April 27th, 2014

This week I worked on updating the UI and implementing Inverse Kinematics.  I simplified the navbar to contain only two buttons, one to show/hide the help text and the other to show/hide the information and buttons relating to the mannequin.  I think this helps simplify the application to make it look more streamlined and easy to use.  Additionally, I continued working on implementing Inverse Kinematics.  I restructured some previous code relating to the joint limitations so I could reuse it in the cyclic coordinate descent function.

I ran into some trouble trying to get the <x,y,z>  coordinate of the effector point based on where the user's mouse is located.  The point tends to rapidly disappear into space when the camera is rotated.  Additionally, I need to restructure the camera controls, as they cause the camera to move when the user is click/dragging the effector point. I may write my own code to handle the camera to have it only allow motion when a key is pressed at the same time.

I plan to finish implementing Inverse Kinematics, as well as continue to clean up the UI this week so that everything will be ready by the demo on Thursday.