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Course name
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Code/No
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Credits
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Registered credits
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Prerequisite
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Lecture
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Lab
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Training
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Rendering Techniques
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COCS484
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5
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0
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0
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5
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COCS481
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Course Objectives:
The goal of this course is to serve as an introduction to rendering techniques. Students will study the technology and science of creating a 3D renderer. Survey a variety of hardware and software technologies for rendering graphic scenes. This course will cover high-end rendering techniques, including lighting design, material models, and photon mapping. Gain fundamental knowledge of radiance and radiosity and the Bidirectional Reflection Distribution Function (BRDF). Students will explore methods for modelling diffuse and specular reflection of surfaces, shading and shadows from point light sources, shadow penumbra, global path tracing, and Illumination algorithms:
direct and global.
Course Learning Outcomes
Upon finishing this course, the students should be able to:
- Study the technology, science, and art of creating a 3D renderer.
- Compare and contrast the strengths, and weakness of many techniques for rendering graphic scenes.
- Discuss complexity, strengths, and weakness of the “rendering equation” for global illumination.
- Explain design principles used for writing recursive “Whitted” ray-tracing.
- Distinguish the capabilities of different renderer methods used for rendering graphic scenes.
- Practice programming a ray tracer for casting rays of light backward into a scene and following their
paths as they bounce around toward a light source.
- Understand how to compute reflection vectors, how to approximate refraction, how to intersect rays
with various primitive shapes.
- Exposed to a structured set of readings from recent papers covering light field methods, 3-D reconstruction,
reflectance modeling, lighting estimation, face modeling, and texture synthesis.
Assessment Strategy:
Students will be assessed in this course based on a set of projects, exam, and presentations.
Note: The instructor reserves the right to make changes to this syllabus as necessary.
Text Book:
1- Primary Book: Real-Time Rendering 4th Edition by Eric Haines, Naty Hoffman, Tomas Akenine-Moller .
2- Physically Based Rendering from Theory to Implementation 3rd edition by Matt Pharr, Wenzel Jakob and Greg Humphreys.
3- Ray Tracing from the Ground Up by Kevin Suffern.
4- The Ray Tracer Challenge: A Test-Driven Guide to Your First 3D Renderer by Jamis Buck.
5- Advanced Global Illumination 2nd Edition by Philip Dutre, Kavita Bala and Philippe Bekaert.
6- Rendering for Beginners: Image synthesis using RenderMan by Saty Raghavachary.
Other Reference:
Extra Resources: books about 2D/3D modeling and game engines, papers, internet…etc.
Time table for distributing theoretical course contents
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Number
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Description
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Duration in weeks
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1
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Introduction to the world of photo-realistic rendering.
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1
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1
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Rasterization approach for rendering: software and hardware
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1
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3
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Direct illumination: Phong reflection model
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2
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4
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Shading Methods: Lambertian/Flat, Gouraud, and Phong shading
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2
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5
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Ray Tracing approach for rendering
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1
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6
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Illumination models and the rendering equation
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3
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7
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Ray Tracing Algorithm
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2
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8
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Final Exam
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