Visual Shape Grammar Editor

We recently developed a system to generate entire cities on the GPU using shape grammars: Parallel Generation of Architecture. Using a simple shape grammar description a variety of different buildings can be generated and rendered. However, writing the underlying rules that generate the buildings is currently achieved in a text editor. While this sufficient to provide an initial setup, advanced editing mechanism would be desirable.

In this project your goal is to take our Shape Grammar system and add visual editing and debugging capabilities. You will take our current editor and extend it in the following way:

• shapes should be clickable and the rule three leading to this shape should be visualized
• on demand the generation process can be stepped through, i.e., the individual rules applied to can be stepped through, visualizing the intermediate results
• rules and random numbers for the selected derivation can be adjusted to alter the resulting geometry

The project requires basic knowledge in C++ and OpenGL. It will partially involve CUDA but you do not need to know CUDA yet.