The week in 559: Week 07 October 13-17

by Mike Gleicher on October 10, 2014

Last week, we went through curves. And not even all of it.While I’d like to tell you about B-Splines, and we’ll need to talk about arc-length parameterizations for the project, this will happen either later or in videos (or both).

Next week, we’ll talk about using the graphics hardware to draw in 3D for us. This means we’ll start to talk about OpenGL – but mainly as a way of getting at the graphics hardware (which we will discuss more). It’s hard to talk about this without talking about lighting first, so we’ll do some of that too.

Reading 7 is about lighting and shading, but you can read things after the lectures.

Assignment 6 is due on October 15. It tries to make sure you can read C++ code, and are set up to do the project.

Project 1 will also be announced during the week. We recommend that you start early – at least checking to make sure you can read the code, and get the framework to compile. We’ll give you some additional help (either in class, or in a tutorial) to help you do some of the more advanced options.

Assignment 6 posted

by asperling on October 8, 2014

You can now download and run a basic FLTK/OpenGL program. Make sure your environment is set up and answer the questions.

https://pages.graphics.cs.wisc.edu/559-f14/2014/10/07/assignment-6-students-revenge-building-and-reading-a-c-program/

Intro to FLTK and GLM posted

by asperling on October 5, 2014

We’ve made a basic tutorial for some of the tool’s we will be using in upcoming projects.

You can view the new tutorial here.

de Castlejau videos

by Mike Gleicher on October 3, 2014

I made some videos showing the deCastlejau algorithm. I’ve worked out some of the technical issues in producing videos of the whiteboard in my office.

We’ll cover this material in lecture on Tuesday – so you can watch it to get a jump on things (this will be useful for Assignment 5). Or come back to it if you need to review after lecture.

The week in 559: Week 06 October 6-10

by Mike Gleicher on October 3, 2014

Last week, we finally discussed rotations in 3D (although with a lot of hand waving), and got started talking about curves. We also had Assignment 4, about projection – if you realized you need to see that material again, check out the video tutorials.

This week, we’ll talk more about curves.

  • For reading, Week 6’s readings are about curves and feature some notes I wrote (that became a book chapter). These parallel the way we’re discussing things in class.
  • Assignment 5 gives you a chance to try out working with curves. Because we won’t see the Bezier algorithms (de Castlejau) until Tuesday, you can have an extension on the assignment until Friday the 10th. (this is a slight variant on the “something is due on Wednesday” – it still is, but we don’t mind if you’re a little late).

The first project is coming soon. This week we’ll get you some information on getting your C++ environment set up correctly so that you can work on it.

Assignment 5 Delays

by Mike Gleicher on October 3, 2014

Assignment 5 was posted a few days ago. But we haven’t gotten to the key technical pieces in class yet (how Bezier curves work, and the de Castlejau algorithm), so you can’t really start it. So, while the assignment is due on Wednesday, everyone gets a free extension until Friday, October 10th.

In addition to explaining Bezier curves in class on Tuesday, they are well described in the readings. And I expect to make another video tutorial experiment explaining how to do the de Castlejau algorithm by hand (we’ll do it in class too).

Assignment 4 (Again)

by Mike Gleicher on October 2, 2014

A bunch of people had trouble with Assignment 4 – realizing at the last minute that they didn’t understand some of the concepts as well as they had hoped.

This is actually the purpose of the assignments: unless you try out the ideas, you aren’t going to know whether or not you really understand them.

The stuff in assignment 4 is important (transformations, projections, …) – so if you didn’t get it, its worthwhile figuring it out. I’ve put up some Video Help (which may or may not help), or you can come to office hours, or ask a classmate – but if you don’t feel like you got Assignment 4’s concepts, keep trying!

If you aren’t satisfied with what you turned in for assignment 4, you can turn it in late. If you didn’t turn in anything, turn in a late assignment (remember, you can do that until Adam grades things – which probably won’t be until next week). If you want to revise your assignment (i.e. you turned something in, but want to turn in something better), send Adam email. I’m not sure how Moodle handles revising things – so we’ll do it manually for now.

There’s always a question: is it better to turn in a less good assignment on time, or a better assignment late. For the assignments, I think the best strategy is to do both: turn in what you have at the deadline, and if you found you aren’t quite getting the concepts, keep working at it and revise. If you just start late, you won’t realize what you don’t know until its too late.

Assignment 5 should be easier…

Grading

by Mike Gleicher on October 2, 2014

Adam mentioned that people were asking about grading. And I wondered “why didn’t they just see that information on the course web?”

And then I looked, and realized that it is a bit buried, so I should point it out.

It is under Basic Info, but the details are on the Grading Page.

There’s other stuff hidden at the bottom on the Basic Info page… like the late policy, a note about C++ in class, …

That list of things may grow as the semester goes on. Usually, it will make the news page.

Video Help: Projections

by Mike Gleicher on October 2, 2014

(note: I had posted this before – honest – but all traces of the posting seem to have vanished)

Since people were having trouble with Assignment 4, I thought this would be an opportunity to try creating “Video Help Sessions.”

These are kindof mini-lectures (like we might have if there was a real help session), except instead of doing it in front of a class, I did it in front of a camera.

This is the first time I’ve tried to do something like this: its an experiment. I’ve learned that its harder to make these than I thought. Hopefully, they are better than nothing. There are technical issues (the camera I used isn’t quite up to the task, so the writing is hard to read), and content issues. Hopefully I’ll get better at this with practice.

Anyway, there are two videos. Note: that this uses the University’s video platform, which does not play nicely with AdBlock software (so if you don’t see a video in your browser, see if there is an ad blocker like AdBlock or Ghostery that is preventing the Kaltura widget from doing its thing).

Video 1: An explanation of the simple projection matrix. https://mediaspace.wisc.edu/media/tree+%28simple+perspective%29/1_pgr336sc

Video 2: Matrix Pipeline (how the matrix we derived in the previous video gets used in Assignment 4. https://mediaspace.wisc.edu/media/MatrixPipeline/1_clydx8sk

Hopefully, these will help you understand the simple projection matrix better. And the simple projection matrix is at the core of Assignment 4.

And, in the future, hopefully I will get better at producing useful videos. These are a first experiment. I know the writing is a little fuzzy, …

Lecture Audio Available!

by Mike Gleicher on October 1, 2014

Audio recordings of the lectures are available. They are linked from the Syllabus. Or you can browse the entire directory of them.

We are not making the video recordings available now – even on an individual basis. It is unlikely that we will be able to do so in the future either.