News

Tomorrow James Hays will be giving a lecture on Digital Imaging where you'll be able to get an inside look on the course he's teaching here in the Spring. Let's show our new faculty member our support and interest by attending.

James Hays is a recent graduate of the Computer Science Department Ph.D. program at Carnegie Mellon University, where he worked with Alexei Efros. He was a member of the Graphics Lab and also worked with many computer vision and graphics researchers in the Robotics Institute at CMU. From his recent work we would like to highlight the Scene Completion Using Millions of Photographs paper.

See you in class!

Pixar is around.They have an infosession on November 18th at 8:00pm at the Career Developement Center Library. Check out the flyer for more information: Pixar flyer

Ray assignment is out! 5 out of 6 TA's agree that this is the best assignment of the course. So go out there and enjoy it! Here are some motivational images for the current intersect assignment! There will be more, and they will be crazier, when the deadline for Ray approaches.

So go out there and shoot some rays! Have fun!

The Filter homework went out today in class. The Filter algo and assignment will both be out on Thursday. This means that there will be three things out at the same time.

Don't panic! We're not expecting you to work on all of them at the same time. You should work on Sceneview until it's due, but take a moment to read the homework before Thursday's lecture so you can extract from it the important things you'll need to answer the homework. Remember, this is an important homework, it's worth 7% of your final grade! After you're done with Sceneview be sure to start working on the homework, algo and assignment as soon as you can, preferably over the weekend, so you have enough time to finish it.

A fun image to serve as motivation for Sceneview. Isn't fun to have these crazy bugs??

Remember to go see Toy Story 1 & 2 in 3D in theaters !!

Bill Buxton
Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Lubrano (CIT 4th floor)

Why e-bay is One of the Most Useful Tools for Interaction Design And Why Anyone Who Talks about Touch Interfaces is Unqualified to Speak on the Topic

It may not sound like it, but this is a bit of a talk on the history of technology. More to the point, it is about why and how history is more pertinent now, in this age of experience de-sign, than it even was in the past. However, it is also a talk about cultural literacy and criticism. To make my case, I will dive into the technological and cultural history of one of the trendiest technologies out there today: touch and multi-touch. With concrete examples, I will walk through about 40 years of history, or more. And, if you come to the talk knowing what a touch interface is, if I succeed, you will depart sure that you don't. Which now qualifies you to talk about it! And, in closing: the talk is not as dogmatic as it sounds. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, these things are too important to take seriously.

BIO: Bill Buxton is the author of, Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design, published jointly by Morgan Kaufmann and Focal Press as well as a columnist on design and innovation for BusinessWeek.com. He is Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and has a 30 year involvement in research, design and commentary around human aspects of technology, and digital tools for creative endeavour, including music, film and industrial design. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was a researcher at Xerox PARC, a professor at the University of Toronto, and Chief Scientist of Alias Research and SGI Inc. - where 2003 he was co-recipient of an Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement. In 2007, he was named Doctor of Design, honoris causa, by the Ontario College of Art and Design, in 2008 became the 10th reci-pient of the ACM/SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award for fundamental contributions to the field of human-computer interaction. In January 2009 was elected a Fellow of the ACM, and in June was awarded a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, by his alma mater, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario.

More information on Buxton and his work can be found at: www.billbuxton.com
Host: Professor Andy van Dam

Shapes algo is due at 5pm tonight! The helpsession will be held at 6pm in the Motorola room, it's Q&A based so please come with questions about the assignment.

The WPF 3D lab will be held tonight at 7pm in the MS Lab for the first group. It'll be held on Friday for the second group same time, same place. The session you should attend corresponds to the session you attended last week.

Also, remember the Linear Algebra helpsession is this Thursday at 7pm in the Motorola room. This helpsession is mandatory for those of you who haven't taken a Linear Algebra course before and strongly recommended for those who have, but who might be a little rusty. You will have to implement an algebra package for the next assignment, so you need to understand these concepts well.

Shapes has gone out! The shapes algo is due by 5pm on Tuesday, September 22nd and there will be a question-based helpsession at 7pm the same day. The project will be due next Friday, September 25th at 11:59pm. View the assignments page for more details.

Don't forget that Brush is due tonight at 11:59pm!

The WPF 3D chapter from the book has been added to the resource page. It is strongly recommended that you read this chapter before the WPF 3D lab next week. Also available is a chapter on hierarchical modeling as optional reading material.

Brush Algo is out, Due Saturday. Please check the calendar for events that are coming up, including C and C++ help sessions. Algos and collaboration policies should be handed in on paper on the second floor handin bins (near the stairs). Note that we CAN NOT grade your algos until you hand in the collaboration policies.

You will also need to sign up for labs here: lab signup

Sign up for the google mailing list, the link is at the top right of the page. Important annoucements and answers to questions will be posted through the google group as well as this page. You are responsible for keeping up with both.

The C Minicourse will be on Thursday, September 10 at 8pm and will be located in the Sunlab (first floor of the CIT). This minicourse is strongly recommended for anyone not already familiar with C programming. A separate C++ minicourse will be offered as well on Monday September 14 at 7pm also at a location TBD.

Computer Graphics is a flourishing field within Computer Science in which we study methods for digitally synthesizing and manipulating visual content. Today, this field touches many aspects of our daily life, from animation, computer games, art and special effects to graphical user interfaces, information visualization, industrial design and education; computer graphics plays an increasingly important role in our lives, both practically and culturally.

This course will introduce you to the fundamental concepts in 2D and 3D Computer Graphics. The topics covered will include the fundamentals of rendering geometric primitives, 2D and 3D transformations, color theory, 2D image filtering, simple illumination models, and GPU shaders. The Brown University Computer Science Department is a great place to learn about computer graphics, as a strong percentage of our faculty are dedicated to the field.

This year the course is undergoing a major redesign process. We will be using a new edition of the Foley, van Dam, Feiner and Hughes book, which hasn't been released to the public yet. We will also be updating the lectures to incorporate some of the new things that this book brings. We will also have a couple of labs and some reading on WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), a new framework for working with Computer Graphics.

The official prerequisites for CS123 are either CS015/16, CS017/18, or CS019. Though some introduction to linear algebra will prove to be helpful, none is required or assumed. In addition to learning about computer graphics, CS123 is a great way to familiarize yourself with C/C++ and systems level programming.

So come join us in this exciting adventure!