Announcements

Nov. 3rd
A Google group has been configured for discussion of homework/testing challenges: cs410-opengl
Oct. 31st
Homework is now due Wed., Nov 5th. By popular demand, there is a specification on the assignments page (that matches exactly what was in the lecture notes)


Sept. 15th
Note the corrected due date for Assignment 2! (Sept. 29th)

About the website

This web site should be your first source of information about the course. You can find the following information here by following the links above:

About the course

This course teaches students how to program a computer to generate photo-realistic images. The general idea is that if you have a scene model, a sensor model and a viewpoint, you should be able to create the same image that a camera would for that scene and viewpoint. Scene models include 3D object models and light sources. Objects models are composed of surfaces, and include both geometry (where is the surface?) and material properties (what is it made of? What color is it?). For this class, sensor models will be limited to pin-hole projection models.

This course will emphasize geometric objects and transformations, perspective projections, ligthing and reflectance models, shading models, and 3D curves and surfaces. Students will become experienced OpenGL programmers and become familiar with Google's SketchUp tool. Perhaps most importantly, students may finally come to appreciate the power of linear algebra.