This project is a creative production that combines image, sound, and narrative. It uses these elements to employ a twist as a device for a paradigm and genre shift in a short film text. My short film introduces a plot that is seemingly linear. Yet, the twist presents a piece of information that reveals the actual non-linear nature of the story, which in turn necessitates the re-interpretation of the plot. The aim of this project is to explore how a twist in a narrative-based short film can alter the cues and perceptions the audience receive from the plot. The project is predominantly practice-based (80%).

Nous nous intéressons à l'acquisition automatique de mouvements 3D de personnes. Cette opération doit être réalisée sans un équipement spécialisé (marqueurs ou habillage spécifique), pour rendre son utilisation générale, sous la contrainte du temps réel. Pour répondre à ces questions, nous sommes amenés à traiter de la reconstruction et l'analyse de la forme 3D. Concernant le problème de reconstruction 3D en temps réel d'entités en mouvement à partir de plusieurs vues, les approches existantes font souvent appel à des calculs complexes incompatibles avec la contrainte du temps réel. Les approches du type SFS offrent un compromis intéressant entre efficacité algorithmique et précision. Ces dernières utilisent les silhouettes issues de chaque caméra pour proposer un volume englobant des objets. Cependant elles nécessitent un environnement particulièrement contraint, dont le placement minutieux des caméras. Les travaux présentés dans ce manuscrit généralisent l'utilisation des approches SFS à des environnements peu contrôlés. L'acquisition du mouvement revient à déterminer les paramètres offrant la meilleure corrélation entre le modèle et la reconstruction 3D. Notre objectif étant le suivi temps réel, nous proposons des méthodes qui offrent la précision requise et le temps réel. Couplé à un suivi temporel par filtre de Kalman, à un recalage d'objets géométriques simples (ellipsoïdes, sphères, etc.), nous proposons un système temps réel, offrant une erreur de l'ordre de 6%.De par sa robustesse, il permet le suivi simultané de plusieurs personnes, même lors de contacts. Les résultats obtenus ouvrent des perspectives à un transfert vers des applications grand public

This project is a creative production that combines image, sound, and narrative. It uses these elements to employ a twist as a device for a paradigm and genre shift in a short film text. My short film introduces a plot that is seemingly linear. Yet, the twist presents a piece of information that reveals the actual non-linear nature of the story, which in turn necessitates the re-interpretation of the plot. The aim of this project is to explore how a twist in a narrative-based short film can alter the cues and perceptions the audience receive from the plot. The project is predominantly practice-based (80%).

[pt] No presente trabalho apresentamos um estudo de curvas silhuetas discretas sobre alguns tipos particulares de malhas, com o objetivo de avaliar propriedades dessas curvas. Nosso objeto de estudo são malhas quadrangulares, ou seja, onde todas as faces sejam quadriláteros e também sejam planares. Em particular dois tipos de malhas são discutidas: circular e cônica. Essas malhas são particularmente interessantes em arquitetura para modelagem de estrutura de vidros. A geração das malhas é feita aplicando-se um processo de otimização e em seguida, sobre essas malhas, definimos curvas discretas como candidatas a silhuetas e buscamos medidas de qualidade para essas curvas. / [en] In this work we study discrete silhouette curves on Planar Quad meshes (PQ meshes), with the objective of evaluate some properties of these curves. PQ meshes correspond to planar quadrilaterals meshes, and our interest is focused particularly on two kinds of meshes: Conical and Circular. They are interesting in architecture for design with glass structures. An optimization process is applied for the mesh generation and we follow defining discrete curves on the meshes to obtain silhouette and to measure their quality.

In der Archäologie ist das Zeichnen von Fundobjekten ein zeitaufwändiger und daher kostenintensiver Prozess. Die Abbildungen sind wegen fehlender Standards sowie den unterschiedlichen persönlichen Stilen und Fähigkeiten der Zeichner subjektiv und stark inhomogen. Es gibt deswegen erste Ansätze, mithilfe von 3D-Scannern virtuelle Modelle zu erzeugen, von denen dann objektive, standardisierte Abbildungen extrahiert werden sollen. Von den zahlreichen Verfahren aus dem Bereich des Non-Photorealistic Rendering (NPR) kommen dafür insbesondere solche in Betracht, die Verzierungen und Oberflächeneigenschaften betonen. Auf Interaktion soll dabei nach Möglichkeit verzichtet werden.

La reconstruction précise d’une scène 3D à partir de plusieurs caméras offre un contenu synthétique 3D à destination de nombreuses applications telles que le divertissement, la télévision et la production cinématographique. Cette thèse propose une nouvelle approche pour la reconstruction 3D multi-vues basée sur l’enveloppe visuelle et la stéréovision multi-oculaire. Cette approche nécessite en entrée l’enveloppe visuelle et plusieurs jeux d’images rectifiées issues de différentes unités multiscopiques constituées chacune de plusieurs caméras alignées et équidistantes. Nos contributions se situent à différents niveaux. Le premier est notre méthode de stéréovision multi-oculaire qui est fondée sur un nouvel échantillonnage de l’espace scénique et fournit une carte de matérialité exprimant la probabilité pour chaque point d’échantillonnage 3D d’appartenir à la surface visible par l’unité multiscopique. Le second est l’hybridation de cette méthode avec les informations issues de l’enveloppe visuelle et le troisième est la chaîne de reconstruction basée sur la fusion des différentes enveloppes creusées tout en gérant les informations contradictoires qui peuvent exister. Les résultats confirment : i) l’efficacité de l’utilisation de la carte de matérialité pour traiter les problèmes qui se produisent souvent dans la stéréovision, en particulier pour les régions partiellementoccultées ; ii) l’avantage de la fusion des méthodes de l’enveloppe visuelle et de la stéréovision multi-oculaire pour générer un modèle 3D précis de la scène. / Accurate reconstruction of a 3D scene from multiple cameras offers 3D synthetic content tobe used in many applications such as entertainment, TV, and cinema production. This thesisis placed in the context of the RECOVER3D collaborative project, which aims is to provideefficient and quality innovative solutions to 3D acquisition of actors. The RECOVER3Dacquisition system is composed of several tens of synchronized cameras scattered aroundthe observed scene within a chromakey studio in order to build the visual hull, with severalgroups laid as multiscopic units dedicated to multi-baseline stereovision. A multiscopic unitis defined as a set of aligned and evenly distributed cameras. This thesis proposes a novelframework for multi-view 3D reconstruction relying on both multi-baseline stereovision andvisual hull. This method’s inputs are a visual hull and several sets of multi-baseline views.For each such view set, a multi-baseline stereovision method yields a surface which is usedto carve the visual hull. Carved visual hulls from different view sets are then fused iterativelyto deliver the intended 3D model. Furthermore, we propose a framework for multi-baselinestereo-vision which provides upon the Disparity Space (DS), a materiality map expressingthe probability for 3D sample points to lie on a visible surface. The results confirm i) theefficient of using the materiality map to deal with commonly occurring problems in multibaselinestereovision in particular for semi or partially occluded regions, ii) the benefit ofmerging visual hull and multi-baseline stereovision methods to produce 3D objects modelswith high precision.

In this thesis, cluster analysis was applied to data comprising of customer spending habits at a retail chain in order to perform customer segmentation. The method used was a two-step cluster procedure in which the first step consisted of feature engineering, a square root transformation of the data in order to handle big spenders in the data set and finally principal component analysis in order to reduce the dimensionality of the data set. This was done to reduce the effects of high dimensionality. The second step consisted of applying clustering algorithms to the transformed data. The methods used were K-means clustering, Gaussian mixture models in the MCLUST family, t-distributed mixture models in the tEIGEN family and non-negative matrix factorization (NMF). For the NMF clustering a slightly different data pre-processing step was taken, specifically no PCA was performed. Clustering partitions were compared on the basis of the Silhouette index, Davies-Bouldin index and subject matter knowledge, which revealed that K-means clustering with K = 3 produces the most reasonable clusters. This algorithm was able to separate the customer into different segments depending on how many purchases they made overall and in these clusters some minor differences in spending habits are also evident. In other words there is some support for the claim that the customer segments have some variation in their spending habits. / I denna uppsats har klusteranalys tillämpats på data bestående av kunders konsumtionsvanor hos en detaljhandelskedja för att utföra kundsegmentering. Metoden som använts bestod av en två-stegs klusterprocedur där det första steget bestod av att skapa variabler, tillämpa en kvadratrotstransformation av datan för att hantera kunder som spenderar långt mer än genomsnittet och slutligen principalkomponentanalys för att reducera datans dimension. Detta gjordes för att mildra effekterna av att använda en högdimensionell datamängd. Det andra steget bestod av att tillämpa klusteralgoritmer på den transformerade datan. Metoderna som användes var K-means klustring, gaussiska blandningsmodeller i MCLUST-familjen, t-fördelade blandningsmodeller från tEIGEN-familjen och icke-negativ matrisfaktorisering (NMF). För klustring med NMF användes förbehandling av datan, mer specifikt genomfördes ingen PCA. Klusterpartitioner jämfördes baserat på silhuettvärden, Davies-Bouldin-indexet och ämneskunskap, som avslöjade att K-means klustring med K=3 producerar de rimligaste resultaten. Denna algoritm lyckades separera kunderna i olika segment beroende på hur många köp de gjort överlag och i dessa segment finns vissa skillnader i konsumtionsvanor. Med andra ord finns visst stöd för påståendet att kundsegmenten har en del variation i sina konsumtionsvanor.

My passion as a student at the Claremont Colleges is to help children with Autism Spectrum Disorder grow and learn as normal children and to help prepare them for life outside the Autism Center at Claremont McKenna College. In my thesis project, I am exploring the concept of silhouettes through photography and my perceptions of the stories told to me by the children I teach. Esthetically, I am inspired by Kara Walker’s installation of large cutout silhouettes but I am using different mediums to accomplish my project: Artistically, I am inspired by the detailed descriptions of the obsessive stories and information provided to me by the children at the Autism Center. Primarily, I will be using photographs that I have taken of the children and creating silhouetted images of them through Photoshop. Afterwards, I will paint my perceptions of the detailed and creative descriptions of the different information relayed to me by each individual child. Secondary, there will be some life size black cutouts, on black paper, of different imagined scenarios with the children. In the spring, I see this as an installation with many separate pieces that contain different sizes, depth, and simplicity.

[pt] No presente trabalho propomos uma nova forma de extrair a silhueta de uma nuvem de pontos, via reconstrução local de uma superfície descrita implicitamente por uma função polinomial. Esta reconstrução é baseada nos métodos Gradient one fitting e Ridge regression. A curva silhueta fica definida implicitamente por um sistema de equações não-lineares e sua geração é feita por continuação numérica. Como resultado, verificamos que nosso método se mostrou adequado para tratar dados com ruídos. Além disso, apresentamos um método para a extração local de linhas laplacianas de uma nuvem de pontos baseado na reconstrução local utilizando a triangulação de Delaunay. / [en] In this work we propose a new method for silhouette extraction of a point cloud, via local reconstruction of a surface described implicitly by a polynomial function. This reconstruction is based on the Gradient one fitting and Ridge regression methods. The curve silhouette is implicitly defined by a system of nonlinear equations, and is obtained using numerical continuation. As a result, we observe that our method is suitable to handle noisy data. In addition, we present a method for extracting Laplacian Lines of a point cloud based on local reconstruction using the Delaunay triangulation.

<p>In the research of developing arbitrary and unique virtual views from a real- world scene, a prototype of an interactive relief texture mapping system capable of processing video using dynamic image-based rendering, is developed in this master thesis. The process of deriving depth from recorded video using binocular stereopsis is presented, together with how the depth information is adjusted to be able to manipulate the orientation of the original scene. When the scene depth is known, the recorded organic and dynamic objects can be seen from viewpoints not available in the original video.</p>