CS 6620 - Fall 2017
Ray Tracing for Graphics

Example images generated by students who took this class in Fall 2017.

Instructor:	Cem Yuksel (Office hours: by appointment, MEB 3116)
TA:	Elena Vasiou (Office hours: Monday 1-3pm, Friday 2:30-4:30pm, MEB 3115)
Time:	Tuesday & Thursday @ 3:40pm - 5:00pm
Location:	WEB 1248

Overview

This course covers fundamental concepts of rendering and ray tracing. Each student implements a ray tracer of his/her own. All the related theory and implementation details are discussed in the lectures. Therefore, the students do not need to have prior knowledge about computer graphics and prerequisites do not apply (this course can be taken without taking 5610 or 6610).

We begin with the basics of rendering and we build an extremely simple ray tracer. With each project we add a new feature to our ray tracers. To make sure that each project can be completed in a short amount of time, additional source code is provided when needed. We pay attention to implementation details during the lectures, so that the project codes not only work, but also have the right structure to easily add the new features of the upcoming projects. At the end of the semester, we get to have highly advanced ray tracers that are capable of generating realistic images using global illumination techniques. The course ends with the Teapot Rendering Competition.

Students can use the Canvas Discussion Board.

Course Objectives

The main objective of this course is to introduce students the fundamental concepts of image synthesis in computer graphics. At the conclusion of this course students will be able to:
• Understand the stages of a general purpose rendering pipeline,
• Implement ray tracing for image synthesis and lighting simulation,
• Identify aliasing and sampling related problems in graphics, and
• Obtain the necessary background knowledge for following the state-of-the-art advancements in rendering related research in computer graphics.

Schedule

Week	Date	Topic	Project Deadlines
1	Aug 22	Transformations and Camera Rays
1	Aug 24	Sphere Intersection and Software Setup
2	Aug 29	Lights	Project 1 deadline - Ray Casting
2	Aug 31	Shading and BRDF
3	Sep 5	Visibility and Shadows	Project 2 deadline - Shading
3	Sep 7	Ray Traced Shadows
4	Sep 12	Reflections	Project 3 deadline - Shadows
4	Sep 14	Refractions
5	Sep 19	Ray Plane and Box Intersections	Project 4 deadline - Reflections and Refractions
5	Sep 21	Ray Triangle Intersection
6	Sep 26	Space Partitioning	Project 5 deadline - Triangular Meshes
6	Sep 28	Space Partitioning (cont.)
7	Oct 3	Textures and Mapping	Project 6 deadline - Space Partitioning
7	Oct 5	Texture Sampling
8	Oct 10	— Fall Break —
8	Oct 12	— Fall Break —
9	Oct 17	Antialiasing	Project 7 deadline - Textures
9	Oct 19	Reconstruction Filters
10	Oct 24	Depth of Field	Project 8 deadline - Antialiasing
10	Oct 26	Motion Blur
11	Oct 31	— No Class —
11	Nov 2	Glossy Surfaces and Soft Shadows	Project 9 deadline - Depth of Field
12	Nov 7	Rendering Equation and Global Illum.	Project 10 deadline - Soft Shadows and Glossy Surfaces
12	Nov 9	Ambient Occ. and Monte Carlo Sampling
13	Nov 14	Irradiance Caching	Project 11 deadline - Monte Carlo GI
13	Nov 16	Path Tracing
14	Nov 21	Photon Mapping	Project 12 deadline - Path Tracer
14	Nov 23	— Thanksgiving —
15	Nov 28	Photon Mapping (cont.)
15	Nov 30	Final Gathering
16	Dec 5	Adv. Global Illumination	Project 13 deadline - Photon Mapping
16	Dec 7	Adv. Global Illumination (cont.)
	Dec 15	Teapot Rendering Competition Time: 4:30-5:30pm	Final Project

Projects

Students must prepare a project web page for each project, which should include at least one image rendered using his/her project code, clearly showing that the requirements of the project have been completed. This web page can have multiple images showing different aspects of the project. Each image must also have a render time next to it (as well as hardware information). The images on the project web pages must be in PNG format.

All project web pages of a student must be under the same web directory. The naming convention for the project web pages is prjN.html, where 1 ≤ N ≤ 14. Students should also prepare a 200x150 pixel thumbnail image for each project and put it in the same directory with the name convention prjN.jpg. For example, if the student's web directory is http://www.cs.utah.edu/~myname/courses/cs6620/, Project 1 submission should include:
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~myname/courses/cs6620/prj1.html and
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~myname/courses/cs6620/prj1.jpg
as well as all the files that are linked within prj1.html. Students should pick a web directory and email the link to the instructor before the Project 1 deadline.

Students must also submit their source codes for each project via canvas. The project source codes should NOT be included on the project web pages or any publicly accessible web service. Students are highly encouraged to use C++ for their projects.

Deadlines and Late Submissions: The deadline for each project is at noon (12:01pm) on the date indicated on the schedule (see above). Late submissions suffer a 20% penalty and an additional 20% penalty is applied at each following class start time. Therefore, a project that is submitted two weeks after its deadline can only receive up to 20% of its total points. If a project is submitted more than two weeks later than its deadline, it will receive no points. To accommodate special circumstances, first three late penalties of each student will be omitted. No late submission is accepted for the final project without prior permission from the instructor.

All projects are individual projects. Group projects are not permitted. Therefore, each student must write his/her own code. Collaboration between students is encouraged, but code sharing is not permitted. External libraries and source code can be used only for additional functionalities that are not core parts of the projects, and they should be clearly indicated with comments within the source code.

Grading

Projects 1-10	5 points
Projects 11-13	10 points
Final Project	20 points
TOTAL	100 points

University of Utah Disability Accommodation Policy

The University of Utah seeks to provide equal access to its programs, services, and activities for people with disabilities. If you need accommodations in the class, reasonable prior notice should be given to the Center for Disability Services, 162 Olpin Union Building, 801-581-5020 (V/TDD), http://disability.utah.edu/. CDS will work with you and the instructor to make arrangements for accommodations.

2017 Teapot Rendering Competition Awards

Winner