordinate systems while calling InverseTranf().

*. create a loop to move down the tree to the leaf nodes while recording the transformations *. pull leaf() routine : which runs in parallel restore the original state of the primitive objects.(leafs) *. mat_restore() routine: which restores the original matrix transformation and coordinate system at each node. Tests and Verification:

I believe test driven development would be key in finding and fixing problems with the pull routine and then with more tests to ensure the code functions correctly and its bulletproof to all forms of object inputs. This will be enhanced with the creation of a special regression test for the pull command to avoid modification of unwanted nodes/objects.Also, this command will be included among the MGED commands and a well written manual will be made so support the usage of the command.

Links

[1] CodePatch(Sample linked list that holds the matrices and inverses and corresponding directories together with the sample implementation of the Inverse of a transformation function). Link:

[2] Geometric Transformations and Inverses:

   www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/COURSES/cs3621/.../geometry/geo-tran.html
   www.cg.info.hiroshima-cu.ac.jp/~miyazaki/knowledge/teche53.html

Deliverables

   Implementation of the Inverse transformation routine. and other pull subroutines(mat_restore()).
   Implementation of the complete pull routine with further testing. 
   Integration  of the Pull routine into MGED command interface together with Documentation containing(summary together with usage capabilities)
    

Development schedule

July 1st (~ 3 weeks)

       Study BRLCAD Manuals and other Documentation on the Push Command
       Discuss with other developers
       Study the (src/libged , /include ) libraries and the implementation
       push/xpush commands.
       Discuss more coding specifications and implementations details with   
       mentor/other developers

==July 21(1 week)

       Implementation of the Inverse Transformations with
           determination of original matrix transformations
       Tests on sample primitive matrices

July 28 - Aug 18(4 weeks)

Implementation of do_restore() routine which traverses nodes restoring the original matrix

       Implementation of pull routine(pull_leaf() and others)
          Testing and functionality verification of function
          
       Mid-term evaluation in July 29 - Aug. 2 
       

Aug. 19 - Sept 14 (4 weeks)

       Finalization of complete pull routine 
        
       Tests
           Tests on the final pull routine on primitives 
           
        Integration of Pull into MGED command interface.
           Testing of functionality of command 
           and debugging

Sept 15 - Sept 21(1 week)

   	Tests
   		Fix bugs and improve performance of routine
   	Documentation and code clean up
   	

Sept 23 - Sept 27(1 week)

   	Final Evaluation
   	Submission of Final code to Google.

Time availability

I would be able to offer over 40 hours on the project. However, Our Second Semester ends late june or early july and our next semester begins in early October.

Why BRL-CAD?

From the day i read the Document "How to become a Computer Hacker" by Eric S. Raymond, I started coding very seriously and praying for the day i would become a true hacker by contributing code to the opensource community. I believe working with brlcad this year will give the joy of working on my first real opensource project. I will really cherish the experience of having contributed code to a great organizaton like BRLCAD.

Why me ?

I believe having won the prize as the best computer programmer in my freshman class at my university I would be capable of contributing software to brlcad and the opensource commmunity. I see this brlcad project as a challenge to gain both the respect of brlcad geeks and other great programmers which would give me additional confidence in climbing the ladder of hackerdom. I pray that you give me this great opportunity to greatly impact humanity and the world using software.