This course focuses on the concepts and algorithms that underlie the development of modern interactive, three-dimensional computer graphics software. Good computer graphics requires effective use of data structures, human factors, algorithms, software engineering, and mathematics. This highly interdisciplinary nature of computer graphics is a fundamental guiding philosophy of the course. In addition to exams and quizzes, the course requires a substantial amount of programming, and assignments that require you to read current computer graphics research literature and write about it.
You will be expected to implement most of the programming assignments in C/C++ using the OpenGL graphics library. You must have a working knowledge of C, and should also have some working knowledge of C++, and possibly Java. Some assignments may require programming in Java and/or Java 3D. Although there might be some minimal introduction to Java during the course if necessary, you should not rely on this to provide you with all the knowledge you may need; rather, you will be expected to learn most of it on your own.
We will go over some OpenGL programming in class, but, again, a lot of your learning will have to be done on your own, outside the classroom.
You are free to develop your assignments on whichever computer(s) you would like, but, by the time your assignments reach me, you will have to have verified that they work on my environment -- definitely some flavor of Unix, most likely some Linux machines. I will provide more precise details a bit later.