Lectures for CMSC 740: Graduate Computer Graphics

This page has pointers to the material covered in each lecture and will be updated throughout the semester. The lecture notes appearing on this page are copyrighted by Amitabh Varshney, except for images that appear with appropriate credits. Use of these lecture notes by students of the class CMSC 740 at the University of Maryland is permitted for their educational purposes. Any other use requires permission of the author.

These course notes are visible only from umd.edu domains.

Following each lecture I have listed the approximate (but usually not exhaustive) coverage of the topics that we covered in our lectures from the textbook by Alan Watt. The following reading suggestions are for the case when you do not fully understand what was discussed in the lectures. Unfortunately, the following list does not cover everything discussed in the class (there is no perfect textbook yet).


January 29

Discussion of course policies and course plan
Motivation, Overview
applications, pipeline
PDF (2), PDF (6)
(not covered in Watt's textbook)


January 31

Graphics Display Technology and OpenGL
human visual system, graphics hardware, vector/raster graphics, graphics APIs, OpenGL
PDF (2), PDF (6)
(not covered in Watt's textbook)


February 5

GLUT overview, Pixel Operations
event-driven computing, bitmaps, pixmaps
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Section 6.4.1


February 7

Line and Polygon Scan-Conversion
various algorithms for each
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Sections 6.4.2, 6.5


February 12

Clipping and Culling
2D Line and Polygon Clipping, backface culling, view-frustum culling
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Sections 6.1, 5.2.1, 5.2.2


February 14

2D Transformations
translate, rotate, shear, scale, homogeneous coords, normals
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Chapter 5


February 19

3D Transformations
representation, composition, quaternions
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Chapter 5


February 21

3D Viewing
parallel, perspective, 3D world to screen mapping
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Chapter 5


February 26

Illumination and Shading
illumination models and shading methods
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Sections 6.2, 6.3


February 28

Illumination and Texturing
BRDF, BSSRDF, Fresnel Term, Texture mapping
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Sections 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, 7.7, 7.8


March 5

Texture Mapping
Perspective Foreshortening, Bump, Normal, Displacement, Environment, OpenGL
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Sections 8.1, 8.4, 8.6, 8.8


March 7

Anti-aliasing, Color
Sampling, Filtering, Dithering, Transparency
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Chapter 14, 15.1, 15.2, 15.5.4


March 12

Visibility Algorithms
visibility scan-conversion, visibility culling
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Sections 6.6, 6.7, 2.3


March 14

Multipass Rendering
Antialiasing, depth of field, motion blur, light maps, shadow generation
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Sections 8.5, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3.1, 9.3.3, 9.3.4


March 19

Review of the course thus far


March 21

Midterm Exam


March 26 and 28

Spring Break


April 2

Ray Tracing
basic algorithm, ray-object intersections, distribution ray tracing, efficiency issues
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Sections 10.3.1, 10.6, Chapter 12


April 4

Radiosity
basic algorithm, progressive radiosity, potential problems
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Sections 11.1, 11.2, 11.4, 11.5, 11.6


April 9

Modeling Overview
Implicit, Parametric, Procedural, CSG modeling
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Chapter 2


April 11

Interpolation and Approximation
natural cubic splines, Bezier, and B-Splines
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Sections 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 3.5


April 16

Volume Rendering
various approaches
PDF
Watt: Chapter 13


April 18

Point-based Rendering
motivation, overview
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Not covered in Watt's book


April 25

Image-based Rendering
motivation, overview
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Watt: Sections 16.3, 16.4, 16.5


April 30

Multiresolution hierarchies for 3D Graphics Meshes
motivation, overview, view-independent (static), view-dependent (dynamic)
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Not covered in Watt's book


May 2

Multiresolution hierarchies for 3D Graphics Meshes
simplification operators, error bounds, perceptual criteria
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Not covered in Watt's book


May 7

Virtual Environments
history, applications, technology
PDF (2)
Not covered in Watt's book


May 9

Computer Animation
overview
PDF (2), PDF (6)
Sections 17.1, 17.2, 17.5 + overview of Sections 17.3, 17.4, 17.6


May 14

Course Recap
wrap-up review
PDF (2), PDF (6)