CS148 Homepage

[overview] [announcements] [syllabus and handouts] [assignment faqs] [scpd course page] [useful links] [gratuitous cg pictures]

Lectures:	Textbook:
TTh, 11:00-12:50, Gates B01	The OpenGL Red Book, Fourth Edition (note)
Instructor:	Teaching assistant:
Dan Morris agentmorris@gmail.com Office Hours: Tuesdays, 1pm to 3pm, Gates 116	Sean Walker cs148ta@cs.stanford.edu Office Hours: Thursdays, 1 pm to 3 pm in Gates 124; And by appointment (please e-mail)

Announcements

(8/12/05) - Everything has been graded and grades have been submitted to Axess (your grade should be available by 7pm tonight). If you want to discuss your grade or pick up your final, mail Dan. I will be out of town for two weeks starting Monday, so mail ASAP if you have pressing issues to discuss. Grades are not permanent for a long long time, so if there was any kind of mistake, it can be settled in the fall.

We enjoyed working with you all in CS148 this quarter, and we hope you all enjoyed your first taste of CG!
(8/12/05) - The staff was _way_ excited about the projects that were demo'd last week. We put together a web page to show the variety of projects y'all submitted... nice work!
(8/12/05) - The results are in from the CS148 demo day... taking home the extra credit prizes are:

Winner: PacMan Space Adventure
This take on a classic game blew away the class with advanced graphics, including stencil buffer shadows and reflections and a particle simulation to deck out the high scores screen. On top of that, it added some 3D style (e.g. jumping pacman) while maintaining the vintage sounds and gameplay. Animated sequences between boards added to the space theme.

First runner-up: Go Snowboarding
This snowboarding game was a crowd favorite for its playability and fantastic use of sound, from the trippy countdown voice to the pumping techno beat. Shadows added to the visual effects, and the overlaid 2D map of the board gave it a professional look.

Second runner-up: Dogfight Spectacular
This combat flight-sim showcases complex terrain, a sophisticated 2D overlay, AI enemy pilots, and an all-around polished look...
(8/8/05) - The final will have the same "rules" as the midterm: open-book(s), open-notes. No laptops.
(8/5/05) - FYI, next week's final - in B03 at 8:30am on Friday (note this is not our usual room) - will cover everything we've talked about this quarter, up to and including Jeff's lecture on Tuesday.
(8/5/05) - Tuesday we'll have a guest lecture by Jeff Klingner... Jeff works in the Graphics Lab here at Stanford on using CG for visualization. I thought this would be a nice change-of-pace from the game-and-simulation focus the course has had so far.
(8/4/05) - The examples directory should now contain all the examples we used in class in CS148 this quarter, up to and including shadows.cpp . Please let us know if there's any examples that were used in class that you aren't able to find the source for.
(8/4/05) - HW3 grades were just mailed out. If you did not receive a grade report, contact Sean.
(8/1/05) - We are once again soliciting student questions for the upcoming exam. Here are some useful statistics:

Total number of students who submitted midterm questions: 0
Total number of students who received effectively free points on the midterm: 0

If this motivates you to submit questions for the final, please e-mail us by Sunday, 8/7. The midterm is a good model for what questions might look like.
(8/1/05) - Remote students: if we should fax the exam to a different number than the one to which we faxed your midterm. Also let us know ASAP if you will not be able to take the exam at 8:30am PST.
(7/25/05) - Sean has changed his office hours as listed above(since no one was showing up on Monday nights). If you need to meet with Sean in the evening (for SCPD students) please e-mail him to set up an appointment.
(7/24/05) - The pp3 faq is live; try to check it regularly and try to check it before sending questions to the staff.
(7/21/05) - This zipfile (from the examples directory) contains code and windows executables for each of the three code-related problems from the midterm. If you're unclear on any of them, we recommend looking at the code and playing with it some. For the display-lists-of-letters problem, this code generates random series of vertices for the letters.
(7/20/05) - There were some online demos that I wanted to show in class today that I was not adequately networked for... here they are; they really drive the points home:
- Why interpolating texture coordinates in 2D doesn't work (1)
- Why interpolating texture coordinates in 2D doesn't work (2)
- When you actually might notice the incorrectness of image-space Gouraud shading
(7/20/05) - The midterm has been graded and handed back; graded exams are on their way out to SCPD students. Solutions were handed out in class and will be sent out with SCPD exams. Contact Dan within one week if you have regrade requests.

The mean was a 73.7, the std deviation was 23.4. Here is a histogram of results (click for a larger version):
(7/19/05) - Grades for HW2 have been e-mailed out. E-mail Sean if you didn't get a grade report.
(7/17/05) - solutions for the practice midterm have been posted.
(7/15/05) - By popular demand, last year's midterm has been posted as a study guide. This is fairly representative of what this year's midterm will be like, although there were of course some topics covered last year that weren't covered this year and vice versa.
(7/14/05) - Per student request, the Visual Studio workspace that I've been using in class to run the examples has been posted to the examples directory, along with the .dsp files for each project.

If you want to compile in visual studio, you'll need to put all the source files except cs148.h and cs148.cpp in a subdirectory called 'src'. Note that when you first fire up the workspace (the .dsw file), it will complain that it can't find some projects, since there are some examples that we haven't gotten to yet.
(7/14/05) - There was a typo on the pp3 handout; it said it was due on "Tuesday 7/28". 7/28 is a Thursday, and the project is indeed due on Thursday 7/28. The online syllabus is correct here, and the online project handout has been fixed.

On the other hand, getting done by Tuesday will give you two days to relax before embarking on pp4, your graphics masterpiece and the culmination of your CS148 experience...
(7/13/05) - "Local" SCPD students are expected to come to class for the exam. We will be faxing exams directly to non-local SCPD folks, (and you will have to fax them back to us 2 hours later), so please email us your fax #'s ASAP.
(7/13/05) - PP3 is out; we recommend that you get started ASAP on the modeling and viewing aspects of the assignment, which we've already covered in class.
(7/12/05) - Notes on next week's midterm:
- The exam is open-book, open-notes. No laptops.
- You can bring a calculator but we don't think you'll need one.
- The best study guide is the bold questions on the class notes, and any "what's wrong with this approach" questions
- You are encouraged to submit questions by Thursday at midnight. We don't promise that we'll use any student-provided questions, but we'd like to, and it's a great way to study anyway.
- The exam will cover material through today's class (tuesday 7/12).
(7/10/05) - HW #1 Grades have just been e-mailed out. If you submitted an assignment and did not get an e-mail, send Sean a message.
(7/9/05) - FYI, all CS148 assignments must be turned in by midnight on August 12th (the day of the final). So if you feel that not using all of your late days would be like throwing money away, remember that you can only use one late day on the last assignment. If you need an extension for profoundly extenuating circumstances, contact us well ahead of time.
(7/7/05) - A persuasive argument from a CS148 student has convinced me that we should be printing lecture slides for you, so copies of the slides will be available in class from now on. We want your Stanford dollar to be working to its full potential.
(7/7/05) - FYI, any corrections made to the slides in class are posted online within 24 hours (generally within 1 hour) after class is over. Thanks to everyone who has been keeping me honest.
(7/5/05) - The pp2 faq is live; try to check it regularly and try to check it before sending questions to the staff.
(7/5/05) - If you try to compile a CS148 program and you get this error:

/usr/pubsw/X/lib/libXmu.so.6: undefined reference to `XtDisplayToApplicationContext'

...and a whole bunch more like it, add ' -lXt' to the LINKFLAGS line in your Makefile. I.e.:

LINKFLAGS = -lGL -lglut -lGLU -lICE -lSM

...should become...

LINKFLAGS = -lGL -lglut -lGLU -lICE -lSM -lXt

This issue doesn't seem to be too common, but if a post to the web page can save just one person just one frustrating hour, then we've made the world a better place.
(6/29/05) - Reminder: The CS148 newsgroup is a good place for discussion on class topics or for posting general homework questions. If you haven't used newsgroups before, I recommend using gravity as a newsreader; it's gui-ish and friendly. The news server you need is nntp.stanford.edu . You can use tin at the command line on the Sweet Hall machines if you're into command line programs. The newsgroup is su.class.cs148 .
(6/29/05) - The pp1 faq is live; try to check it regularly and try to check it before sending questions to the staff.
(6/28/05) - All the examples referred to in today's slides are available in the examples directory. We will post all future in-class examples in this directory also.
(6/28/05) - After a record six errors on today's lecture slides, I posted a new .pdf at 1:07pm. I'm gunning for double-digits before the quarter is over.
(6/27/05) - Sean has moved his Monday office hours later by two hours (the times on this page and in the 6/24 announcement are correct). Sean won't be holding office hours today but you can e-mail him for an appointment if you want help before class tomorrow.
(6/25/05) - By popular demand, we will post a link to whatever fun videos we show in class at the 'SIGGRAPH video breaks' on the syllabus page.
(6/24/05) - Sean's office hours will be:
- Mondays, 7 pm to 9 pm in the Sweet Hall Cluster (2nd Floor)
- Thursdays, 1 pm to 3 pm in Gates 124 (right after class)
Depending on Sean's schedule and attendance, the times may change again but this is a start. E-mail Sean to set up an appointment if you can't make office hours.
(6/23/05) - If you try to run the pp1 demo or you try to run your own pp1 and you get this error:

./pp1: /lib/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.3' not found (required by /usr/pubsw/lib/libstdc++.so.5)

...or some such nonsense, you may not have the magic sweet hall libraries in your library path. Try running:

setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/pubsw/lib

This should solve your problem. You may want to add this to the end of your .cshrc if you're having this problem. Let us know if there are any other technical issues.
(6/21/05) - If you downloaded the essential math handout before 9:28am on 6/21, (a) there was a mistake on the last page that is now fixed, and (b) props for the highly-motivated early downloading. Thanks to zl for pointing out the error.
(5/5/05) - The web page is in transition toward the summer quarter... e-mail Dan if you need more information about the summer course offering.
Old announcements

Assignment Frequently Asked Questions

Useful Links

OpenGL programming guide (second edition)
- This is the second edition of the course's textbook (we're officially using the fourth edition). If you want to have an OpenGL reference after CS148, we recommend buying the fourth edition, which covers the current OpenGL standard. For this course, using the online version of the second edition will be enough if you want to save the $46.09 that Amazon is charging for a used copy of the fourth edition.
How to install OpenGL/Glut (PDF)
Nate Robbins's OpenGL Tutorials
NeHe's OpenGL samples and tutorials
gl and glu API reference
glut API reference

Course Overview

CS148 is an introduction to 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional computer graphics, with an emphasis on interactive 3D graphics. The goal of this course is to give you some hands-on experience with computer graphics - specifically with OpenGL, a common programming interface for 3D graphics. The course requires significant programming, but we hope it will be fun. Graphics as an introductory topic almost sells itself: it's loaded with pretty pictures.

Topics covered include scan conversion, OpenGL and GLUT, matrix transformations and clipping, graphical model representations, projection algorithms, lighting and color models, hidden-surface elimination, Bezier and B-Spline curves, animation, and ray tracing.

Announcements

Assignment Frequently Asked Questions

Useful Links

Course Overview

Gratuitous CG pictures