1. The pitch: go to the class forum and post an idea for a game that you would like to work on, or post your thoughts on the game concepts that have been posted.  We will form groups around the best game ideas that emerge from this discussion.
2. Benchmarking: work in pairs to do some exhaustive benchmarking of rendering pipeline performance.

Group projects: The remaining assignments will be done in the context of your final project.  Each assignment consists of adding a feature to the group's game engine.  Sometimes the same feature can be used to satisfy different assignments; of course, each group may only use a single feature once.  These projects are to be done individually: you will clearly need to discuss implementation issues amongst your group, and you are welcome to discuss algorithms and structures as well, but the research and coding should be primarily individual efforts.

1. Engine core (Feb 3-Feb 19)
2. First individual project (Feb 26-Mar 18)
3. Second individual project (Mar 18-Apr 6)
4. Third individual project (Apr 6-Apr 22)
5. Final game project (Apr 22-May 5)

Check the e-mail archive on Toolkit.

A note of warning: Although the final project is to build a 3D game, this is not exactly a course about building video games: it is about building a 3D graphics engine such as sits under the hood of modern games. The course will be highly technical and a lot of work. We will not touch on many vital aspects of game design: character AI, the production process, artist tools, the network layer (for multiplayer or online games), interface design, multiplatform support, etc. In other words, don't take the class just because you like playing video games.

Some lectures are accompanied by Powerpoint presentations, often from other sources (e.g., NVIDIA presentations at Game Developers Conference).  The original presentations will be included below for your convenience.  For copyright-related reasons, some of these links will only work if you are browsing from a virginia.edu IP address.

• Individual assignments: 40%
• Group project: 35%
• Group participation: 20%
• Class participation: 5%

I reserve the right to add a test, quiz, or "practicum exam".

Each student has up to five late days to use at his or her discretion for the individual assignments.  Each late day extends the due time by 24 hours.  Late days do not apply to group-wide deadlines.  Let the TA know how many late days you are taking when you turn in an assignment. 

Real-Time Rendering (2nd edition) by Tomas Akenine-Moller and Eric Haines, AK Peters (2002).

This book is a significant update from the (excellent) first edition, and contains a great deal of additional material.  In particular there are new chapters on advanced shading techniques, shading capabilities of modern hardware, and so on. It is an excellent book that anybody serious about a career in computer graphics ought to own.  One of the best aspects of the book is the accompanying web site, a vast compendium of graphics resources that the authors keep very up-to-date. 

Other books that may be of interest:

3D Game Engine Design by David H. Eberly, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers (2001).

This book is not required but makes excellent reading for programmers serious about writing their own game engine.  It is quite mathematical and not for the faint of heart.  It comes with a lot of free software, including some very useful little modules, also available from the accompanying web page.

Level of Detail for 3D Graphics by D. Luebke, M. Reddy, J. Cohen, A. Varshney, B. Watson, and R. Heubner, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers (2002).

Line your professor's pockets while learning about level of detail, a crucial tool for real-time rendering.  Errata and links to code, models, and resources at the accompanying web page.

Game Programming Gems (series editor Mark Deloura).

There are three books in the series.  Some of the material from the first two might be a bit dated, but much of it is still very relevant.  Because these are about game design, they include non-graphics topics (e.g., character AI).  Each book is a collection of "gems", submitted by different game programmers.  Some are short useful code snippets, others are long involved packages or essays on different aspects of game programming.

See the tools page.