CS 260: Computer Graphics

handouts location: http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/classes/cmps260
Earth and Marine Sciences Building B210
Tuesday, Thursday 6:00-7:45 PM
Office hours: Tuesday, Thursday 5:00-6:00 PM

Prerequisites: CMPS 160 or equivalent (Computer Graphics), Knowledge of OpenGL or other Graphics Application Programming Interfaces, Graduate standing and/or permission of instructor.

Text: Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques: Theory and Practice by Watt and Watt, 1992.

Requirements: 3 homeworks (10%), 3 projects (60%), 1 midterm (10%), and 1 final (20%). Projects percentages are: project 1 (15%), project 2 (15%), and project 3 (30%). The course has one in class midterm, and a final during the scheduled final exam time (see below).

 I. 	Intro/Graphics API's and Image Based Rendering 

Week [1] Jan. 5 & 7:  OpenGL, OpenGL Pipeline, Background/Review,
(Assigned reading: Ch. 1 & 2, OpenGL Specification, Linear Algebra texts, 
Foley and van Dam appendix).
  
Week [2] Jan. 12 & 14: Camera calibration, introduction to image based 
rendering, and project 1 definition,
(Ch. 1, partial, Tsai paper, SIGGRAPH'98 Course 15 notes, Szeliski's slides),
homework 1 due.
  
Week [3] Jan. 19 & 21:    Image based rendering techniques, 
(Layered Depth Images, Shade et al.'98, Feature extraction of clouds from
GOES Satellite Data for Integrated Model Measurement Visualization,
Wittenbrink et al.'96, Photorealistic scene reconstruction by voxel 
coloring, Seitz and Dyer'97)
project 1 due.

 II. Curves, Surfaces, and Animation 

Week [4] Jan. 26 & 28: Curves, Surfaces, 
(Ch. 3, IFS fractal interpolation for 2D and 3D visualization, Wittenbrink'95),
homework 2 due.

Week [5] Feb. 2 & 4: Subdivision Surfaces/Midterm
(Ch. 3 cont., Ch. 17, Subdivision Surfaces in Character Animation, 
DeRose et al.'98)

 III. Antialiasing and Graphics Hardware 

Week [6] Feb. 9 & 11: Antialiasing
(Ch. 4, The A-buffer, an antialiased hidden surface method, Carpenter'84,
Glassner Ch. 8, 9, and 10)
project 2 due.

Week [7] Feb. 16 (Exchanged exchange day): Antialiasing hardware
Feb. 16 Exchange day, No class on Thursday for Travel!)
(Hardware Accelerated Rendering of Antialiasing Using a Modified A-buffer
Algorithm, Winner et al.'97)
homework 3 due.

Week [8] Feb 23 & 25: Hardware architectures cont.
(An overview of the VISUALIZE fx Graphics accelerator Hardware, Scott et al.'98,
Tutorial for geometry and texture compression for computer graphics, Wittenbrink'97)
  
 IV. Ray Tracing, Ray Casting, Project Presentations, and Scientific Visualization 

Week [9] Mar. 2 & 4: Ray Tracing, Volume Raycasting
(Ch. 8, Ch. 9, Ch. 10, Opacity-weighted color interpolation for volume sampling,
Wittenbrink et al.'98)
project 3 due/presentations begin
  
Week [10] Mar. 9 & 11: Project 3 presentations cont./Scientific Visualization
(Approaches to uncertainty visualization, Pang et al.'97)

 Final Exam,
 Tuesday, March 16th 7:30pm-10:30pm.

Reference material:

Optional Text: Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice, 2nd Edition by Foley, van Dam, Feiner, and Hughes, 1990.
Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats by Murray and vanRyper, 1994
Principles of Digital Image Synthesis, Glassner, 1995, 2 volumes.
OpenGL Programming Guide, Second Edition, (version 1.1) Woo et al. 1997.
OpenGL Reference Manual, Second Edition, (version 1.1) OpenGL ARB, 1997.
Proceedings of SIGGRAPH, the annual conference series.

Course Description:

260. Computer Graphics. Winter. This course covers in depth, advanced topics in Computer Graphics. Students registering for the course are assumed to have a background in computer graphics. Materials will be drawn from Siggraph Proceedings, IEEE CG&A and other publications. Topics will range from a review of introductory computer graphics and the OpenGL pipeline, to antialiasing, ray tracing, and image based rendering.

The class will be conducted through a series of lectures, videos, exams, projects, and student presentations. There will be three programming projects: two that I will assign, and the other will be your own project. Projects are expected to be implemented on the Silicon Graphics workstations. Other platforms are permitted as long as the project can be demonstrated at school. You can pick your own programming language.

Policies:

All course work including homework, programs and exams are intended as individual effort and are graded as such. It's okay to discuss general approaches and algorithms with other students, but this should be done without sharing code. Cheating or plagiarism in any form will not be tolerated. Punishment will match severity of offense. You are responsible for protecting your homework solutions and programs from being copied by others. Do not discard printouts in public places. And don't forget to logout.

Plagiarism includes presenting text or pictures from other students or the web, without proper citation and credit. Plagiarism is also copying of other students homework or projects. The CS department has guidelines, and instructions on academic honesty for those who are unclear about these requirements. There will be no make-up exams, homeworks, or programs. There will be no incompletes given in the class.

Sciences Visualization and Animation Lab Accounts: The graphics labs in 299 Applied Sciences and Porter are managed by CATS. You will need a separate account from your regular CATS account, although you may want to use the same login name. You will also need a keycode to physically enter the lab. You must submit a form to get an account, see http://wwwcatsic.ucsc.edu/Labs/AS299/ to get a form.