===== River Trees =====

==== Facts ====
^ Type           | master project|
^ Place          | internal      |
^ Supervisors    | Jack van Wijk |
^ Student        | -             |
^ start/end date | -             |
^ date           | 11/2010       |

==== Description ====

The visualization group in Eindhoven has a long tradition in hierarchical
data visualization, which led to new methods like cushion treemaps,
squarified treemaps, beamtrees, and botanically based visualizations. 
For a visual overview of many tree visualization methods,
see http://vcg.informatik.uni-rostock.de/~hs162/treeposter/poster.html.

In this project another metaphor is explored: The River. A river has
a hierarchical structure, where streams combine. The challenge is
to develop automated methods to generate smooth, naturally looking
patterns that resemble such a river. These can be used to visualize
how larger parts (file systems, organizations, groups of people)
are split up. Given this starting point, many issues are open:

  * How to generate such patterns?
  * How to label branches and elements?
  * How to assign and use color?
  * How to deal with interaction, to explore the tree and tune its presentation?
  * What 3D cues could be useful?
  * How would radial patterns look like?
  * How to deal with constraints, for instance on the geometric distance from the root?

In the end, a flexible approach has to be developed and implemented
that allows users to generate visualizations of hierarchical data that
are useful and visually intriguing.

==== Additional information ====
  * http://vcg.informatik.uni-rostock.de/~hs162/treeposter/poster.html