CS184 Course Information

Welcome to CS184! This course is about technologies for creating 3D, interactive computer graphics. From the course contents, you can see that the course is divided into four topical sections, not of equal size. The first deals with the creation and use of 3D models. This section comprises over a third of the course and uses the modeling language VRML97. Section 1 will show you how to build 3D models, animate them, add behaviors and textures, and the basics of 3D interaction. This section finishes when the first project starts, to be written using VRML97 (the current evolution of VRML 2.0 which seems to have disappeared). Section 2 deals with more advanced modeling. It won't be needed in the first project, but will be required on the midterm. Section 3 deals with the theory of light and color and with photo-realistic rendering of 3D scenes. Section 3 will make use of the Renderman^® language developed by Pixar. The second project will be based on Renderman. Section 4 deals with the algorithms and hardware for rendering 3D objects on a display system.

There will be one midterm, based on sections 1 and 2 of the course, and a final. There is also weekly lab work which is an important part of the course and which will be graded. The lab work will either be a weekly exercise or work on one of the projects. Check the course contents for the schedule for labs and projects.

Administrivia

Lecture: MWF 11-12:00 in 306 Soda, CCN 24992
Section 102: M 3-4 in 405 Soda, CCN 24998
Section 103: M 2-3, in 405 Soda, CCN 25001
Section 104: Tu 5:30-6:30 in 405 Soda, CCN 25004
Prerequisites: Math 53, CS61B
Credit: 4 units

Sections will not meet in the first week.

Instructor: John Canny, jfc@cs.berkeley.edu, 529 Soda, 642-9955
Office hours: Tues 2-3, Weds 2-3
TA1: Alex Berg, aberg@cs.berkeley.edu, 535 Soda, 642-9716

Course Secretary: Winnie Wang, alg@cs.berkeley.edu, 719 Soda Hall, 642-9575

Grading:

First midterm 20%
Final 20%
Weekly Labs 20%
Projects 40%

Discussion sections:
Sections will include short quizes at the end of each hour. These quizes will not contribute to your final grade but are will be used by the instructors to measure the progress and level of understanding of the whole class.
We are also planning to experiment with some remote presentation technologies in the sections. You will hear more about this in the first week of the course.

Labs:
The labs will be in rooms 347-349 Soda, which contain SGI Indy and HP graphics workstations. For the VRML section of the course, you can also develop and test your environments on most Windows 95/NT/98 PCs by downloading the current Cosmo plugin for Netscape or Explorer. This plugin parses and displays VRML 2.0/97 models on PCs. Make sure you download the latest version from CosmoSoftware. Even though Netscape communicator is distributed with a version of the Cosmo player, this version may not be up-to-date. You can also download the Blue Moon Renderman tools for Windows from here.

Projects:
The projects will be done normally in teams of two. There will be one project based on VRML at the end of section 1 of the course, and a second project based on Renderman during section 3 of the course. The projects will be less constrained than in past offerings of the course. You will be given some suggestions for projects, but the choice of projects will be up to you. You should document your project so that it is easy to use (and grade) and so that you make clear the contributions of the team members.

Course Text:
"Computer Graphics, C version" by Donald Hearn and Pauline Baker, Prentice Hall 1996.

Recommended:

"VRML 2.0 Sourcebook, 2^nd Edition" by Andrea Ames, David Nadeau and John Moreland, John Wiley and Sons, 1997. This is an excellent book and includes many examples on CD-rom, but is not essential because of the extensive documentation of VRML 2.0 available on the web. The VRML examples from the book are also available on the publishers web site for the book.
"The Renderman Companion" by Steven Upstill, Addison-Wesley Longman Inc., 1990. This is also a good reference. Before buying it, you should look at the online documentation for Renderman, and also the shareware Renderman clone from Blue Moon Software.
Early in the summer, we requested the OpenGL^® Programming guide (OpenGL is a registered trade mark of Silicon Graphics Corp.) as a recommended text to the ASUC bookstore and Ned's. OpenGL has been a mainstay of his course in the past. But the recent evolution of VRML into a stable cross-platform standard has made OpenGL unnecessary. The relationship between VRML and OpenGL is similar to TCL/TK and raw X-windows. You won't need OpenGL for this offering of the course.

Class Home Page:
Is http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs184.

Course Contents:
As well as the outline of the lectures and labs etc., the course contents page will contain supplementary notes (in HTML) for lectures and sections. Typically for lectures, those will consist of the examples given in class, and for discussion, supplementary notes about the tools and concepts needed for the labs.

Newsgroup:
The newsgroup is an important tool for staying in touch with the class and getting help from the TA or instructor or from other students. You should set up a newsreader (Netscape works fine) to the campus news server agate.berkeley.edu and select the newsgroup ucb.class.cs184. You must be connected to the campus network directly or to a campus dialup line to access the course newsgroups. Click here if you are.