CS2013-final-report

cumulate in a multi-week final project. Topics covered in the course include: projective geometry, ray tracing,
bidirectional surface scattering functions, binary space partition trees, matting and compositing, shadow maps,
cache management, and parallel processing on GPUs. The cumulative laboratory exercises bring students through
the entire software research and development pipeline: domain-expert feature set, formal specification,
mathematical and computational solutions, team software implementation, testing, documentation, and
presentation.
How are students assessed
In 13 weeks, students complete 9 programming projects, two of which are multi-week team projects.
Course textbooks and materials
Students use the iOS app The Graphics Codex as their primary textbook and individually choose one of the
following for assigned supplemental readings, based on their interest: Fundamentals of Computer Graphics, 3rd
Edition, A K Peters; Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice, 3rd Edition, Addison Wesley; or Real-Time
Rendering, 3rd Edition, A K Peters.
Why do you teach the course this way
In this course, students work from first principles of physics and mathematics, and a body of knowledge from art.
That is, I seek to lead with science and then support it with engineering. Many other CS courses--such as
networking, data structures, architecture, compilers, and operating systems--develop the ability to solve problems
that arise within computer science and computers themselves. In contrast, graphics is about working with problems
that arise in other disciplines, specifically physics and art. The challenge here is not just solving a computer
science problem but also framing the problem in computer science terms in the first place. This is a critical step of
the computational and scientific approach to thinking, and the field of graphics presents a natural opportunity to
revisit it in depth for upper-level students. Graphics in this case is a motivator, but the skills are intentionally
presented as ones that can be applied to other disciplines, for example, biology, medicine, geoscience, nuclear
engineering, and finance. The rise of GPU computing in HPC is a great example of numerical methods and
engineering originating in computer graphics being generalized in just this way.
Body of Knowledge coverage
KA Knowledge Unit Topics Covered Hours
GV
Fundamental
Concepts
Basics of Human visual perception (HCI Foundations).
Image representations, vector vs. raster, color models, meshes.
Forward and backward rendering (i.e., ray-casting and rasterization).
Applications of computer graphics: including game engines, cad,
visualization, virtual reality.
Polygonal representation.
Basic radiometry, similar triangles, and projection model.
Use of standard graphics APIs (see HCI GUI construction).
Compressed image representation and the relationship to information
theory.
Immediate and retained mode.
Double buffering.
3
GV Basic Rendering Rendering in nature, i.e., the emission and scattering of light and its
relation to numerical integration.
Affine and coordinate system transformations.
Ray tracing.
Visibility and occlusion, including solutions to this problem such as
depth buffering, Painter’s algorithm, and ray tracing.
The forward and backward rendering equation.
Simple triangle rasterization.
Rendering with a shader-based API.
10
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