Information on Fundamentals of Computer Graphics 308-557A

Synthetic image of course name

This page provides information for the computer graphics course taught by Gregory Dudek in the School of Computer Science, McGill University.

The gallery of ancient images submitted for one of the assignments in winter 1997 can be visited by clicking here.

Recent news and updates are listed below

General Information

The study of the fundamental mathematical, algorithmic and representational issues in computer graphics, with emphasis of 3 dimensional graphics. The key issues are how to describe and manipulate 1, 2 and 3 dimensional data and how to visualize and depict it either photo-realistically or to enhance specific attributes.

The topics to be covered are: overview of the graphics process, projective geometry, homogeneous coordinates, projective transformations, line-drawing, surface modelling and object modelling using spatial sampling and parametric functions, computational modelling of reflecance, approaches to rendering including ray tracing and radiosity, texture synthesis and mapping, polyhedral representations, video.

Instructor:

Professor G. Dudek,

    School of Computer Science.
    Office hours:  M: 4-5, Tu: 10-11
	    419 McConnell Building; 
	    meetings at other times by appointment only.
    Telephone: 398-4325.

Class email account: cs557@cs.mcgill.ca You are strongly advised to use your McGill email account for course-related mail.
Class web page: http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dudek/557.html
Frequently asked questions and assignment tips: FAQ

TA information

Teaching Assistant:

Eric Bourque: Office Hours:TBA

Hot news

Interested students are invited to room MC103 at 1:00pm Thursday April 17 to see a few videos from the class.
NON-McGill Seminar at Siggraph Montreal, for those of you who really liked the video assignment. THE EVOLUTION OF ANIMATION: TOOLS, TECHNIQUES AND CREATIVITY Tuesday, April 15th 2003 at 6:00PM Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), 305, St. Catherine street West.
Texture notes can be found here
Notes on illumination modeling and ray tracing can be found here in PDF form. Note that Ch. 16 of the text does a good job on this, so you should not realy need these.
Video assignments can be submitted on CD, on account of hardware failures with the VHS video recording equipment (as discussed in class).
Due dates for the assignment and video will not be strictly enforced however if you submit stuff to late for me to have time to mark it, it will be your responsibility (as dicussed in class).
Re. the sample code for openGL, and for reading images in C for the assignment: these only run on the machines in lab105n and lab110a. The TA reports that "many students continue to complain that they don't run in 103n or on willy, etc., despite me telling them several times that SOCS only has certain machines setup properly for openGL. "
Re. the exam formerly schedule for the 14th:
```
     Section 306 of the Election Act
     of the Province of Quebec (1989) states in part: 306. 
     Every education institution shall, on polling day, grant leave
     to those pupils and students who are electors.
```
Thus, the McGill policy is: examinations originally scheduled for April 14, 2003 will be rescheduled as follows:
Arts, Education, Engineering, Law, Music, Nursing, Science, Social Work: Sunday, April 13, 2003 (at the same time and in the same location as originally scheduled on April 14, 2003).
I'm told by CS help staff that the open GL sample code works on the machines in 110A and 105N, but not 103N due to an impending X server upgrade on the latter machines.
OpenGL sample Makefile and C code. This will run on the lab105n and 110A machines.
Assignment 3 question 3 helpful snippet can be found here. This code is provided for example purposes only, and is not guaranteed to work, and may not even be helpful.
Assignment 3 is available here.
Assignment 1 marks marks
Notes and details re. the
Re. importing movies frames into Adobe Premiere (as discussed in class), not that this may not work with every image file format. It is conformed to work with JPEG, but almost certainly not with TGA images.
Notes and details re. the video (movie) assignment.
A more detailed description of the project can be found here.
Re. the project, naturally if you work in a team your project needs to be proportionately better than a solo project to get the same mark. As noted in class, in both the project and the movie assignmemt, you must CLEARLY INDICATE in writing who did what, and how the workload was FAIRLY DISTRIBUTED.
As discussed in class, submit your assignment to http://zope.cs.mcgill.ca:8080 Your submission should contain: your image and your source file. You also need to use handin to submit the image (again), the source file, any extra files required, and a supplementary document describing any tricks you use, your approach and/or challenges, and how the program can be used (if there is anuthign non-obvious). Since there have been problems with the site, we will not strictly enforce the due date: you have 24 hours grace period.
You images need to be GIF or JPEG formatted. We discussed that in class too. You can use gimp for conversion, or one of several other tools.
Assignment 1 can be found here. There is just 1 question.
Please note I have been informed that if students do not have the pre-requisite(s) for the course, the Faculty will be instructed to delete the course from their records.

Textbook and References:

Course textbook (available in the McGill Bookstore):
Foley, van Dam, Feiner, Hughes, Computer Graphics: principles and practice in C, Addison Wesley, Second Edition.

There is also a lower-cost abbreviated version of the text available called Introduction to Computer Graphics" by the same authors. It does not cover all of the relevant material, but deals with most of it.

Other reference texts:

A. Watt, 3D Computer Graphics, Addison Wesley, Second (1993) edition.

D. Rogers and Adams, Mathematical Elements for Computer Graphics, McGraw Hill, 1990, (ISBN 0-07-053530-2).

These are held by the Physical Sciences and Engineering Library, and the text is stocked by the McGill Bookstore. The book by Watt is quite good and concentrates specifically on three-dimensional modelling and rendering in greater detail. The library only has an older edition under the title ``Fundamentals of Three Dimensional...''. The book by Rogers and Adams provides additional details on basics and background on the basic mathematics, with emphasis on geometric transformations.

Prerequisites:

189-223 and 308-251.

The ability to write programs well in the C language under UNIX is assumed. If you don't know about Makefiles, find out now.

Syllabus and details

There will be a total of about 26 lectures. The approximate sequence of major topics is as follows:

Overview, introduction and hardware 
3-D surface description 
2-D graphics and transformations
Morphing and Warping
Color
3-D parametric models 
3-D volumetric models
Hidden surfaces 
Lighting and reflection 
Rendering 
Texture mapping
Animation and assorted open issues: fractals,  graftals, video techniques.

Laboratory:

Programming assignments will involve the use UNIX or LINUX based workstations. Knowledge of UNIX will be assumed (makefiles, compiling, linking, etc.).

Assignments:

Roughly four assignments will be given out, the last one being more substantial. Students wil also have to create a short video-based demo at some time during the term. Substantial programming will be involved, as well as analytic work.

Assignments will involve both elaboration of ideas seen in class, as well as exposure to more practical issues and "hands-on" experience.

Assignments should be handed in on or before 17:00 hrs. on the date due.

Late assignments MAY NOT BE CREDITED! All pages making up an assignment should be secured by binding or stapling. Paper clips or other loose attachments often come undone, with consequent loss.

All assignments must be fully documented. Document your code both internally and externally, and provide test results as appropriate. Always clearly (re)state the questions to which you are responding before presenting answers.

Collaboration / Academic Honesty:

It is reasonable to discuss with others possible general approaches to problems. It is unreasonable to work together on a detailed solution, to copy a solution, or to give away a solution. If your common discussion can be detected by looking at the solutions, then there is too much collaboration. Such instances of academic dishonesty may result in a course grade of F or potentially even more severe penalties.

Marking:

All marks in this course will be recorded in the form of letter grades only. Marks will be combined as follows:

final examination influence 35% of the final grade,
assignments 30%,
mid-term test 5%,
final project 30%.

Note: this page is maintained by Professor Gregory Dudek from the School of Computer Science and the Centre for Intelligent Machines (CIM) at McGill University.

Legalities

This document is copyright (c) Gregory Dudek, 2003. You are granted permission for the non-commercial use, reproduction, distribution or display of this document in any format under the following restrictions. This document must remain intact and complete and appropriate credit is given as to its source. This permission is valid for a period of 45 (forty-five) days from the time this document was obtained from McGill University. All other rights reserved by the author(s).