Time: 9:30 – 10:45 AM, Tues/Thurs

Instructor: David Luebke (219 Olsson Hall; 924-1021; luebke@cs.virginia.edu)

Office hours 2:30-3:30 PM Mon/Wed

T.A.: Dale Newfield (226A Olsson Hall; 982-2391; dnewfield@Virginia.EDU)

Office hours 1:30-2:30 PM Mon/Wed

Description: This course will cover advanced topics in computer graphics. Topics we will hopefully get to, broadly categorized, are:

• Realism (e.g., antialiasing, ray tracing, radiosity)
• Speed (e.g., occlusion culling, level-of-detail, texture tricks)
• Hardware (e.g., rendering pipeline, graphics architectures)
• Modeling (e.g., NURBS, CSG, subdivision surfaces)
• Non-traditional rendering (e.g., pen-and-ink, painterly rendering)
• Animation (e.g., collision detection, particle systems, physically based modeling)
• Image-based rendering (e.g., image warping, sprites, layered-depth images).

Prerequisites: Professor Ryall’s course (CS 551: Computer Graphics), or consent of instructor. Strong C/C++ programming skills and familiarity with OpenGL are essential.

Format: Project-oriented, with several programming assignments. Two tests. The graduate-level course CS 651-0001 is being taught through the same lectures, requirements may differ slightly. Undergraduates are only eligible for the 551 version of the course.

Textbooks: The main textbook (required) is:

• Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques: Theory and Practice by Watt and Watt, Addison-Wesley (1992).

If you decide to seriously pursue computer graphics you will also want:

• Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice by Foley, van Dam, Feiner, and Hughes, Addison-Wesley (1993).
• OpenGL Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL, Version 1.1 by Mason Woo et al., Addison-Wesley (1997).

Unixlab: Programming assignments will be done in the UNIX environment. We expect students to use the Sun or SGI workstations in the Small Hall Unixlab. If you do not already have an account, mail accounts@virginia.edu and tell them you need a UNIX account for CS 551. We hope to support Linux as well but do not yet promise it.

Assignments: Four or five programming assignments will constitute the bulk of your grade. Most assignments will involve modifying or building on an existing code base.

Grading: The final grade will be calculated as a weighted average:

• Assignments: 50%
• Midterm: 15%
• Final: 25%
• Participation: 10%

Assignments will be graded using Professor Ryall’s system: an assignment meeting all criteria gets 8/10 points, implementing "extras" can raise this to 9/10 points, and the single best assignment earns 10/10 points. No credit will be given for assignments that do not compile, or otherwise completely fail (e.g., the dreaded "black screen" effect).

Participation means coming to class, asking questions, taking part in discussions, not falling asleep, and so on.

I reserve the right to cancel the final exam, possibly replacing it with another assignment.

Late Assignments: Assignments are always due at the beginning of class. If an assignment is not done at the beginning of class it is considered one day late. This is to prevent people from skipping class to finish up the assignment. Assignments one day late subtract an additional 10% (i.e., 1 point on a 10-point scale). Two days late loses 30%. After 2 days the assignment will be considered a zero.

Honor Code: The honor code applies to all work turned in for this course. In particular, all code and prose that you write for the assignments and project should be entirely your own, unless the instructor has specifically assigned a team project. You are welcome and encouraged to reuse your own code, if appropriate.