CS 497 - MJG
Advanced Surface Modeling for Computer Graphics

In recent years, 3D computer graphics has become an increasingly important technology in a variety of application areas. Video production has come to rely heavily on computer-generated effects, and whole movies have been synthesized by computers. CAD tools are widely used in the design of complex objects such as buildings and aircraft (e.g., a Boeing 777). And graphical visualization can be an invaluable tool for understanding scientific and medical data sets. With the advent of powerful consumer-level graphics hardware, the usage of computer graphics should expand much further.

However, as expectations for computer graphics applications continue to rise, there is a need for sophisticated modeling techniques. Real-time interactive systems, such as games and flight simulators, demand model representations which are compact and can be rendered efficiently. And designers require systems which provide as much freedom of control over the model as possible.

In this course, we will explore some of the more important modeling techniques which have been developed to address these needs. Topics to be covered include:

• Hierarchical splines
• Subdivision surfaces
• Surface simplification and view-dependent refinement
• Multiresolution surface editing
• Geometry compression
• Image-based models

Class readings will consist largely of papers from the literature. Each student will be expected to give one classroom presentation on a selected topic and to complete the course projects.

Credit:  1 unit
Prerequisites:  CS 318 (or equivalent) or consent of the instructor.
Course Web page:  http://www-sal.cs.uiuc.edu/~garland/class/cs497/

Instructor contacts:

DCL 3215 244-5970 garland@uiuc.edu

Last modified: Wed Aug 4 14:43:49 CDT 1999