Readings

This page will be updated throughout the course with recommended readings from the textbook and other external materials. Students should also get acquainted with the course site's student handbook (#2) to learn about site features like writing comments, viewing assignments, and more. You can also see more course-specific resources and reading material on the resources page (#5).

Lecture 1: Course Introduction

• Shirley et al., Chapter 1
• Optional:
  • Video: Moments That Changed The Movies: Jurassic Park

Lecture 2 & 3: Digital Drawing, Sampling, and Antialiasing

• Shirley et al., Chapters 2, 3, 8.1 - 8.3, 9
• Further Reading:
  • A Pixel is Not A Little Square, Alvy Ray Smith, 1995
  • A Video Illustration of Temporal Aliasing. by Jesse Mason
  • The Fourier Transform and It's Applications (Ch. 5) by B. Osgood (this is an outstanding reference)

Lecture 4: Transforms

• Shirley et al., Chapters 6, 7
• Further Reading:
  • Real Time Rendering -- Chapter 4. by T. Akenine Moller, E. Haines, N. Hoffman. Additional methods for 3D rotations, including quaternions.

Lecture 5: Texture Mapping

• Shirley et al., Chapter 11
• Further Reading:
  • Pyramidal Parametrics. by L. Williams (the original mipmapping paper from 1983!)
  • Reconstruction filters in computer graphics. by D. Mitchell and A. Netravali

Lecture 6: Rasterization Pipeline (+Visibility and Shading)

• Shirley et al., Chapter 18, recall Chapter 8.1-8.3, Chapter 10.

Lecture 7: Splines, Curves and Surfaces

• Shirley et al., Chapter 15.

Lecture 8: Geometry Processing (and Ray-Surface Intersection)

• Shirley et al., Chapter 4.4.
• Further Reading:
  • Smooth Subdivision Surfaces Based on Triangles, Charles Loop's MS Thesis, University of Utah, 1987.
  • Recursively defined B-spline surfaces on arbitrary topological meshes. Original paper on Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces. 1978.
  • A survey of ray-surface intersection algorithms, by Pat Hanrahan. Chapter 3 in Glassner's book "An Introduction to Ray Tracing".
  • Subdivision Surfaces in Character Animation

Lecture 13: Accelerating Ray-Surface Intersection

• No assigned reading.
• Further Reading:
  • Debugging Aggregates, Chapter 4.6 in PBRT. This may be helpful for debugging Assignment 3. Note: you should be able to access this book online while on campus with your Calnet login.
  • PBRT Chapters 4.3 - 4.4.

Lecture 14: Measuring Light: Radiometry and Photometry

• Shirley et al., Chapter 20.
• Steve Marschner's notes on radiometry.

Lecture 15: Monte Carlo Integration

• Shirley et al., Chapter 14.
• Further reading:
• Monte Carlo Integration, Chapter 13 and 14.4 in PBRT.

Lecture 17: Global Illumination

• Shirley et al., Chapter 24.
• Further reading:
• Chapter 15, PBRT.
• The Rendering Equation, J. Kajiya, 1986. The original!

Lecture 18: Reflection and Materials

• Shirley et al., Chapter 20.1.6 and 25.
• Further reading:
• Reflection Models, Chapter 8, PBRT.
• Predicting reflectance functions from complex surfaces, S. Westin, J. Arvo, K. Torrance.

Lecture 20: Cameras and Lenses I

• Marc Levoy's CS178 Applets on exposure.

Lecture 21: Cameras and Lenses II

• Kolb, Mitchell, Hanrahan (1995) A realistic camera model for computer graphics
• Marc Levoy's CS178 Applets on thin lenses, thin lens equation, depth of field, phase detection autofocus, and contrast autofocus.
• Further reading:
  • Canon introduction to Basics of Interchangeable Lenses.
  • Canon reference on Optical Terminology.
  • Canon chapter on Lens Technology.

Lecture 23: Introduction to Color Theory

• Shirley et al., Chapter 21
• Further reading:
  • Marc Levoy's CS178 Applets on color.

Lecture 25: Intro to Animation

• Shirley et al., Chapter 17.

Lecture 26: Physically Based Rendering

• Further reading:
  • Witkin and Baraff Physically Based Modeling: Principles and Practice.

Textbooks

The primary source for the course will be the website, lectures, and section. The following textbooks are recommended, but optional, resources for you in this course and beyond:

Fundamentals of Computer Graphics

Authors: Pete Shirley and Steve Marschner with Michael Ashikhmin, Michael Gleicher, Naty Hoffman, Garrett Johnson, Tamara Munzner, Erik Reinhard, Kelvin Sung, William B. Thompson, Peter Willemsen, and Bryan Wyvill

• Available on Amazon

Physically Based Rendering: From Theory to Implementation (Third Edition):

Authors: Matt Pharr and Greg Humphreys

• This book (PBRT) is the book for learning about modern ray tracing techniques. It has a great website with full source code online for an advanced physically-based ray tracer. It even won an Oscar for its impact on the film industry!
• PBRT is available free online for you through Berkeley login: (Second edition, Third edition)
• Also available on Amazon

Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice

Authors: John F. Hughes, Andries van Dam, Morgan McGuire, David F. Sklar, James D. Foley, Steven K. Feiner, and Kurt Akeley

• Available on Amazon