CMSC 435, or permission of instructor.

Course Description

Advanced graphics including hidden surface removal, shading, texturing, illumination, anti-aliasing, procedural techniques, and modeling. Students will become familiar with the state-of-the-art in rendering, and are encouraged to extend the state-of-the-art.

Special Bonus
Students whose final projects (along with a paper) get accepted to SIGGRAPH 99 (Ca), Visualization 99(Ca), or SIGGRAPH 00 (La) will get full funding for a trip to that conference! Final projects could serve as the basis of a Master's project or thesis.

Textbook

Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques, Watt and Watt, Addison Wesley. Additional reading of papers from the literature may be required.

Good References:

• Texturing and Modeling: A Procedural Approach, 2nd Edition by Ebert, Musgrave, Peachey, Perlin, and Worley. AP Professional 1998.
• Procedural Elements for Computer Graphics, David F. Rogers, McGraw-Hill.
• Radiosity and Realistic Image Synthesis, Cohen and Wallace, AP Professional 1994.
• Principles of Digital Image Synthesis,Andrew Glassner, Morgan Kaufman 1994.

The lab assignments will require the use of UNIX and the C/ C++ programming language. A tentative list of assignments is given below. Lab assignments will be due at MIDNIGHT of the due date.

10% per 24 hours late. No labs accepted after 5 days past the due date. Labs will be submitted electronically. Labs are expected to be worked on individually (except lab 4). Collaboration in any form will not be tolerated. Any form of collaboration or copying of labs will be dealt with according to university policy.

Examination Policy

Exams are closed book and fixed duration. Make-up exams will only be given when a student is prevented from taking the exam due to unforeseen circumstances (e.g., sickness), and formal proof will be required to prove the prevailing circumstance.

Academic Honesty

Cheating in any form will not be tolerated. You may discuss programming assignments with anyone. However, any help you receive must be documented. At the beginning of your program, you must include a comment indicating the sources you used while working on it (excluding course staff and text), and the type of help you received from them. If you received no help, say so. Failure to include this comment at the top of your program will result in your program being returned ungraded.

Grading Policy

Grades will be assigned on the basis of accumulated points. The weighting is as follows:

• Midterm Exam 25% (Tentative date Wednesday, March 17, 1999)
• Final Examination 25% (Monday, May 17, 3:30-5:30pm)
• Labs (4) 45%
• Paper Presentation 5%

As per University policy, incomplete will be granted only under extraordinary circumstances; students who are enrolled after April 9 (the last day to drop a class) should be prepared to receive a grade of A-F.