Recent news

July 17:

• Updated 2016/2017 grade list v2, now with T3 results (new: and updated final grade).

July 3:

• P3 grades: click here.
• Final grade list (concept): click here and: v2.
  

June 30:

• Detailed math solutions to the final exam: click here.
• Full overview of current INFOGR results, including T2: click here.
  

June 29:

• Answers to the final exam: click here.

Course: "Graphics" is an introductory course about computer graphics. Computer graphics deals with the algorithmic processing of visual (images) and spatial (geometry) data. The course will focus on the very basics of modeling and rendering, i.e., the mathematical description of three-dimensional scenes and how to create (realistic) images of such models.

Rendering Algorithms: We have several options to convert the mathematical representation of a virtual world into a digital image. Modern games typically rely on the z-buffer algorithm. An alternative approach is ray tracing. In this course we will explore both methods. Ray tracing allows us to produce 'correct' images; rasterization lets us approximate this in real-time.

Math: An important aspect of computer graphics is the use of mathematics. This course provides a short coverage of the mathematical basics needed for rendering. We will introduce fundamental concepts of linear algebra and other areas of higher mathematics that are important far beyond the field of graphics.

The language for this course will be English.

The official schedule for this course is available on Osiris. Official course information via www.cs.uu.nl. And here is a list of participants.

Lecturers:

• Graphics theory: Jacco Bikker (j.bikker@uu.nl)
  
• Mathematics: Debabrata Panja (d.panja@uu.nl)

Teaching Assistants:

Practicals

• Kevin van Mastrigt
  
• Sander Vanheste
  
• Zino Onomiwo
  
• Hugo Hogenbirk
  
• Niek Mulleners
  

• Tuesdays, 09:00h - 10:45h,
  Room KBG-COSMOS (starting week #17) and RUPPERT-WIT (week #24)
  
• Thursdays, 13:15h - 15:00h,
  Room RUPPERT-WIT (starting week #17)

Practicals tutorial/consultation hours

• Math tutorials are offered after the lectures on Tuesdays.
• Working colleges take place after the lectures on Thursdays.
  
• Room allocation is complex; see schedule.
  

Below is a list of all lectures with a very brief summary of the topics, slides downloads, and recommended readings to prepare for the lecture.

Midterm Exam: Tue May 23, 08:30-10:30 in EDUC-GAMMA.

What to study: Slides for lectures 1-7, suggested readings for these lectures, tutorials 1, 2 and 3. You may also want to take a look at the 2016 midterm exam. And maybe you even find the 2015 midterm exam useful. Note that this year's tutorials are a better indication of what to expect in terms of math questions!

For this exam, you are not allowed to bring notes.

Final Exam: Thu June 29, 13:30-16:30, in OLYMPOS-HAL2.

Retake Exam: Thu July 13, 13:30-16:30, in EDUC-BETA.

Period 4 Schedule

Overview

During the course we will hand out tutorial sheets.

• The tutorials cover the mathematical aspects of the course.
• There will be several problem sheets throughout the semester. It is expected that you work on these at home and during the tutorial sessions. Please take this seriously! You will need the practice!
• The tutorials are a very good preparation for the midterm and final exam.
  Reading the textbook and attending the lectures is a good idea, but you can only be sure that you understood the material if you succeed in solving these problems. The problems in the tutorials will be very much like what you can expect in the written tests.
  

Assignment Sheets / Downloads

• T1 - Vectors, coordinates, primitives and projections in 2D. And: updated solutions.
  
• T2 - Vectors, coordinates, primitives and projections in 2D (part 2) and 3D. And: solutions.
  
• T3 - Vectors, coordinate systems, primitives and projections in 3D. And: updated solutions.
• T4 - Matrices, episode 1. New: solutions v3.
  
• T5 - Matrices, reloaded, v2. And: solutions. New: solutions in latex.
  

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENTS

There will be three practical assignments, covering traditional rasterization algorithms, shaders and ray tracing. The first assignment will be online on Tuesday, April 25. We recommend that you start working on it right away.

Practicals tutorial/consultation hours

On Tuesdays, teaching assistants will be present in various rooms to help you if you have questions. These practical tutorials are offered after the lectures on Tuesdays. Please see the schedule for a list of available rooms for each week.

Remarks:

• Additional rooms are typically available. In these rooms, no TA is present, but the room is reserved for this course, so you may use it if you need the hardware / software.
• We might adapt the consultation hours (extend before deadlines, shorten elsewhere).

Important Rules

Because of the large group of students taking this lecture, we need strict rules to keep everything manageable. The most important rules are listed below. Further explanations might be given during the lecture.

• Grading: You have to hand in all practical assignments. Your grade from the practicals has to be at least 5.0 to pass this course (cf. exams & grading).
• Working in teams: The programming assignments must be done in groups of 2 or 3 students. If you submit alone without prior consultation with the course instructor, the grade of your submission will be reduced by 1.0.
  • Building groups: You can choose your partner(s) yourself among your fellow students. If you ca not find one on your own, contact one of the TAs during the practical consultation hours. They will help you to team up with other students.
  • If your partner drops the course: contact the instructor immediately. You will either be assigned a new partner or be allowed to work alone without penalty. Working alone without prior consultation reduces your grade.
  • Project team responsibility: It is up to you how you split the work among your team members. However, this freedom comes at the price that you have to be prepared for situations such as team members dropping the course or not delivering what they promised to you. It is your responsibility to make sure that you are aware of your team's progress, so you can react to such issues in an appropriate way.
    
• Students doing the course a second time: For this year's course, the practicals have been redesigned. As a consequence, you cannot reuse last year's results.

Soft- / Hardware and Infrastructure:

• Required equipment: For the practicals, you need a Windows PC with Visual Studio. The free Community Edition of Visual Studio is a good platform for C# development. We will be using OpenTK to access OpenGL from C#. This is also free software.
  
• Alternative platforms: For this course, support will be mostly limited to Microsoft Windows and C#. You may of course use alternative platforms and programming languages, but an appropriate level of autonomy is expected in that case.
  
• All necessary hard- and software is installed on the computers in the reserved rooms.
• "Groep indeling" and TA-support: Ignore the "groep indeling" on OSIRIS. There are no groups other than the teams you form with your fellow students, and there are no fixed time slots where you have to be present.
  
  

Assignments:

Assignment P1: OpenTK Tutorial
Assignment P2: Ray Tracing
Assignment P3: Advanced shaders

GRADING

Programming assignments: There will be three programming assignments throughout the semester. The final grading P for your programming assignments is calculated as follows: P=0.2*P1+0.4*P2+0.4*P3. P must be at least 5.0 (before rounding) to pass the course.

Exams: There will be a midterm exam T1 and a final exam T2. The final grading T for your exams is calculated as follows: T = 0.3*T1 + 0.7*T2. T must be at least 5.0 (before rounding) to pass the course.

Final grade: If both T (= the grade for the written exams) and P (= the programming grade) are at least 5.0, the final grade for the course is (T + P) / 2. Your final grade must be at least 6 (after rounding) to pass the course.

RETAKES AND REQUIREMENTS

If you did not pass the course but your final grade for the course is at least 4.0 (before rounding), you are entitled to participate in a retake. This can either be a retake assignment or a retake exam.

Retake (exam) T3: This exam will cover all lectures and tutorials. The result from your retake exam T3 will replace the lower one of your original scores, i.e. either T1 or T2 if and only if it improves your final grade. Criteria for passing stay the same as indicated above (i.e. P and T must be at least 5.0 before rounding, and your final grade must be at least 6 after rounding). 

Retake (practicals): There will be one retake assignment that can replace either P1, P2, or P3 if it improves your final grade. The topic for the retake assignment is decided individually. To get your assignment and related deadlines, contact the instructor.

Exceptions: Exceptions to these rules in principle always require involvement of the study coach.

Results

To be released.

Textbook:

• The textbook of this course is Fundamentals of Computer Graphics by Peter Shirley et al.. The course is designed based on the 4th edition of the book. Since the basics (which we are covering) did not change that much, older editions might work, too (no promises).
• Here is the web page of the text book.

Additional resources for the practicals:

Resources that might be helpful, especially for programming assignment 2 and 3:

• Some free books on the developer section of NVIDIA's website:
  GPU Gems 3, GPU Gems 2, GPU Gems 1.
  
• A (quite extensive) tutorial on ray tracing:
  Codermind Team Ray Tracing Tutorial
• A somewhat old ray tracing tutorial:
  Ray Tracing Topics & Techniques
• Other resources will be added during the course.
  

Web references:

• Department website: INFOGR-2013/14
• 2013 Graphics course, held by Wolfgang Hürst
• 2014 Graphics course, held by Michael Wand
• 2015 Graphics course, held by Jacco Bikker
• 2016 Graphics course, held by Jacco Bikker

Old posts

June 24:

• Slides for the Grand Recap (theory part) now available.
• Slides for the Grand Recap (math part) now available.
  

June 23:

• Updated solutions to tutorial 4.

June 20:

• Updated midterm solutions: click here.
• Tutorial 5 solutions now in latex.
  

June 20:

• Slides for lecture 14 on post-processing now online.

June 19:

• Solutions for tutorial 5 now online.

June 15:

• Updated lecture 13 notes.

June 13:

• Slides for lecture 12 ("Visibility") now available.
• Updated tutorial 4 solutions.
• Notes for lecture 13 ("Advanced topics") can be previewed.
• Grading sheet for assignment P2, now updated to v2 based on your comments.
  

June 12:

• Solutions for tutorial 4 have been uploaded.

June 9:

• Updated tutorial 5.

June 7:

• Grades for the ray tracing assignment: click here.
• Midterm grades, including math retake: click here.

June 6:

• Slides for lecture 10 ("Shading") now available.
• Notes for lecture 11 ("Matrices (2)") now available.
• Tutorial sheet 5 now available.

June 5:

• Recordings of math lectures can from now on be downloaded; check the first one here. Use solis credentials to access them.
  

June 1:

• Midterm math retake solutions.
  

May 30:

• Slides for lecture 8 ("OpenGL") now ready for download.
  
• Notes for lecture 9 ("Matrices") also available.
• Fresh tutorial 4 document has been added.
  

May 29:

• Assignment P3 ("Rasterization") details now available.
  
• A fresh template for P3 can now be downloaded.

May 25:

• Tentative grades for the midterm exam.
  
• Check your e-mail for details on the math retake. Didn't receive a mail? Let me know.
  

May 23:

• Answers to the midterm exam and solutions to the math questions.
  

May 22:

• P1 grades, version 2. Please check carefully.

May 20:

• P1 grades. Please check carefully.

May 19:

• Tutorial 3 solutions updated.

May 18:

• Slides for "Accelerate" lecture 7 now online.
• Tutorial 3 solutions has been published.
  

May 17:

• Updated tutorial 1 solutions.

May 16:

• Slides for the third math lecture are ready for download.
• Tutorial 3, and Tutorial 2 solutions, are available.
• Links to the 2015 and 2016 midterm exams added to midterm exam info.
  

May 11:

• Slides for lecture 5 on ray tracing are now available.

May 9:

• Tutorial sheet 2 is now available for download.
• Notes for the second math lecture; page 5 & 6 will be discussed next week.
• Solutions for the first tutorial sheet have been added.
  

May 4:

• Slides for lecture 3 can now be downloaded.
• Assignment P2 is now available.
  

May 2:

• Notes on the first math lecture are now available.
  

May 1:

April 26:

• Slides for lecture 1 are now available for download.
  

April 21:

• Slack channel for 2016/2017 edition now available.
• Files for assignment 1 now available.
  

March 27:

• Initial version of the 2016/2017 page.