{CS,CAM}384G

Computer Graphics

Spring 2004

Instructor: Donald S. Fussell

General Course Information

Course Description

New this year

Starting this year, we will be basing the course on different software than in the past. The first part of the course will involve projects using the Matt Pharr and Greg Humphries' "Physically-based Ray Tracer". During this time, we will cover the basics of modeling, rendering, viewing and lighting in computer graphics. The latter part of the course will deal with real time graphics. For this portion, we will be using Java3D rather than OpenGL, MESA, Direct3D or similar lower level packages as in the past. This should enable us to cover topics involving hierarchical modeling and scene graphs more thorougly than in the past and to do larger scale, and more fun, projects.

Books

Copies of the PBRT book are now available from University Duplicating in Welch Hall 2.228 (phone 471-1657). You want course packet 209 for CS384G, unique number 51280. The price is $38.00, refundable up until Feb 5 if you drop the course and keep the packet in pristine shape.

Reading

For February 2 - Chapters 1 and 2 in Pharr and Humphreys
For February 11 - Chapter 3 in Pharr and Humphreys
For March 22 - Chapters 5, 9, 10, 11, 12 in Pharr and Humphreys

Java Info

Bump Mapping Help

Texture/Bump mapping in BMRT
LibTIFF Tutorial
Another LibTIFF Tutorial
Command for creating properly formatted tiff file from ppm file: "pnmtotiff -truecolor -color filename.ppm > filename.tif"

Assignments

Turning in your assignments
For interactive assignments (not ray tracing assignments), please arrange to demo your assignment with the TA.
How to run PBRT
Renderman for Poets
Bezier patch rib file example
Bezier patch created by above example
Assignment 1 - Due Midnight Monday February 9
Assignment 2 - Due Midnight Monday March 1
Assignment 3 - Due Midnight Wednesday April 7
- Using libtiff For C and C++ programmers who want to make tiff files as bump maps
- Documentation for OpenEXR (for tiff2exr)
Assignment 4 - Due Midnight Wednesday May 12 NOTE: UPDATED WITH MOUSE CONTROLS AS OF 8:15pm Wednesday April 21
Deadline extended to midnight Friday May 14, those turning it in by the original deadline will receive extra credit for doing so. See assignment for additional turnin instructions

Exams

First exam: Wednesday, March 31 Open book, open notes. We'll spend Monday March 29 going over questions about the exam.
- Here's a sample old exam.
- List of topics
Second exam: Last class day
- Sample old exam.