Full Name:             Kevin Mullane

Title of Project:      Procedural Modelling of Cities implemented as a Blender Plug-In

Supervisors:           Kevin Glass
                                Shaun Bangay

Date:                       08 March 2007

Previous Short Term Objectives:

Road Generation Method
A short term objective of this week has been to decide on an appropriate road network generation method and begin to develop the required algorithm.

Implementation in OpenGL
Another short term goal for the week was the implementation of some of the relevant geometry of this project in an OpenGL framework.

Project Proposal
The final project proposals for the Honours projects were due in this week and thus formed an integral part of this weeks short term objectives.

Progress:
Not much progress was made in terms of the decision on road generation, this was mainly related to a lack of understanding of some of the more complex methods required. Specifically a further understanding of L-Systems in general and their relevance to road generation grammars is required, and as such will form that major focus of my objectives for next week.

A decision was also reached during the week to skip the OpenGL implementation of the project and to rather begin with basic implementation in Blender. As a result of this no direct headway was made in terms of OpenGL modelling, however the basic principles of Blender scripting in python were looked at.

As a result of this the major progress that was made this week was a further familiarisation with Blender specifically a familiarisation with the python scripting. This progress was initially made during a group session which involved scripting basic mesh creation and manipulation in Blender. Further familiarity was gained through further scripting and modelling after this session.

As a separate line of progress which applies more to the topic of Honours paper writing in general and less to the content of this project itself, two sessions were held on the correct use of the DocArc document archive facility and the use of LyX for document creation.

Lastly a final draft of this projects formal proposal was writeen and accepted by both supervisors this week. Outlined in the proposal for this project was both the intended research work and implementation as well as a rough outline of the timescale and order of events required for the project completion.
                                   
Problems:
The first and most obvious problem encountered this week was my unfamiliarity with the required abstract mathematical concepts for road generation. This however will become one of the main objective for next week in order to allow me to properly come to terms with the algorithms and methods used for complex road network generation.

A second problem encountered this week was my inability to use LyX correctly and the resulting problems with the project proposal write-up. This problem however has been tackled through the two meetings with Kevin to further my understanding of the LyX product.
                                   
Objectives for Next Week:

• To develop an understanding of the background mathematical concepts used in the various road generation methods.
• To apply those concepts to the various methods and thus to gain a fuller understanding of the implications of each method.
• Further practise with some basic Blender scripting and specifically the extension of the python script generated in the group meeting this week.
• Further practise with LyX, specifically the generation of the next progress report through LyX.