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
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Lecture: MWF
11-12:00 in 306 Soda, CCN 24992
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Section 102: M 3-4 in 405 Soda, CCN 24998
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Section 103: M
2-3, in 405 Soda, CCN 25001
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Section 104: Tu 5:30-6:30 in 405 Soda, CCN 25004
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Prerequisites: Math
53, CS61B
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Credit: 4
units
Sections will not meet in the first week.
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Instructor:
John Canny, jfc@cs.berkeley.edu,
529 Soda, 642-9955
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Office hours: Tues
2-3, Weds 2-3
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TA1: Alex
Berg, aberg@cs.berkeley.edu,
535 Soda, 642-9716
Office hours: TBA
TA2: Eric
Paulos, paulos@cs.berkeley.edu,
417 Soda, 642-8149 or 642-4948 (lab)
Office hours: TBA
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Course Secretary: Winnie
Wang, alg@cs.berkeley.edu, 719
Soda Hall, 642-9575
Grading:
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First midterm 20%
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Final 20%
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Weekly Labs 20%
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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:
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"VRML
2.0 Sourcebook, 2nd 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.
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"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.
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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.