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Computer Graphics:  2010-2011

Information

Lecturer	Stephen Cameron
Degrees	Part A Options — Honour School of Computer Science Schedule B1 — Honour School of Computer Science Schedule B1 — Honour School of Mathematics and Computer Science
Term	Michaelmas Term 2010  (16 lectures)

Overview

This course is an introductory course in Computer Graphics, and covers a wide range of the field of interactive computer graphics at all levels of abstraction, and with emphasis on both theory and practise. It follows a standard textbook in the field, with additional material used to keep the course up-to-date.

Learning outcomes

Knowledge and understanding

• Understanding of the fundamentals of the modern computer graphics pipeline
• The mathematics of affine transformations in three dimensions
• Manipulation of lighting effects 
• Application of mathematics to graphics systems

Practical skills

• Ability to program low-level scan-conversion of simple shapes
• Working knowledge of a modern 3D graphics library via the practical assignments 
• Ability to produce usable graphics user-interfaces
• Ability to write programs from a practical specification and produce realistic graphics output
• GPU programming

Synopsis

The following are major topics that will be covered. (Numbers in brackets give an approximation to the number of lecture hours spent on the topic.)

• Fundamentals of graphics hardware and software (3).
• Essential algorithms: line generation, solid area display, transformations, clipping, projection (5).
• Abstraction, and simple examples of libraries of graphics functions (2).
• Modelling of 3-dimensional solids, and display of parametric curves (2).
• Rendering techniques and colour and lighting models (3).
• Input devices, interactive techniques, and the human-machine interface (1).

There is practical work to supplement the lecture material; the course does assume previous experience of practical programming in a high-level procedural language, and simple knowledge of matrices and vectors. The practicals themselves will be in Java, or using Java-like syntax (GPU).

Syllabus

The following are major topics that will be covered. (Numbers in brackets give an approximation to the number of lecture hours spent on the topic.)

• Fundamentals of graphics hardware and software (3).
• Essential algorithms: line generation, solid area display, transformations, clipping, projection (5).
• Abstraction, and simple examples of libraries of graphics functions (2).
• Modelling of 3-dimensional solids, and display of parametric curves (2).
• Rendering techniques and colour and lighting models (3).
• Input devices, interactive techniques, and the human-machine interface (1).

There is practical work to supplement the lecture material; the course does assume previous experience of practical programming in a high-level procedural language, and simple knowledge of matrices and vectors. The practicals themselves will be in Java, or using Java-like syntax (GPU).

Reading list

The main course text is "Introduction to Computer Graphics" by J D Foley, A Van Dam, S K Feiner, J F Hughes and R L Phillips, Published by Addison-Wesley, at around £40.00.

Note that this is an abridged and updated version of "Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice" by Foley, Van Dam, Feiner, & Hughes, also available from Addison-Wesley for about £45.00. The latter could be used for the course, but the early editions contain some differences in the examples, exercises, and implementation language (Pascal).