Topic outline

  • General

    Class format

    Due to the ongoing pandemic, CS-C3100 will feature no contact teaching – lectures or physical exercise sessions – in fall 2020.

    Lectures are held on Mondays and Thursdays, starting on Monday 14 September. Each lecture consists of two 45-minute sessions:

      • During the first session of each lecture, students watch, in their own pace, a few short (10-15min) lecture videos prepared and shared by the lecturer prior to the start of the session.
      • The second hour of lecture sessions consists of live Q&A and discussion held on the course Slack channel #lecture_qa. Sign up using this link with your full name.

    Exercise sessions are held as "Slack office hours" where the teaching assistants patrol the assignment-specific Slack channel. You are encouraged to ask and answer each others' questions on the same channels also outside of the sessions. There is a small bonus for students who answer actively.

    As the computer classrooms are unavailable, all programming assignments are to be completed remotely. For those students who have no access to a suitable computer at home, we have prepared a guide for using the Aalto VDI virtual machine system ("On remote working", found in the Materials section.)

    Class contents

    Overview

    After successfully completing CS-C3100 Computer Graphics, you will possess in-­depth practical knowledge on the entire field of computer graphics, i.e., the mathematics and algorithms used for modeling, animating, and generating pictures 3D virtual environments for use in games, visual effects, augmented reality, product visualization, and other applications.

    You will gain practical experience through implementing algorithms that cover all of these aspects, including modern modeling techniques, character animation, physically-based simulation of dynamics, ray tracing, shadow computations, as well as real-time shading on graphics processing co-processors (GPU).

    All assignments include an essentially unbounded amount of possible extra credit work.

    Materials

    There is no textbook. Lecture slides (and online material linked from the slides) form the reading material.

    Passing

    In order to successfully complete the class, you need to

    • get more than 40% (24p) total assignment score, and
    • get more than zero points on 4 out of the 6 assignment rounds.
    A grade of 5 requires a 100% score on all assignments. Note, however, that you can compensate for potential missing points by doing extra credit in other assignment rounds. See the slides for Lecture 1 for more details.

    It is not mandatory to attend lectures or exercise sessions. There are no exams.

    Assignment deadlines
    This list is subject to change. All deadlines are on Sundays at 23:59 PM.
    1. Assn 1 / Warmup: Sun 27 September (27.9.)
    2. Assn 2 / Curves and surfaces: Sun 11 October (11.10.)
    3. Assn 3 / Hierarchical modeling: Sun 1 November (1.11.) (Three weeks due to exam week)
    4. Assn 4 / Physical simulation: Sun 22 November (22.11.)
    5. Assn 5 / Ray tracing: Sun 13 December (13.12.) (Three weeks, longer assignment)
    6. Assn 6 / Real-time shading: Sun 20 December (Only one week, but very simple & published earlier)

    Questions / contact information

    All questions related to the assignments are to be posted to the course Slack channels. Do not contact course staff directly without posting your question publicly first.

    Other questions and requests are to be sent by email to cs-c3100@aalto.fi. The list reaches all course personnel. Please do not approach course staff over individual email unless you really feel you need to.

    Personnel
    Jaakko Lehtinen lecturer, responsible professor
    Heikki Timonen Teaching assistant (TA)
    Erik Härkönen TA