COMP 557 - Fundamentals of Computer Graphics
Fall 2010

There will be two tutorials at the beginning of the term to help you get started with OpenGL, the java bindings, and setting up your Eclipse environment for assignments. These are things you can do on your own by following the directions in assignment 0 below, but the tutorials may help you resolve any problems you have and will cover the basics of OpenGL.

• Monday 13 September, TR 3120, Yasaman, Eclipse, setting up A0, vecmath, OpenGL
• Friday 17 September, TR 3120, Sheldon, More on OpenGL, including picking and VBOs

There will be four assignments during the term. Links to assignments will be posted here during the term. Practice problems, old midterms and final exams, and solutions will also be posted here during the term.

There will be two exams, worth a total of 60% of the final grade. The first will be a midterm exam which will take place in class sometime between October 13 and October 25. It is worth 20% of your grade. The second exam will take place during the Final Exam Period and is worth 40% of the final grade. For more information on evaluation refer to the coures outline.

• Assignment 0, no due date, but you'll need to do this to start the others.
• Assignment 1, due 12 noon Monday 27 September.
• Assignment 2, due 12 noon Wednesday 13 October.
• Assignment 3 due 12 noon Wednesday 10 November.
• Assignment 4 due 12 noon Wednesday 1 December.

The following course textbook is recommended, and should be available for purchase at the McGill bookstore for the beginning of the term.

• Fundamentals of Computer Graphics, 3rd Edition, Shirley and Marschner

There are many online resources that you may find helpful, including those listed below.

• The OpenGL Programming Guide (The Red Book)
• NeHe game development site (note JoGL examples link at bottom left)

The following schedule is tentative and will be adjusted once the term starts to better match material in the textbook, and to synchronize with assignments. A few topics will definitely be dropped while others will certainly be added.

1	September 1	Introduction, Inpainting, (Canceled and to be rescheduled)
2	September 8	Vector spaces, Affine spaces, Homogeneous coordinates, Rotation
3	September 13	Transformations, Hierarchies
4	September 15	Viewing transformation, Perspective projection
5	September 20	Projection taxonomy, Normalized device coordinates
6	September 22	Curves introduction, Bezier, Interpolation, and Hermite curves, Bezier properties, Change of basis
7	September 29	Tensor product patches, Decaslejau algorithm, rational curves, Note: O'Brien Colloquium October 1
8	October 4	B-spline introduction and intuition, polar forms and blossoms
9	October 6	Surfaces of revolution, swept surfaces, Frenet frame, parallel transport
10	October 11	Subdivision curves, corner cutting, limit point analysis, subdivision surface introduction
11	October 13	Mesh terminology, Euler characteristic , Half edge data structure introcution
12	October 18	Half Edge data structure examples, Level of Detail introduction
13	October 20	Mesh simplification, Edge collapse and vertex split, Point plane distance, Quadric error metric introduction, Note: Heidrich Colloquium October 22
14	October 25	Midterm Exam (in class) may be moved to the October 13th
15	October 27	Mesh simplification review Quadric error metric
16	November 1	Clipping Rasterization Painter's and Warnock algorithm Binary space partions Depth Buffer
17	November 3	Ray triangle intersection barycentric coordinates barycentric interpolation bilinear interpolation ray quadric intersection
18	November 8	Quadric transformations Quadric normals, Constructive solid geometry, Illumination (ambient, diffuse, specular, attenuation), Note: Montreal International Game Summit
19	November 10	Shading models (Phong, Gouraud), Lighting models continued, Note: Grinspun Colloquium November 12
20	November 15	Texture mapping Magnification and Minification Mip maps Bilinear interpolation
21	November 17	Shadow maps, Stencil shadow volumes
22	November 22	The rendering equation Radiosity
23	November 24	compositing, transparency, blending
25	November 29	Colour Colour Matching Experiment CIE XYZ Chromaticity diagram Colour conversion between different displays
26	December 1	Colour purity / saturation Complementary Colours Just noticable differences Gamuts and Gamma
27	December 3 (Friday)	Review for final