CS323A Syllabus

Karl Stiefvater
qarl@cs.wustl.edu
Office hours: Lopata 404b
3pm - 4pm Tuesday and Thursday

Lab 1: Introduction to 3D representation - the "scene"

camera, lighting, atmosphere, environment, objects

object representations - polygonal meshes, parametric surfaces

Lab 2: 3D manipulations

transformations - translation/rotation/scaling

matrix form, composition

inbetweening for animation

Lab 3: Texturing

image projection - planar/cylindrical/spherical

wrapping to parametric surfaces

bump mapping

Lab 4: Procedural texturing

general procedural techniques

2D and 3D noise functions

fractal and Fourier synthesis

turbulence

Lab 5: Rendering surface materials

BRDFs

ray tracing

traditional illumination models - Phong/Blinn/Cook and Torrance

Fresnel coefficient

Lab 6: Grammar-based modeling

L-systems

grammars for organic growth

other structures

Lab 7: Volume rendering

ray scattering

non-uniform particle density - ray marching

3D noise functions and turbulence applied to volumes

Lab 8: Human visual system

Lens glare

Contrast sensitivity

Low-lighting conditions

Lab 9: Non-photorealistic 3D Rendering

contour effects - sketches, cartoons

painterly effects

random-dot stereograms

Final Project:

Student defined project, an in-depth exploration of a graphics topic interesting to the student. Topics need not be restricted to material presented in class - for example, other good project topics include 2D graphics, genetic algorithms in graphics, artificial intelligence in graphics, etc.