CS 184: COURSE OBJECTIVES

SPECIFIC EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES:

• Understand how geometric objects are modeled on a computer so that they can be rendered effectively and/or efficiently.
• Object hierarchies and instance transformations needed for the modeling of complicated scenes.
• Interactive input techniques, the basics of a graphics editor.
• The geometrical operations in the rendering pipeline: consecutive transformations, windowing, clipping, projections.
• Visibility determination and hidden feature elimination.
• Illumination and shading models for rendering.
• Introduction to parametric curves and surfaces, Bezier patches.
• Introduction to advanced rendering techniques: ray-tracing, texture mapping, radiosity.

GENERIC SKILLS AND CONCEPTS TAUGHT:

• Refresher course on 3D geometry, matrix and vector operations.
• Understanding the potential (and the effort needed) for creating computer graphics models.
• Composing complicated environments in a hierarchical manner from nested abstractions.
• Visual debugging with appropriate test cases.
• Modular systems programming, some software engineering.

PREREQUISITES:

• Knowledge of data structures, experience in programming in C, C++, or Java, able to build software composed of several interacting modules.
• Linear algebra: coordinate systems, matrices, transformations.