Introduction Course structure Lectures Lab sessions Course material Final assignments Grading

Introduction

Goals: Learning advanced graphics and in particular point-based rendering techniques; obtaining hands-on experience with state-of-the-art graphics programming. Studying an advanced graphics technique and giving a lecture about it.

Prerequisites: Computer graphics (bachelor level), basic programming and OpenGL knowledge

Course structure

• Lectures. These will be given partly by the instructor(s), and partly by the students, who work in pairs or individually, depending on the number of participants.
• Lab sessions.
• Final assignment.

Lectures

Week 1. Introduction to point-based rendering. Acquisition and digital processing of point-sampled data (Lectures by course instructors).

Week 2. Rendering point-sampled data.
OpenGL refresher. Introduction to GPU concepts (Lectures by course instructors).

Week 3. Rendering point-sampled data (continued).
Point-based rendering on the GPU (Lectures by course instructors).

Week 4 Surface Reconstruction from Point Samples (Lecture by course instructor).
Lecture by students.

Week 5. Digital Processing of Point Models (Lecture by course instructor).
Lecture by students.

Week 6 Point-based Shape Modelling (Lecture by course instructor).
Lecture by students.

Week 7. Special topic (Lecture by course instructors).
Lecture by students.

Week 8 (optional). Lectures by students.

One week before your presentation, you have to send a 1-page summary (containing one illustrative picture) to the lab instructor. Also, send him your powerpoint/pdf slides a few days in advance to make sure your presentation is well balanced.

Lab sessions

Lab sessions are in week 47-51 on Thursdays 09:15-11:00, starting on November 20, room 5161.0204.

The purpose of the lab sessions is to become acquainted with the Cg ("C for Graphics") graphics language, and to develop some graphics programs using Cg. We assume basic OpenGL knowledge at the level of the bachelor course Computer Graphics.

You have to hand in a documented version of the source code of your program(s) to the lab instructor. Make sure your programs compile and run without problems.

The lab instructor is Wladimir van der Laan, room BB-493, e-mail: w.j.van.der.laan@rug.nl.

The working directory for the lab sessions is /net/users/vakken/ACGaVE.

Course material

The Point-based Graphics Resource

Final assignments

This can be related to the topic of your lecture, but may also be completely different. You can pick one from the list the instructors will provide. You can also propose a subject yourself, which should be well motivated. Final choice needs approval by the course instructor(s). The result of the final assignment is a report written in the style of a conference paper, which requires the use of specific style files that are available in Nestor.

Grading

To earn the credits for the course, you have to comply with the following:

1. Complete the lab sessions. Demonstrate correct functionality of your program (meeting the deadlines).
2. Give a lecture (in pairs).
3. Report of final assignment, including software you developed
   Deadline for handing in the final assignment (send it to the lab instructor): 30 January 2009.