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Syllabus

Administrivia:

• Time: MWF 2:30-3:20
• Place: EE1 045
• Instructor: Brian Curless (curless@cs.washington.edu), Sieg 318
  

• TAs:	Craig Kaplan (csk@cs.washington.edu) Michael Aucoin (maucoin@cs.washington.edu) Jason Ilano (jilano@cs.washington.edu) Alan Wilson (alan@cs.washington.edu)

• More about course personnel

Prerequisites:

• Data structures (CSE/326)
• A good working knowledge of C and C++ programming
• Linear algebra
• Some mathematical sophistication
• (No prior knowledge of graphics is assumed.)

Required text:

• Hearn and Baker. Computer Graphics, Second Edition C Version. Prentice Hall, 1997.

Optional texts:

• Woo, Neider, and Davis. OpenGL Programming Guide, Second Edition. Addison-Wesley, 1997.
• Hartman and Wernecke. The VRML 2.0 Handbook. Addison-Wesley, 1996.

Supplemental texts:

• Edward Angel, Interactive Computer Graphics: A top-down approach with OpenGL Addison Wesley, 1997.
• Foley, van Dam, Feiner, Hughes. Computer Graphics Principles and Practice, Second Edition in C. Addison Wesley, 1996.
• Glassner. Principles of Digital Image Synthesis. Morgan Kaufmann, 1995.

All of the optional texts will be available in the graphics instructional lab.

Grading:

• Projects: 60%+
  • Working demo (team grade): 40%+
  • Project knowledge: 15%
  • Project artifacts: 5%+
• Written assignments: 20%
• Final: 20%

(A "+" denotes an area in which extra credit can be earned.)

Projects:

CSE/457 is taught using the wonderful graphics instructional lab consisting of 14 Windows NT workstations. The lab is located in Sieg 228.

There will be four projects. You'll work indvidually on Project #2, and in a team with one other student on Projects #1, #3, and #4. Each project, with the exception of Project #2, will require you and your teammate to make substantial extensions to an existing interactive graphical application. The projects we have in mind are:

Project #1: Impressionist:

An interactive impressionistic paint system, similar in spirit to Paul Haeberli's The Impressionist.

Project #2: Articulate:

A hierarchical model, built with the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), containing various animated movements that can be triggered by a user.

Project #3: Trace:

A program to create beautiful raytraced images, complete with shadows, reflections, and transparent effects.

Project #4: Animator:

An interactive keyframe animation system, used to animate your VRML model from Project #2.

You will have two weeks for each project.

Projects will be graded during in-person sessions with one of the TAs on the day that the project is due. During the grading session, a TA will run the project to make sure that it conforms to the project guidelines. The TA will then quiz individual members of the team to determine how well they understand the structure of the code, the design trade-offs, and the implemented algorithms.

One grade will be assigned for all members of the team for the project's implementation. Separate grades will be recorded for each team member's "knowledge of the project." The last component of the grade involves using your project to create an artifact, hopefully, of some artistic merit. Extra credit will be given for the nicest artifacts, as determined by class vote. Click here for more information on project grading.

Project Turn-in & Late Policy:

Assignments are due at the beginning of lecture on the due date. Late assignments are marked down at a rate of 33% per day (not per lecture), meaning that if you fail to turn in an assignment on time it is worth 66% for the first 24 hours after the deadline, 33% for the next 24 hours, and it is worth nothing after that. In addition, no extra credit for bells and whistles will be awarded for any late assignment.

Exceptions will be given only in extreme circumstances and only in advance.