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Course Description

This course provides a broad overview of the theory and practice of rendering. Classic rendering algorithms will be covered, however, most of the course will cover current results in physically-based rendering algorithms.

Prerequisites

Attendees should have a working knowledge of computer graphics (at the level of CS248 and CS348A). In particular, you should fully understand the basic 3D display pipeline, viewing and modeling transformations, simple geometric modeling using polygons and quadrics, and hidden surface algorithms like the z-buffer algorithm.

Solid knowledge of integral calculus and basic geometric algorithms is an absolute must. Some exposure to signal processing and probability is also assumed. Proficiency is C++ programming.

Syllabus

Information

• Room: Art 4

• Course staff mailing list: cs348b-spr0607-staff@lists.stanford.edu

• Instructors/TAs

• Participants

• Bibliography

• PBRT Information

Text and readings

There is one required text for the course.

• Matt Pharr and Greg Humphreys
  Physically Based Rendering: From Theory to Implementation
  Morgan-Kauffmann, 2004.

Additional readings will be assigned from research monographs, papers from journals and conference proceedings, and excerpts from conference tutorials. Only papers NOT available online will be handed out in class. Readings for each lecture are available from the Lectures page.

Assignments and grading

The projects for this quarter involve enhancing a working ray tracer. We will use a a ray tracing system called pbrt. This system is a combined C++ codebase and textbook written in a literate programming language.

The first part of the course involves four assignments:

• Assignment 1: Lighting design

  Assignment 2: Lazy K-D Tree

  Assignment 3: Realistic Camera Simulation

  Assignment 4: Investigating Importance Sampling

In the last part of the course you will enhance your system so that it is capable of reproducing an image of a real object, for example, a gemstone, a puff of smoke, a candle flame, etc. Check out the results produced by previous students.

Evaluation criteria: The first four structured programming assignments will each count as 10% of your grade, and the final programming project will count as 40%. The remaining 20% of your grade will be based on your posted comments on the lectures. There will be no exams in this course.

Collaboration: For the first four programming projects, you may discuss the assignment with friends, but you are expected to implement your own solutions. On the last programming project, you are permitted (and encouraged) to form teams of two people and partition your planned extensions among the team members. Teams may discuss their project with other teams, but may not share code.

Late assignments: Since each assignment builds on the previous one, it is important that assignments be completed on time. To allow for unforeseeable circumstances, you will be allowed three weekdays of grace during the quarter (to clarify: an assignment due on Friday and turned in on Monday will use one late day). Beyond this, late assignments will be penalized by 10% per weekday that they are late. On the last programming project, neither the demo nor the writeup may be late. Incompletes in this course are given only in exceptional circumstances.

Hardware and software

You are welcome and encouraged to do class assignments on your own machines. Although PBRT builds successfully on most systems, the TAs will be able to provide support for compiling PBRT on Linux (on the public Stanford 'myth' machines, see below) and on Windows (via Visual Studio.net 2003 or 2005). Check out the PBRTInfo page for information about working with the PBRT software.

If you do not wish to develop on a personal machine, you will have access to the 'myth' machines located in Gates B08 (3.2 Ghz DELL Dual-Xeon Linux boxes). The myth machines are named myth1 - myth29. CS348b students are given non-exclusive priority access to these machines.

All students with Leland accounts automatically have accounts on these machines. Home directories on these machines are shared with other Stanford Computing Clusters using AFS. If you do not have a Leland account, consult this ITSS web page. Registered students will get an extra 500MB of disk quota for the quarter (Please contact the course staff if your quota does not increase within 48 hours of signing up for the class).

Rendering competition

In case the delight of learning does not sufficiently motivate you to exert yourselves heroically on the programming assignments, there will also be a rendering competition. During finals week, a judging will be held to select the best rendering made using the ray tracer you have written in the course. While grades for the projects are based solely on "technical merit", the competition will be judged on both "technical merit" and "artistic impression". The jury, to be named later, will consist of computer graphics experts from both industry and academia. There will be several awards and one grand prize - an all-expenses-paid trip to SIGGRAPH 2007 in San Diego. Total value: about $1,000.