This fourth topic week gets us to 3D! The workbooks focus on 3D programming - using the basic mechanisms to make stuff. The readings talk about what is going on “underneath the hood”. It is hard to make the connections: the high-level APIs we use hide the details. However, it is worth it to spend the effort to learn the underlying math.

For our first “portfolio” assignment, you will assemble a “web” that shows off programs that demonstrate that you can apply the ideas we learned about in class to create actual graphics programs.

The third week of assignments focus on Curves - a tricky topic that I find fascinating. In the regular class, we divide it between a (rather long) workbook, and a programming assignment (the train). For this class, we’ll move the train to the portfolio (next week), so you can take more time to dig into curves (and get a head start on the portfolio).

The second week of assignments focus on one of the most important ideas in computer graphics: transformations. The idea is that geometry is much easier to think about/work with if we do it in a convenient coordinate system - so we make sure to describe things in convenient coorinate systems, and use transformations to move between those coordinate systems. We’ll explore the use of transformations in 2D (trust me, it is better to understand it in 2D and then we’ll see that things work in 3D).

This is our first week of assignments (for the second week of class). It will be a “normal” content week - but since it is the first week we’ll need to work the bugs out of the mechanisms, and you’ll need to do some extra “getting started work”. The real work of the week are Workbooks 1 and 2, but as you do them, you need to be thinking ahead to Portfolio 1, and also looking at some supplemental resources.