Computer Graphics 2: 15-463, Spring 1997
Administrative Info
Place and Time:
Tue/Thu 9:00-10:20 in Doherty Hall A317.
To get there, go to Wean 5th floor and walk east.
Registrar's info about this course
Professor:
Paul Heckbert
- Office: Doherty Hall 4301A
- Email: ph@cs.cmu.edu
- Office Hours: Thu 10:30-11:30, or by appointment (send email)
Teaching Assistant 1:
Sundar Vedula
- Office: Bldg D 152
- Email: srv@cs.cmu.edu
- Office Hours: Mon 1-2
Teaching Assistant 2:
Noah Gibbs
- Office: none
- Email: angelbob@andrew.cmu.edu
- Office Hours: by appointment (send email)
Non-electronic handouts missed in class may be picked up from my
secretary:
Phyllis Pomerantz
- Office: Doherty Hall 4301G, x8-7897
- Email: plp@cs.cmu.edu
What's where
- The class Web page is the
primary online source for documents and info.
The URL is
file://localhost/afs/andrew/scs/cs/15-463/pub/www/463.html
or from a machine without AFS access:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/andrew/scs/cs/15-463/pub/www/463.html .
- The class newsgroup is cmu.cs.class.cs463.
This bboard will serve as
a Q&A forum. Feel free to ask questions or exchange information.
We'll read the group and answer. We'll also post important official
announcements there, as well as in the WWW page.
- Each registered student will get a subdirectory in
/afs/andrew/scs/cs/15-463/students
named after her/his last name, to be used for electronic
submission of assignments, and to meet your class-related storage
needs. To get a directory you need to
sign in electronically via the Web.
Note: As of 11:25 AM, 1/16, the sign in script is fixed.
Prerequisites
- 15-462 or equivalent,
linear algebra, and a little calculus.
Some of the topics you're expected to know from
462 are computer graphics modeling, including knowledge of 4x4
affine and perspective transformations, parametric surfaces,
and polygon scan conversion.
Required Text
- Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice,
2nd edition in C. Foley, van Dam, Feiner, and Hughes.
Addison-Wesley, 1996.
(The 2nd edition not in C is also OK).
Optional Texts
- Digital Image Processing, Gonzalez and Woods. Addison-Wesley,
1992.
(This book is good for the first 1/3 of the course.)
- Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques, Watt and Watt.
Addison-Wesley, 1992.
(Good for coverage of texture mapping, ray tracing,
radiosity, volume rendering.)
- An Introduction To Ray Tracing, Andrew
Glassner (ed.). Academic Press, 1989.
(Good for ray tracing.)
Foley, Gonzalez, and Watt should be available at the bookstore at
the beginning of the semester.
Gonzalez and Watt should be in the E&S library on reserve for the
entire semester.
Grading
- 65% homework (probably 4 programming and 2 written). Late
policy: 14% off per weekday (clock stops between midnight Friday and
midnight Sunday).
The programming assignments will be:
- Assignment P1: morphing animation
- Assignment P2: ray casting (non-recursive ray tracing)
- Assignment P3: recursive ray tracing
- Assignment P4: radiosity
- 35% midterm & final
Assignments must be done by you alone unless you have permission
from the instructor to work in a group.
You may use Maple or similar systems to help with algebra on
assignments, but where you do, turn in a transcript.
After you turn in a programming assignment, do not modify the
files you turned in until your work is graded (put corrections
elsewhere).
Computers
You can use any language or machine you like.
The Silicon Graphics Indy's in
Wean 5205
are most recommended,
since they have 24 bits per pixels
(
software on cluster machines).
Machines with 24 bits per pixel are preferable, since several of the
assignments require high quality filtering, which is very difficult
to judge on a dithered 8 bit display.
It will be possible for you to do the assignments on 8-bit color
workstations or PC's, however.
Some software libraries we will use are Xforms (user interface library),
Xlib (X window system), and optionally OpenGL.
15-463 Web Page
ph@cs.cmu.edu 1/13/97