CSci 490 Schedule

Referenced here are the topics covered each day, accompanied with reference materials concerning the topic, usually drawn from Hill's book. I'll update the schedule as the semester progresses.

I strongly recommend that you try to read the accompanying materials. While I don't technically require this, they contain a lot of interesting bits that I choose not to cover, and so you'll learn a lot more about computer graphics this way. (I also choose to cover a lot of interesting bits that don't appear in these references, so you shouldn't feel that these references are complete.)

Tue 18 Jan
overview (Hill 1.1, 1.2, topics map)
raycasting (Ray-Casting Tutorial)
diffuse reflection (Hill 8.2.2)
Thu 20 Jan
vector and raster graphics (Hill 1.4.1, 1.4.2)
color (Hill 12.1, 12.2)
vectors: dot and cross-products (Hill 4.3, 4.4)
 
Tue 25 Jan
OpenGL and Direct3D (reference)
OpenGL introduction (Hill 2.1, 2.2, 2.3)
Transformations in OpenGL (Hill 5.5)
handout code walkthrough
Thu 27 Jan
Homogeneous coordinates (Hill 4.5)
Affine transformations (Hill 5.1, 5.2)
handout code walkthrough
 
Tue 1 Feb
Graphics pipeline, 3D graphics (Hill 5.6, )
Camera and view volume (Hill 7.2)
Thu 3 Feb
Perspective transformation (Hill 7.4)
Quiz 1 - 30 points
 
Tue 8 Feb
OpenGL polyhedron drawing
Sphere example (handout)
Smooth shading (Hill 8.3)
Thu 10 Feb
Bresenham's line drawing (Hill 10.4)
Convex polygon scan conversion (Hill 10.7)
Antialiasing (Hill 10.8)
 
Tue 15 Feb
Jittering (screen shots)
Clipping (notes)
Thu 17 Feb
Quiz 2 - 30 points
Hidden surface removal (Hill 13.2, 13.3)
 
Tue 22 Feb
Textures (Hill 8.5)
Thu 24 Feb
No class - At conference
 
Tue 1 Mar
Texture mapping (Hill 8.5, cont'd)
MIP maps, anisotropic filtering
Thu 3 Mar
Reflections
Shadows (Hill 8.6, others)
 
Tue 8 Mar
(Monday) Presentation topic deadline
Lighting/shading (Hill 8.2)
Radiosity
Thu 10 Mar
Midterm - 80 points
Ray tracing intro (Hill 14.1)
 
SPRING BREAK
 
Tue 22 Mar
Ray tracing, cont'd (Hill 14.10, 14.11)
Thu 24 Mar
Image representation (GIF, JPG, PNG)
 
Tue 29 Mar
Neil: Beat detection
Monte Carlo integration
Thu 31 Mar
Ian: Collision detection
Path tracing
 
Tue 5 Apr
Bezier curves (Hill 11.1, 11.4)
B-splines (Hill 11.7)
Natural cubic splines
Thu 7 Apr
Derek: GUI layout studies
Zach: Real-time camera management
Rendering curves
 
Tue 12 Apr
Brandon: Real-time Water Rendering
Particle system intro
Project topic checkpoint
Thu 14 Apr
Quiz 3 - 50 points
Particle system cont'd
 
Tue 19 Apr
Forces affecting particle systems
Brownian motion
Thu 21 Apr
(Friday) Project progress checkpoint
Graphics processor architecture
 
Tue 26 Apr
Color quantization
Dithering
Thu 28 Apr
Fundamental hardware (BitBLT, sprites)
Operating system support
Historical GUI environments
Modern GUI environments
 
Fri 6 May
Project demos
Final - 120 points