Department of Computer Graphics Technology Degree Theses

DEFINING INDUSTRY EXPECTATIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS OF ART AND TECHNOLOGY CO-CREATIVITY

Vanessa C. Brasfield — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 07:40:20 PDT

The primary purpose of this study was to establish whether or not students and industry professionals share the same views about what students should be learning in animation education, what skills are necessary, and whether or not students graduating with a bachelor’s degree would be adequately prepared for an entry level position. To establish where misconceptions lie, surveys were issued to three groups: undergraduate students, post-graduate students, and industry professionals. These surveys were then analyzed using paired t-test for validation and question relevance, and ANOVA models to establish whether or not groups shared viewpoints. These data established significance within the results such that there were many misconceptions that exist between all three groups, with a secondary effect showing that overall, many are dissatisfied with animation education’s lack of co-creativity. These data suggest that views are drastically different, and that changes should be made to the animation curricula in order to remove misconceptions that do exist. Suggestions and future work better discuss ways to achieve agreement and satisfaction across all groups

Social Media Marketing in a Small Business: A Case Study

Sarah Cox — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 07:40:19 PDT

In today’s social media driven environment, it is essential that small businesses understand Facebook, Twitter, and the strategies behind using social media for growing their business. Unfortunately, many small businesses do not have a strategy when they begin using social media. The purpose of this study is to understand how the owner of a small business, recognized for using social media to grow the business, uses social media to engage consumers. A case study is presented, followed by an in-depth interview with the small business owner, and accompanied by an analysis of the business’s Facebook and Twitter posts. The results of the case study reveal the different strategies the owner uses to build and maintain relationships with consumers. The study concludes with a discussion of the lessons learned from the research: networking and creating relationships with other businesses, increases brand exposure; focusing more on relationships than sales, increases sales; interesting content promotes interaction; and one main barrier to entry is a learning curve.

EFFECTS OF AUGMENTED REALITY PRESENTATIONS ON CONSUMER'S VISUAL PERCEPTION OF FLOOR PLANS

April L. Lutheran — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 07:35:13 PDT

Home architects and designers use many types of presentation drawings to convey design ideas. Augmented reality is a relatively new technology that can be used to aid in design and marketing for residential builders. An augmented reality presentation provides a more complete idea of a design than other presentations such as 3D model renderings and hand drawn artist sketches. While designers are accustomed to visualizing 2D plans, this task is difficult for home buyers. This difficulty has been associated with lower spatial ability in people who are not accustomed to reviewing plans. Augmented reality can be used to make visualization easier and help developers save on marketing expenses. The use of augmented reality could lower sales and marketing expense by reducing the number of model homes built to help potential buyers visualize new concepts. While this technology has been studied by many industries, very little research has been done on how it could benefit residential builders. The research conducted in this study sets a baseline of consumers opinions on viewing and augmented reality presentation.

An Analysis of Step, Jt, and Pdf Format Translation Between Constraint-based Cad Systems with a Benchmark Model

Dillon McKenzie-Veal — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 07:35:12 PDT

This research was conducted to provide greater depth into the ability of STEP AP 203 Edition 2, JT, and 3D PDF to translate and preserve information while using a benchmark model. The benchmark model was designed based on four industry models and created natively in the five industry leading 3D CAD programs. The native CAD program models were translated using STEP, JT, and 3D PDF. Several criteria were analyzed along the paths of translation from one disparate CAD program to another. Along with the analysis of the three interoperable file formats a survey was conducted to determine how well the benchmark model captures what is used in industry and whether a benchmark model could be used for an industry or company. Several industry experts participated in the survey to determine what important criteria does a potential benchmark model need to capture. The conclusions of the research show that neither interoperable file format out-performs the other for a majority of the analysis criteria. The survey suggests that a benchmark model could be used in an industry or company and the general structure of this benchmark.

The Effects of Microblogging in the Classroom on Communication

Alex Vernacchia — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 07:25:18 PDT

Research on the Relationship between Story and the Popularity of Animated Movies

Meng Wang — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 07:25:16 PDT

Over the past ten years, animated films have become increasingly more important to the movie industry. Their increasing popularity is evident when looking at box office hits like Shrek, Kongfu Panda, and Iceage, to name a few.

No one will deny that some animated movies are more attractive to audiences than others. Previous studies show that a film’s story is the decisive factor that makes a film a success or a flop. The story plays a central role in bringing in an audience and thus determing a film’s critical acclaim and financial success. The story concept ties together various elements that are all closely related and together contribute to the overall effect of an animated film. This research aims to explore the relationship between an animated film’s story and its popularity in order to better understand what makes a successful film as well as provide a useful reference for animation studios as they are deciding whether or not to pursue a certain script.

User Assisted Tree Reconstruction from Point Clouds

William P. Leavenworth II — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 07:25:15 PDT

LIDAR is a useful tool for quickly digitalizing real world objects, but it usually takes some effort to produce a recognizable object from the raw input. When the object is a tree, the challenge is to create a three‐dimensional model that represents its general shape, while avoiding the influence of undersampling and noise. In the method developed for this research, the user creates a sketch overlaying a display of the raw input data. Each node in the sketch creates an estimated slice of the tree skeleton at that point, and the slices are connected according to the connectivity of the sketch. Both user‐guided and automated sketches are tested. Analysis is performed by simulating the LIDAR scan process on pre‐existing three‐dimensional tree models, and then comparing the surface of the reconstruction to that of the original. The results of the method are presented on scans of both synthetic and real trees. It is shown that the output meshes follow the general shapes of the trees, although the influence of undersampling and noise can still be found.

Towards the Development of Cost Metrics for Inadequate Interoperability

Kyle L. Sigo — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 07:20:14 PDT

This study was conducted in order to validate a set of interoperability cost metrics that were designed and developed to assess the impacts of inadequate interoperability with regard to the exchange of CAD data in product development organizations in the aerospace and automotive industries. A set of surveys, designed to target the specific cost factors of the various components of inadequate interoperability, were developed and sent to individuals in the aerospace and automotive sectors. The survey responses shed light on the magnitude of the costs that product development organizations in the aerospace and automotive industries incur in pursuit of interoperability and as a result of inadequate interoperability with regard to data exchange. The study concludes with an analysis of the inadequate interoperability costs incurred in the aerospace and automotive industries. This research is not intended to identify the solution to inadequate interoperability, but instead to provide the tools to assess and quantify the impacts in order to build awareness of the problem and, ultimately, support for a standardized solution.

Recruiting for Higher Education: The Roles that Print, Web, and Social Media Play in the Decision Process for Prospective Students

Brandon X. Karcher — Tue, 01 May 2012 06:52:57 PDT

Recruiting in higher education is a process that has been an evolving process since it first began. The most traditional methods for recruiting have been through print, web, and campus visits. However, with new social media like Facebook, Twitter, and other services, many universities have adopted the new media for recruiting purposes. Social media, coupled with a more technologically adept population of prospective students forces universities and colleges to look at an increasing number of mediums for recruiting. There is a lack of literature that documents the usefulness of the newer social media outlets. This study was designed to determine how effective different media (print, web, and social media) is in recruiting prospective students, and also to determine who influenced the students in the decision making process. For this research, first semester freshmen in the College of Technology at Purdue University were surveyed to determine how print, web, and social media is perceived by students. This paper will detail the results of the web survey conducted in the Spring of 2011.

WHAT IS THE EFFECT OF REAL VERSUS AUGMENTED MODELS FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SPATIAL ABILITY BASED ON HAPTIC OR VISUAL LEARNING STYLE OF ENTRY-LEVEL ENGINEERING GRAPHICS STUDENTS?

Katie L. Huffman — Tue, 01 May 2012 06:51:20 PDT

This research study conducted during the Fall Semester of 2011 at Purdue University compared the use of augmented reality and real blocks instructional methods, for advancing spatial abilities in students of different learning styles (visual/haptic). This study implemented augmented reality and real models as visualization aids for first year engineering students enrolled in an entry level engineering graphics course. This thesis presents the significance of this research study, the research methodology, and the statistical findings. The results of the study conclude that there is no significant interaction between learning style of visual or haptic and instructional method of augmented reality or real blocks. This result infers that either instructional method would aid students in advancing visualization skills equally. This thesis suggests future studies and applications for the integration of both augmented and real models as visualization aids to advance the spatial abilities of introductory engineering students.

Using A Serious Game To Motivate High School Students To Want To Learn About History

Marin M. Petkov — Tue, 01 May 2012 06:03:12 PDT

Serious games are games, whose primary goal is not entertainment, but instead
education (Michael & Chen, 2005). They have the capability of presenting the
educational material into a way that is more engaging than traditional classroom
instruction. The researcher has decided to develop a serious game called
National Pastime. National Pastime is an online role playing game with the main
goal of motivating high school students to learn about the Japanese internment
camps that were established in the United States during World War II. The game
intends to improve the students’ motivation with its engaging story and gameplay.

Adopting Game Technology for Architectural Visualization

Scott A. Schroeder — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:58:24 PDT

Current methods to display a new home in the architectural visualization industry involve long render times and hundreds of frames that require rendering. Many times, these virtual tours that are produced are slow, methodical, and limit the viewer's perspective of the home. This research looks into using computer game engines to display the virtual tour in real time, thus removing the long render time requirements and limited viewer perspective.

GPU-Based Global Illumination Using Lightcuts

Tong Zhang — Mon, 09 May 2011 05:23:00 PDT

Global Illumination aims to generate high quality images. But due to its high
requirements, it is usually quite slow. Research documented in this thesis was
intended to offer a hardware and software combined acceleration solution to
global illumination. The GPU (using CUDA) was the hardware part of the whole
method that applied parallelism to increase performance; the “Lightcuts”
algorithm proposed by Walter (2005) at SIGGRAPH 2005 acted as the software
method. As the results demonstrated in this thesis, this combined method offers
a satisfactory performance boost effect for relatively complex scenes.

Stereoscopic Visualization as a Tool For Learning Astronomy Concepts

Norman M. Joseph — Fri, 06 May 2011 03:41:55 PDT

Three-dimensional (3D) visualization is becoming an extensively used educational tool. 3D visualization tends to be most useful when demonstrating concepts involving the very large – such as astronomy, or the very small – such as nanotechnology. Stereo visualization allows students to familiarize and immerse themselves in worlds which are difficult or impossible to experience in real life. This study will evaluate the educational benefit of teaching lessons involving a highly spatially-oriented topic (astronomy) using stereoscopic visualization technology.

We have used a stereoscopic visualization system, installed in a classroom, to deploy 3D simulation packages for use in classroom instruction. This educational tool is currently being used for two descriptive astronomy courses in the Physics department, which involve visualization of the galaxies and the Solar System. These courses are taken by students from various departments.

This study used a 3D simulation software developed to view the local universe containing visualizations of the Local Group of galaxies and our Solar System, which was presented using stereographic projection. This interactive software allows the user to navigate through a simulation of the Local Group of galaxies, looking at various galaxies in the Group, navigating from one galaxy to another and measuring the distance between galaxies. The software also allows the user to navigate in a simulation of our Solar System and view the planets that revolve around the sun. The objects in this simulation are kept in relative scale to one another so that students can understand the large variation in sizes of objects found in the universe. The relative scale also allows students to increase their perception of the velocity required to travel the distance between two objects, two planets or even two galaxies.

After conducting the study with 153 students, the data analysis revealed that both the simulation software presented using a two-dimensional perspective and the simulation software presented using the stereoscopic projection system while wearing 3D glasses helped the students learn more compared to the traditionally used PowerPoint presentation. For the current classroom setting, however, the simulation software that was presented using a two-dimensional perspective and the simulation software that was presented using the stereoscopic projection system while wearing 3D glasses were not found to have a significant difference in the amount of information learnt by the students.

Comparisons Between Educational Map Software Displaying Soil Data

Laura A. Kocur — Fri, 06 May 2011 03:41:53 PDT

The use of technology in the classroom is becoming more widespread, and the area of agronomy is no different. Utilization of various mapping technology is more common in instructional components in the classroom, although the impacts of software usability have not yet been explored. Maps available over the Internet are identified as an area in which usability is not known, nor are there any fixed standards or conventions to govern the display of them. The recently developed mapping prototype is intended to increase accessibility to map data used in class, as well as make it easier to use the data. A comparison between this prototype and other established map software was conducted to determine the relative usability and the differences between the compared software. The findings of this study indicate the prototype yielded a higher rate of correct response. Also, the simpler interface of the prototype was preferred by students while answering content-related questions.

Visual Learning Styles Among Digital Natives

Eric Palmer — Fri, 06 May 2011 03:41:50 PDT

This study explored the concept of digital nativity and its educational implications, including application of the learning styles hypothesis. The concept of digital natives, first put forth by Marc Prensky, introduced the notion that individuals raised in a technological environment have developed in such a way as to utilize information differently than the non-native generations before them. This study examined the possibility that these differences may include an increased efficiency in the utilization of narrative imagery versus textual information. The potential benefit of utilizing narrative imagery as an instructional tool is discussed. An experimental test application was developed for the purpose of identifying any relevant learning trends among the digital native subject pool tested in this study. The results of this experiment were statistically analyzed to reveal the significance of the research. This analysis suggested a possible trend toward multimodal learning styles in the subject pool as well as indicating that digital natives may in fact utilize visual information more efficiently than textual information, reducing the training time requirement by nearly half.

How do Millennial Engineering and Technology Students Experience Learning Through Traditional Teaching Methods Employed in the University Setting?

Elizabeth A. Howard — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 08:41:33 PDT

The purpose of the study was to document and analyze how Millennial engineering and technology students experience learning in large lecture classrooms. To help achieve this purpose, perceptions Millennials have toward traditional teaching methods employed in large lecture classes were analyzed and discussed. Additionally, this study documented how Millennials experienced technology within large lecture classrooms. A learning model depicting how Millennials experience learning within the large lecture classroom was created based on the results of this study. This model employed three separate tools utilized within the large lecture classroom. These tools: Lecture, Technology, and Homework, work together to synthesize learning for the students. The findings from this study were analyzed to help identify whether change is needed in the large lecture classroom structure. Recommendations based on the findings of this study were provided.