Disclaimer
----------
Copyright(C) 2000 - 2001 Kwan-Yee Kenneth Wong
All Rights Reserved

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING
ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL
THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE,
DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER
TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR
PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

=================================
   OctCarve ver 1.4 beta F.A.Q
=================================

What is "OctCarve"?
-------------------
"OctCarve" is a small application written in VC++ for research purpose.
It produces 3D models from 2D images by space carving technique using
silhouettes and octree. The implementation is based on the technqiue
described in [1] with some modifications. The 3D models found in [2] are
all built by this program with the motion parameters estimated using the
algorithm described in that paper.

What is the system requirement for "OctCarve"?
----------------------------------------------
"OctCarve" should run in Windows9X and Windows NT 3.0 or higher.
OpenGL (software/hardware) support is required, and 64 MB or more
memory is recommended.

What are the inputs?
--------------------
a) Image Sequence
    - currently, "OctCarve" supports BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, PPM and PGM
      image formats.

b) Projection Matrices associated with each image
    - these can be in ascii format (image_filename.pa) or in binary format
      (image_filename.p). For the ascii format, the entries of the
      projection matrix are listed in row-wise fashion, with space as
      delimiter, and each row is ended with a newline character. The binary
      format is not currently publicly available.

c) B-Spline Snakes associated with each image
    - these must be in binary format (image_filename.snk), which are outputed
      from the image software "Vision" (http://svr-www.eng.cam.ac.uk/~kykw2).
      The B-Spline Snakes must be closed.

How to create a new project?
----------------------------
Select "New" from the "File" menu to bring up the open file dialog. Select all
the images to be used and click the "Open" button. Note that to include an image
"filename.ext" in the project, the associated projection matrix (i.e. "filename.pa"
or "filename.p") and B-spline snakes (i.e. "filename.snk") MUST be present in the
same directory as the image file.

What are the outputs?
---------------------
"OctCarve" provides a user-friendly interface, which utilizes OpenGL, for
displaying the 3D models produced. Users can also capture screen shots and
save to bitmap files. "Octcarve" also supports exporting the 3D models to
VRML 2.0 format.

References:
-----------
[1] @article{Szeliski93,
       author = "Szeliski, R.",
       title = "Rapid Octree Construction from Image Sequences",
       journal = "CVGIP: Image Understanding",
       volume = "58",
       number = "1",
       pages = "23--32",
       month = "Jul",
       year = "1993"}

[2] @inproceedings{Wong01,
       author = "Wong, K.-Y.~K. and Cipolla, R.",
       title = "Structure and Motion from Silhouettes",
       booktitle = "Proc. IEEE 8th International Conference on Computer Vision",
       address = "Vancouver, Canada",
       month = "Jul",
       year = "2001"}