Schedule

Links to non-open-access articles will work from on campus, or go to library.cornell.edu and search for an article title or DOI to get NetID authenticated access. Most articles also have author-hosted versions that can be readily discovered.

Due dates are subject to change.

date		topic	reading	assignments
25	Jan	intro slides
27	Jan	radiometry notes	PBR Sec 5.4
1	Feb	BRDF and irradiance integrals notes	PBR Sec 5.5-5.7
3	Feb	BRDF and irradiance integrals | shading overview slides		Devops due
8	Feb	BRDF and reflection | shading overview
10	Feb	probability | C++ notes	PBR Sec 13.1, 13.3.1
15	Feb	Monte Carlo illumination slides notes	PBR Sec 13.2
17	Feb	area lighting		Ray Tracing cp1 due
22	Feb	forward and deferred shading slides
24	Feb	pipeline basics | shading frames	Lengyel 2019 pdf	Ray Tracing cp2 due
1	Mar	—February Break—
3	Mar	shadow maps slides	Williams SIGGRAPH 1978 doi opengl-tutorial.org tutorial
8	Mar	soft shadows	Reeves SIGGRAPH 1987 doi Fernando 2005 sketch Eisemann et al. 2013 course notes	Ray Tracing due
10	Mar	environment and ambient illumination slides	Mittring SIGGRAPH 2007 course notes web Chapman tutorial McGuire et al. HPG 2011 doi
15	Mar	framebuffers and textures
17	Mar	ambient occlusion		Pipeline cp1 due
22	Mar	viewing flare and bloom	Spencer et al. 1995 doi
24	Mar	image processing in shaders		Pipeline cp2 due
29	Mar	atmospheric effects and sky models slides	Nishita et al. 1993 doi Preetham et al. 1999 doi Hosek & Wilkie 2012 doi
31	Mar	shadow volumes slides	Crow SIGGRAPH 1977 doi McGuire GPU Gems web Stich et al. GPU Gems 3 web
5	Apr	—Spring Break—
7	Apr	—Spring Break—
12	Apr	mesh animation slides notes	Kavan, SIGGRAPH skinning course I.1-2
14	Apr	rotations and rigid motions slides	Kavan et al. 2008 doi	Pipeline due
19	Apr	rotations and quaternions, cont'd.
21	Apr	antialiasing and texture filtering slides slides	Williams doi Greene & Heckbert CGA 1986 doi McCormack et al. 1999 doi
26	Apr	microfacet models slides	Walter et al. 2007 web	proposals due
28	Apr	normal map antialiasing slides	Olano & Baker 2010 web
3	May	efficient meshes slides	RTR 4e Ch. 16 Hoppe 1997 web, 1999 web Garland & Heckbert 1997 pdf	Animation due
5	May	particle systems slides	Witkin and Baraff 2001 course notes
10	May	project milestone presentations
15	May	final project due date

Projects

During the first three-fourths of the semester there will be three projects that require fairly ground-up implementations of a variety of real-time rendering and animation techniques using C++. Assignments may be done in pairs. Projects will be graded based on reports and in-person demos. These assignments are being updated this semester, and the dates and topics are subject to change.

The details will be released when it's time to work on the projects, but the planned projects are:

• Devops: a simple “assignment zero” to get the framework set up and compiled.
• Ray tracing: a CPU-based real time ray tracer using the Embree API that does physics based shading.
• Pipeline: a GPU-based renderer using the OpenGL API that replicates many of the effects the ray tracer achieves, but faster.
• Animation: an extension to Pipeline that plays back mesh-based character animation.
• Final project: a project of your choosing that extends these assignments with something new.

The longer assigments have weekly checkpoints where you will send us a progress report, to help you keep moving and to help us stay aware of how everyone is doing with the implementations.

Office Hours Schedule

About CS5625

Questions, help, discussion: The instructor and TAs are available to answer questions, advise on projects, or just to discuss interesting topics related to the class at office hours and by appointment as needed. For electronic communication we are using Ed (handy link also at the top of this page).

Collaboration: You are welcome (encouraged, even) to discuss projects among yourselves and to help one another track down problems. The framework-free nature of our coding assignments means that students' programs will be very different from one another, so there is less worry than in some other classes of accidentally glimpsing the solution on another person's screen. But when it comes to actually designing and implementing the projects, your code needs to be your own work (or you and your partner's). In particular, it's certainly never OK to copy parts of one person's or team's writeup, code, or results into another's, even if the general solution was worked out together.

Academic integrity: We assume the work you hand in is your own, and the results you hand in are generated by your program. You're welcome to read whatever you want to learn what you need to do the work, but we do expect you to build your own implementations of the methods we are studying. If you're ever in doubt, just include a citation in your code or report indicating where some idea came from, whether it be a classmate, a web site, another piece of software, or anything—this always maintains your honesty, whether the source was used in a good way or not. The principle is that an assignment is an academic document, like a journal article. When you turn it in, you are claiming that everything in it is your original idea (or is original to you and your partner, if you're handing in as a pair) unless you cite a source for it.

School can be stressful, and your coursework and other factors can put you under a lot of pressure, but that is never a reason for dishonesty. If you feel you can't complete the work on your own, come talk to the professor or the TAs, or your advisor, and we can help you figure out what to do. Think before you hand in!

Clear-cut cases of dishonesty will result in failing the course.

For more information see Cornell's Code of Academic Integrity.

Books

Supplemental Books and Materials

• OpenGL 4.0 Shading Language Cookbook by David Wolff
• Graphics Shaders: Theory and Practice by Mike Bailey and Steve Cunningham
• GPU Pro 2 Edited by Wolfgang Engel
• OpenGL "Red Book" --- *the* reference for OpenGL programming
• Nate Robin's OpenGL "tutors" programs
• 3-D Computer Graphics: A Mathematical Introduction with OpenGL, Volume 385, by Samuel R. Buss
• Andrew S. Glassner, An Introduction to Ray Tracing, 1989