Both of these shapes can be created straightforwardly with a little trig and vector math. It's probably easiest to create them with a default position and orientation (e.g. centered at the origin and built around the z axis) and then transform them as desired. Alternatively, you can construct them manually 'in place' given a starting and ending point.

Let me know what exactly you need help with and I can give you some tips (or maybe just post an example - I have plenty of source code for this sort of thing lying around).

I can't think of any particular papers or references off the top of my head, but basically what you want is a GLUT-style 'make cylinder' function, with added support for specifying the top and bottom radii separately.

I have code for creating a cylinder mesh, but it's set up a little differently (for example, as you noted, there is no subdivision along the length). Rather than try to adapt that code for you, it'd probably be easier to just go over the algorithm here in this post.

To build your cone/cylinder, you first need to be able to generate the vertices of a unit circle, something like:

for (int i = 0; i < numRadialSubdivisions; ++i) {    float angle = TWO_PI * ((float)i / (float)numRadialSubdivisions);    float s = sin(angle);    float c = cos(angle);    verts[index++].set(c, s, 0.f);}

For n vertical subdivisions, you'll want to generate n+1 of these circles, spaced appropriately along the z axis. Also, you'll want to scale the radius of each circle (the value by which to scale can be computed by interpolating between the values of the top and bottom radii, based on which 'step' you're at along the z axis).

Once you have the vertices in place, you can set the triangle indices. This is just bookkeeping, and involves nothing more than a little integer math.

Again, except for the differing radii this is essentially the algorithm used by GLUT to create a cylinder mesh, so if you can find some example code for that (Mesa?) you should be good to go.

Otherwise, just post back if you have any trouble implementing the algorithm I described above, and I'll try and help with the details.

Taken from my engine:

bool CreateCylinder( CMesh *Mesh,
int Size,
float Height,
float Radius,
float Radius1,
int Mode )
{

if ( Radius < 0 ) Radius = -Radius;
if ( Radius1 < 0 ) Radius1 = -Radius1;
if ( Size < 0 ) Size = -Size;
if ( Height < 0 ) Height=-Height;
if ( Size < 4 || Size==0 ||
Radius == 0.0f || Radius1==0.0f ||
Height ==0 ) return false;

float minorStep ;
float x[3],y[3];
float a,du;
int i;

////////////////////////////////////////

Mesh->Reset();

///////////////////////////////////////
// allocate vertex list

if ( Mesh->ReserveVertexBuffer( Size )==false )
return false;
// allocating proper sized texcoords list
if ( Mesh->ReserveTexCoordBuffer( Size )==false )
return false;

//////////////////////////////////////////
// allocating surfaces

if ( Mesh->ReserveSurfaceBuffer( Size )==false )
return false;

/////////////////////////////////////////
// adding vertices

du=(1.0f/(float)Size);

minorStep = 2.0F * __PI *du;

a=0.0f;

for (i=0; i<Size; i++)
{
y[0] = Radius * FastCos(a);
x[0] = Radius * FastSin(a);

Mesh->AddVertex( x[0],-Height,y[0]);

y[1] = Radius1 * FastCos(a);
x[1] = Radius1 * FastSin(a);

Mesh->AddVertex( x[1], Height,y[1]);

a+=minorStep;
}


for ( i=0; i<Size*2-2; i+=2 )
{
Mesh->AddSurface( i+1,i,i+2 );
Mesh->AddSurface( i+3,i+1,i+2 );
}

Mesh->AddSurface( Size*2-1,Size*2-2,0 );
Mesh->AddSurface( 1,Size*2-1,0 );


//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// capping

switch ( Mode )
{

case _VT_CAPBOTH_ :

Mesh->AddVertex( 0,-Height,0);

for ( i=0; i<Size*2-2; i+=2 )
Mesh->AddSurface( Size*2,i+2,i );
Mesh->AddSurface( Size*2,0,Size*2-2 );

Mesh->AddVertex( 0,Height,0);

for ( i=0; i<Size*2-2; i+=2 )
Mesh->AddSurface( Size*2+1,i+1,i+2+1 );
Mesh->AddSurface( Size*2+1,Size*2-1,1 );

break;

case _VT_CAPTOP_ :

Mesh->AddVertex( 0,Height,0);

for ( i=0; i<Size*2-2; i+=2 )
Mesh->AddSurface( Size*2,i+2,i );
Mesh->AddSurface( Size*2,0,Size*2-2 );

break;

case _VT_CAPBOTTOM_ :

Mesh->AddVertex( 0,-Height,0);

for ( i=0; i<Size*2-2; i+=2 )
Mesh->AddSurface( Size*2,i+2,i );

Mesh->AddSurface( Size*2,0,Size*2-2 );

break;

}

//////////////////////////////////////////////

//////////////////////////////////////////////

Mesh->Finalize();

return true;
}