Instructor

Henrik Wann Jensen

Office hours, Fridays 2:30-3:30pm

Lectures

CENTER 216, Tuesdays and Thursdays: 3:30pm - 4:50pm

Teaching Assistant

Craig Donner

Lab. hours:
Monday 3pm - 6pm
Tuesday 10pm - 1pm
Wednesday 3pm - 6pm
Thursday 10pm - 1pm

Programming Lab

AP&M 2444

Mailing List

cse168(at)graphics.ucsd.edu

Book

Peter Shirley, "Fundamentals of Computer Graphics", AK Peters 2002 [Errata]

Useful book on geometry, ray intersections, transformations etc.
Philip Schneider and David Eberly, "Geometric Tools for Computer Graphics", Morgan Kaufmann 2002

More advanced text on global illumination and photon mapping
Henrik Wann Jensen, "Realistic Image Synthesis Using Photon Mapping, AK Peters, 2001

Slightly dated, but still a very comprehensive overview of image synthesis
Andrew Glassner, "Principles of digital image synthesis", Morgan Kaufmann, 1995

Additional notes

Ray tracing document

Course Objective

This course will cover the basic algorithms used for computer graphics rendering. The course will have four programming assignments in which the students will implemeent a ray tracer with acceleration structures, and advanced rendering capabilities such as Monte Carlo ray tracing and photon mapping. At the end of the course the students should be able to write a ray tracer, able to handle different types of geometry efficiently, capable of choosing good acceleration structures, have basic knowledge of shading models such as the Lambert and Phong models, knowledge of texture and bump mapping techniques (possibly mipmap filtering), basic knowledge of sampling and filtering, global illumination and photon mapping, and an idea of more advanced topics such as programmable graphics hardware.

Contents

The ray tracing algorithm, camera models, geometry intersection, geometry tessellation, acceleration structures, shading models, texturing, bump mapping, sampling and filtering, and a brief introduction to advanced topics such as Monte Carlo ray tracing and/or programmable graphics hardware.

Grading

This is class is for 4 units. It will be graded based on four programming exercises (including a final project) and a midterm. The grading for the projects are: 1 (15%), 2 (20%), 3 (20%), 4 final project (30%), midterm (15%)

Programming Assignments

The miro base code is available for Windows and OSX/Linux. It includes a README.pdf that should help answer most questions you might have. If there's still something confounding, email Craig.

Programming assignment 1 [PDF] Due 11:59pm, Wednesday, April 14
Programming assignment 2 [PDF] Due 11:59pm, Wednesday, April 28
Programming assignment 3 [PDF] Due 11:59pm, Wednesday, May 19
Final Project [PDF] Due 11:59pm, Thursday, June 10

Here are the three test scenes for Assignment 3: