Patrick Marais

About me

	I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cape Town. My undergraduate studies were completed in South Africa, where I also obtained my first graduate qualifications. I later obtained my PhD in the UK.
	1998	DPhil (Oxon)	Engineering Science
	1994	MSc (UCT)	Computer Science
	1991	BSc(hons) (UCT)	Applied Maths
	My research is centred on aspects of computer graphics (specifically procedural content generation), data compression and GPU based methods for simulation and visualisation. I am a member the Collaborative Visual Computing (CVC) laboratory and the High Performance Computing (HPC) laboratory.

Contact details

Email/Fax:

email - patrick at cs dot uct dot ac dot za
fax - +27 21 650 3551

Physical address:

Department of Computer Science
University of Cape Town
Private Bag X3
Rondebosch 7701
South Africa

Research Interests

My research includes general computer graphics and, more recently, GPU-based algorithms for data analysis and simulation. This page describes the projects on which I am currently collaborating. Please refer to the Publications page for publications which might have arisen from these projects.

	Procedural content generation: This project aims to produce a sketch-based framework which will allow the rapid design of plausible terrain, with a physically realistic appearance, as well as cities which conform to these terrains. To date we have completed a prototype system which uses sketching to produce compelling landscapes. This work has been extended to synthesize terrain by using a database of DEM models, to improve realism. We have also started work on sketch-based specification of cities and waterways.
	GPU sand simulation: This work aims to develop a low cost sand/granule simulator which can be leveraged in the current and next generation of games engines to improve visual realism. The primary design goal is to allow as much realism as possible while optimizing away visual irrelevancies. A high fidelity, GPU-accelerated, sand simulation has been completed and this is currently being extended to a full level-of-detail granular terrain deformation system.
	GPU-based algorithms for radio astronomy: The use of GPU's for complex computational tasks has become pervasive. This work aims to develop GPU-accelerated solutions for the next generation of radio telescopes, such as the SKA (square kilometer array). The data bandwidth is such that highly scalable parallel solutions are required for both rendering and processing the data. Current projects include galaxy structure discovery and increasing the accuracy of RI computation to allow for more accurate discovery of galactic sources.
	Tools for processing point-cloud data sets: A new collaboration with the UNESCO Zamani project has revealed a pressing need for algorithms and data structures to quickly process laser range-finder data. The Zamani projects has produced data sets that can include as many as 7 billion points, which is far beyond the capabilities of current meshing and texturing software. Current work is based around automating the removal or artifacts from these data sets (a task that currently requires several man-months) and GPU-accelerarted out-of-core surface generation from the point set.

Teaching

In 2011 I will be course coordinator for CSC2003S and CSC3020H. I will also be teaching the following courses:

CSC2001F:

Introduction to Unix

CSC2003S

Introduction to games and games design

CSC3020H:

3D Computer Graphics for Games

CS4000W:

Introduction to Image Processing and Computer Vision

Please refer to Vula for resources/assignments related to these courses.

The following are additional references/resources for the above courses: (None at present)

Journal Publications

• Simplifying Character Skins with Analytic Error Metrics. Bruce Merry, Patrick Marais and James Gain. Computer Graphics Forum, Vol 29 No. 1, pp 13-24, 2010.
• Exhaustive computational search of ionic-charge clusters that mediate interactions between mammalian cytochrome P450 (CYP) and P450-oxidoreductase (POR) proteins. A. Zawaira, M. Gallotta, N. Beeton-Kempen, L. Coulson, P. Marais, M. Kuttel and J. Blackburn. Computational Biology and Chemistry, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 42-52, February 2010.
• Distance-Ranked Connectivity Compression of Triangle Meshes. Patrick Marais, James Gain and Dave Shreiner, Computer Graphics Forum, Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 813-823, 2007. (Zipped PDF file - 5.35MB)
• High fidelity compression of irregularly sampled height-fields. Patrick Marais and James Gain, South African Computer Journal, pp 40-50, Vol 38, June 2007. (Zipped PDF file - 1636KB)
• Animation space: A truly linear framework for character animation. Bruce Merry, Patrick Marais and James Gain, ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 1400-1423, October 2006. (Zipped PDF file - 467KB)
• Compression of Dense and Regular Point Clouds, Bruce Merry, Patrick Marais and James Gain Computer Graphics Forum, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 709-716, December 2006. (Zipped PDF file - 6.6MB)
• Warp Sculpting, J. Gain and P. Marais. IEEE Trans. on Visualization and Computer Graphics, pp 217-227, Vol 11, No 2, March/April 2005. (Zipped PDF file - 1338KB)
• Model-based Segmentation of CT Images, O. Marte and P. Marais. South African Computing Journal, Vol 28, pp 54-59, 2002.
• Detecting the brain surface in sparse MRI using boundary models,P. Marais and J. M. Brady, Medical Image Analysis, Vol. 4(3), pp 283-302, September 2000, Elsevier Science.

Conference Publications

• Panopticon: A Scalable Monitoring System, D. Clough, R. Riviera, M. Kuttel, V. Geddes and P. Marais. In Proceedings Proceedings of South African Institute for Computer Scientists and Information Technologists Conference (SAICSIT 2010), October 2010.
• Terrain Sketching. James Gain, Patrick Marais and Wolfgang Straßer. In I3D '09: Proceedings of the 2009 symposium on Interactive 3D graphics and games, pp 31-38, ACM Press, 2009, Boston, Massachusetts.
• Revisiting District Six: A Case Study of Digital Heritage Reconstruction from Archival Photographs. Christopher de Kadt, James Gain and Patrick Marais. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality and Visualisation in Africa (AFRIGRAPH 2009), pp 13-21, ACM Press, February 2009, Pretoria. (Zipped PDF file - 745KB)
• Analytic simplification of animated characters. Bruce Merry, Patrick Marais and James Gain. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality and Visualisation in Africa (AFRIGRAPH 2009), pp 37-45, ACM Press, February 2009, Pretoria. (Zipped PDF file - 3.5MB)
• A Spatial Awareness Framework for Enhancing Game Agent Behaviour. Simon Perkins, Dave Jacka, James Gain and Patrick Marais. In Sandbox '08: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM SIGGRAPH symposium on Video games. pp 15-22, ACM Press, Los Angeles USA, 2008. (Zipped PDF file - 3.8MB)
• Identification and reconstruction of bullets from multiple X-rays, S. Perkins and P. Marais, In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality and Visualisation in Africa (AFRIGRAPH 2006), pp 117-126, ACM Press, January 2006, Cape Town.
• Low cost model reconstruction from image sequences, C. Lyness, O. Marte, B. Wong and P. Marais. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality and Visualisation in Africa (AFRIGRAPH 2001), pp 131-135, November 2001, Cape Town.
• Generic memoryless polygonal simplification, R Southern, E. Blake and P. Marais. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality and Visualisation in Africa (AFRIGRAPH 2001), pp 7-15, ACM Press, November 2001, Cape Town.
• A Stateless Client for Progressive View-Dependent Transmission, R. Southern, A. Muller, B. Steyn, S. Perkins, E. Blake and P. Marais. ACM Web3D, Padeborn, Germany, February 2001.
• Gems: A generic implementation for memoryless polygonal simplification, R. Southern, E. Blake, and P. Marais. In Proceedings of the 3rd South African Telecommunications, Networks and Applications Conference (SATNAC'00), September 2000.
• Visualising cerebral asymmetry, P. C. Marais, R. Guillemaud, M. Sakuma, A. Zisserman and M. Brady, Proceedings of Visualisation in Biomedical Computing, Springer-Verlag, 1996. (GZipped PS file - 252KB)
• Adaptive spline wavelet image encoding and real-time synthesis, P.C. Marais, E. H. Blake, A. Kuijk, Proceedings the IEEE conference on Image Processing (ICIP), Vol III, pg 368-372, 1994. (GZipped PS file - 487KB)

Miscellaneous

• Normal transformations for articulated models, Bruce Merry, Patrick Marais and James Gain, Technical Sketch, Conference Abstracts and Applications, SIGGRAPH 2006, August 2006. (Zipped PDF file - 483KB)
• The segmentation of sparse MR images, P. C. Marais, DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1998. (GZipped PS file - 6654KB)
• A Spline-Wavelet Image Decomposition On a Difference Engine, P.C. Marais, E.H. Blake, A.A.M. Kuijk, CWI Quarterly, Vol 6, Number 4, December 1993. (Centrum Voor Wiskunde en Infomatica, Amsterdam). (GZipped PS file - 341KB)
• Quadratic vs Cubic Spline Wavelets for Image Representation and Compression, CWI. PNA-R9717, Amsterdam, ISSN1386-3711, 1997.

Technical reports

These technical repots can be downloaded from the CS publications archive.

• Distance ranked connectivity compression of triangle meshes, P. Marais and J. Gain Technical Report CS05-01-00, Computer Science Department, University of Cape Town, 2005.
• Inexpensive and real-time optical motion capture of the hand, D. Gerson, R. Cannell and P Marais. Technical Report CS03-26-00, Computer Science Department, University of Cape Town, 2003.
• Large-Scale structure in the Universe, C. Hultquist, S. Perumal, P. Marais and T. Fairall. Technical Report CS03-16-00, Computer Science Department, University of Cape Town, 2003.
• Scalable Model Viewing, N. Appleby, R. Marcussen, J. McMillan and P Marais. Technical Report CS03-22-00, Computer Science Department, University of Cape Town, 2003.
• View Dependent Refinement Using Progressive Meshes, A. Muller, S. Perkins, B. Steyn, R. Southern and P. Marais. Technical Report CS00-22-00, Computer Science Department, University of Cape Town, 2000.
• Avian Demography Visualisation, P. Green, R. Harley, A. Lousse and P. Marais. Technical Report CS00-22-00, Computer Science Department, University of Cape Town, 2000.
• Model reconstruction for a virtual interactive environments: Merlin, C. Lyness, O. Marte, B. Wong and P. Marais, Technical Report CS99-11-00, Computer Science Department, University of Cape Town, 1999.