Project Elements: A Computational Entity-component-system in a Scene-graph Pythonic Framework, for a Neural, Geometric Computer Graphics Curriculum
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Date
2023
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Eurographics Association
Abstract
We present the Elements project, a lightweight, open-source, computational science and computer graphics (CG) framework, tailored for educational needs, that offers, for the first time, the advantages of an Entity-Component-System (ECS) along with the rapid prototyping convenience of a Scenegraph-based pythonic framework. This novelty allows advances in the teaching of CG: from heterogeneous directed acyclic graphs and depth-first traversals, to animation, skinning, geometric algebra and shader-based components rendered via unique systems all the way to their representation as graph neural networks for 3D scientific visualization. Taking advantage of the unique ECS in a a Scenegraph underlying system, this project aims to bridge CG curricula and modern game engines (MGEs), that are based on the same approach but often present these notions in a black-box approach. It is designed to actively utilize software design patterns, under an extensible open-source approach. Although Elements provides a modern (i.e., shader-based as opposed to fixed-function OpenGL), simple to program approach with Jupyter notebooks and unit-tests, its CG pipeline is not black-box, exposing for teaching for the first time unique challenging scientific, visual and neural computing concepts.
Description
CCS Concepts: Social and professional topics → Computer science education; Software engineering education
@inproceedings{10.2312:eged.20231015,
booktitle = {Eurographics 2023 - Education Papers},
editor = {Magana, Alejandra and Zara, Jiri},
title = {{Project Elements: A Computational Entity-component-system in a Scene-graph Pythonic Framework, for a Neural, Geometric Computer Graphics Curriculum}},
author = {Papagiannakis, George and Kamarianakis, Manos and Protopsaltis, Antonis and Angelis, Dimitris and Zikas, Paul},
year = {2023},
publisher = {The Eurographics Association},
ISSN = {1017-4656},
ISBN = {978-3-03868-210-3},
DOI = {10.2312/eged.20231015}
}