COMP 371

Computer Graphics
Session 1
Course Overview - Syllabus
 Lecture Overview
 Administrative Issues
 Modeling
 Animation
 Rendering
 About OpenGL Programming

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 Course Prerequisites
 Courses
 COMP 232 or COEN 231
 COMP 352 or COEN 352

 Very good programming skills in C/C++

 Basic Data Structures

 COMP 232 or COEN 231
 COMP 352 or COEN 352

 Geometry

 Simple Linear Algebra

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 Computer Graphics
Study of Computer Graphics
 Capturing (imaging) the world
of interest (real or imaginary) in
a pixel, such that it
 appears realistic (when the
world is real),
 appears as intended by the
artist (when the world is
imaginary)
Acknowledgement:
Ray traced image using POVRAY

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 What is a Pixel?
Usually, a rectangular area on a 2D display
surface with two properties, one fixed and
the other under computer control :
 area of the pixel is fixed
 color of the pixel is set under program
control

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 What is a Pixel?

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 Computer Graphics
Important Attributes of the World
(real or Imaginary)?
Two very important and rather complex
attributes:
 visual look or appearance due to light reflection,
refraction, occlusion, material, world lighting, …
 dynamic behavior due to interaction with other
elements of the world -- movement, collision,
elastic effects, ...

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 Computer Graphics
Three Fundamental Tasks
 Modelling the world,
 Simulating behavior of objects in the world,
 Presenting (rendering) the world.
For interactive applications
 Interacting with virtual object.

 Geometry and Physics are traditional tools

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 Computer Graphics
Different Digital Representations of
the World
 Digital Images
 Segmented Regions
 3D Geometric Objects
 Symbolic Descriptions
Different branches of Visual Computing
depend on transforming the data amongst
these representations

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 Computer Graphics
What is Computer Graphics?
 Computer graphics is thus concerned with all
aspects of producing images using a computer:
 Modeling - how to represent shape of objects
 Animation - how to represent and control motion
 Rendering - how to create images of objects
 Image Processing - how to manipulate & edit
images
This course will cover the above theoretical
aspects and provide practical training using
OpenGL graphics library
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 Computer Graphics
Modeling
 How to represent objects
 Turn the real into a virtual representation
 Describe (approximate) the real world or fictional
objects using mathematics
 If the image does not exist in real life, a blueprint
is drawn by an artist

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 Computer Graphics
Animation
 Control and represent motion of the objects
 keyframe - inverse kinematics

 performance-based

 procedural

 physics based [simulation]

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 Computer Graphics
Rendering
 How to create images of objects
 Color

 Lighting

 Shading

 Surface detail (texture)

 Reflection, transparency, shadows

Wire-frame Final Render

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 Computer Graphics
Image Processing
 Various Effects
 Scene Completion
 example shown later
 High Dynamic Range
 increase ratio of light to dark

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 Computer Graphics
Computer Graphics Goals
1. Create synthetic images which cannot be
distinguished from reality
 Autodesk’s Fake or photo Quiz
 http://area.autodesk.com/fakeorfoto

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 Computer Graphics
Computer Graphics Goals
2. Create a new reality (not necessarily
scientific)
 Scene completion using Millions of photos
 James Hays, Alexei Efros
 Non-photorealistic rendering
 Aaron Hertzmann, Denis Zorin

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 Computer Graphics
You will learn a lot!
 Fundamental concepts of 3D Graphics
 Common algorithms used in Graphics
 How to write programs using OpenGL
 How to deliver a project focused on 3D
Graphics
 Many core CG concepts which the industry is
looking for in CS employees!
 You do need programming knowledge, in
particular C/C++, to take this course
 WARNING: HIGH LOAD COURSE
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 Computer Graphics
You will be able to
 Write C/C++ and OpenGL applications such as:
 computer games and other graphical applications
 Take programming jobs for the 3D graphics
and visual domain

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 Computer Graphics
Resources
 Can run OpenGL on any system
 Windows: check graphics card properties for level
of OpenGL supported
 Linux: Mesa (software implementation of OpenGL)
 Mac: need extensions for 3.1 equivalence

 Get GLFW from web

 Get GLEW from web
 You will have remote access to labs with
OpenGL already installed
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 Computer Graphics
After this course
 COMP 376 – Intro to Game Development
 COMP 476 – Advanced Game Development
 COMP 477 – Animation

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 Computer Graphics
Slides Acknowledgements
 Concordia University
 Prof. Thomas Fevens
 Prof. A Ben Hamza
 Prof. Tiberiu Popa
 Prof. Charalambos Poullis
 Others
 E. Angel, P. Shirley, J. Barbic, R. Barzel, A. van
Dam

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 Computer Graphics
Next Lecture
 Introduction to Computer Graphics
 Graphics pipeline
 OpenGL API
 Primitives: lines, polygons
 Attributes: color
 Example

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