CS775 - Advanced Computer Graphics

Semester 2 (Spring), 2022-2023


Overview

We will delve into advanced topics in Character Animation, Global Illumination, Physics-based Animation and Augmented Reality. We will also look at neural rendering, reinforcement learning for character animation and neural network based encodings of physics simulations. The course will involve extensive hands-on work. So, the course is programming intensive and will emphasize a lot on assignments.

Logistics


Registration Instructions

  • This course is open to B.Tech., Dual 3rd year+ students and M.Tech. 1st and 2nd year students who satisfy the prerequisites given below.
  • Audits are not allowed.

Eligibility/Prerequisites

  • CS475/CS675 - Computer Graphics is a strict prerequisite for this course.
  • Knowledge of C/C++ Programming is essential.
  • Basic linear algebra, numerical techniques, data structures and algorithms will be helpful.
  • Familiarity with deep neural networks will be helpful.

Lecture Schedule

Date Topics Tasks and Resources
Jan 3 Introduction to the Course First class is at 5pm-6pm, CC103. Do not miss this class.
Jan 5
Jan 9		 Raytracing Slot 13 timings will be followed from this class.
Jan 12 Radiometry For additional readings, see here.
Jan 16 BRDF For additional readings, see here.
Jan 19 Monte Carlo Path Tracing For additional readings, see here.
Jan 23 Volume Graphics For additional readings, see here.
Jan 26 Holiday for Republic Day
Jan 30 Lightfields For additional readings, see here.
Jan 30 Neural Radiance Fields For additional readings, see here.
Feb 2 Augmented Reality - Introduction, Displays For additional readings, see here.
Feb 6
Feb 9
Feb 13		 Augmented Reality - Tracking, Coherent Rendering Tracking for Augmented Reality). For additional readings, see here.
Feb 16 Learning for Rendering Tracking for Augmented Reality). For additional readings, see here.
Feb 20 MidSem Exam 6pm-8pm, SIC 201
Feb 27 Motion Capture For additional readings, see here.
Mar 2 Skinning For additional readings, see here.
Mar 6
Mar 9		 Kinematics For additional readings, see here.
Mar 13 Motion Graphs For link to the GDC18 talk, see here.
Mar 16 Phase-Functioned Neural Networks for Character Control
Mar 20 Physically-based Animation 1 For additional readings, see here.
Mar 20 Physically-based Animation 2 For additional readings, see here.
Mar 23
Mar 27		 Particle Fluids For additional readings, see here.
Mar 30 Grid Fluids For additional readings, see here.
Apr 3 DeepMimic - Example Guided DeepRL of Physics-Based Character Skills Presented by Aquib Nazaz, Paavan Kumar
Apr 3 Transflower - Probabilistic Autoregressive Dance Generation Presented by Bhavnoor Singh Marok, Harsh Shah
Apr 6 Neural Supersampling for Real-time Rendering Presented by Alan Babu, R Rakesh Kumar
Apr 6 CLIPasso - Semantically Aware Object Sketching Presented by Shreya Ilindra, Satwik M
Apr 10 Instant Neural Graphics Primitives Presented by Animesh and Ashutosh
Apr 10 Deep Shading - CNN for Screen Space Shading Presented by Shrey Singla
Apr 13 Understanding Aliasing For additional readings, see here.
Apr 17 End Semester Exam 8:30am-11:30am, SIC 205

Assignments and Homeworks

Important: Academic integrity is paramount. Any dishonesty will be severely dealt with.

Please read my views on academic integrity of assignment submissions before submitting anything to me.

  1. Assignment 1: Whitted Ray Tracing
  2. Assignment 2: Photorealistic Rendering in Blender
  3. Assignment 3: Character Animation and VFX in Blender

Resources

  1. Books

    1. Augmented Reality (1/e), Deiter Schmalstieg and Tobias Hollerer, Addison Wesley.
    2. Physically-based Rendering : From Theory to Implementation (2/e), Matt Pharr and Greg Humphreys, Morgan Kaufmann.
    3. Computer Animation : Algorithms and Techniques (3/e), Rick Parent, Morgan Kaufmann.
    4. Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques, Alan Watt and Mark Watt, Addison Wesley.

  2. Online Readings

    1. CS475 Online Readings (2022)
    2. Ray Tracing
      a. Ray Tracing
      b. The Internet Ray Tracing Competition (the competition seems to be down at the moment)
      c. The Persistence of Vision Raytracer
      d. Object-Object Intersections
      e. Overview of raytracing on Scratchapixel
    3. Radiometry and BRDF
      1. Fresnel Reflectance
      2. Data from Cornell Light Measurement Lab
      3. Experimental Validation of Analytical BRDF Models, Ngan, Durand, Matusik
      4. Notes on Radiometry by Prof. Steve Marschner, Cornell University
    4. Radiosity
      1. SIGGRAPH Education Radiosity Slide Set
      2. Modeling the interaction of light between diffuse surfaces, Goral, Torrance, Greenberg and Battaile, SIGGRAPH 84.
      3. The hemi-cube: a radiosity solution for complex environments, Cohen and Greenberg, SIGGRAPH 85.
      4. RADIOSITY: An Illuminating Perspective, Drucker, Written Doctoral Exam
    5. Monte-Carlo Raytracing
      1. smallpt: G.I. in 99 lines of C++
      2. The Global Illumination Compendium
      3. State of the Art in Monte Carlo Ray Tracing for Realistic Image Synthesis, SIGGRAPH 2001 course notes
    6. LightFields, Neural Rendering
      1. Light field rendering, Marc Levoy and Pat Hanrahan, SIGGRAPH 1996.
      2. Refocusing and Lightfields, Fredo Durand and Bill Freeman, Slides from course on computational photography
      3. Why is Neural Rendering so Cool?, Talk by Matthias Neißner, TUM.
      4. Understanding and Extending Neural Radiance Fields, Talk by Jonathan T. Barron, Google Research.
    7. Ambient Occlusion, Photon Mapping, Point-based GI
      1. Point-based Global Illumination, Per H. Christensen, PIXAR
      2. A practical guide to using Photon Maps, Henrik Wann Jensen, SIGGRAPH 2000 Course
      3. Ambient Occlusion, Wikipedia
      4. Ambient Occlusion, GPU Gems, CHapter 17, NVIDIA
    8. Augmented Reality
      1. Website of the Augmented Reality Book
      2. Google Spotlight Stories
    9. Motion Capture
      1. Motion Capture, Wikipedia
      2. BVH File Format, Mike Gleicher, University of Wisconsin
    10. Skinning
      1. Geometric Skinning with Approximate Dual Quaternion Blending, Kavan, Collins, Zara and O’Sullivan, ACM TOG, 2008. (Read Sections 1 and 2. Reading of other sections is optional though is interesting and a good exercise.)
      2. Pose space deformation: a unified approach to shape interpolation and skeleton-driven deformation, Lewis, Cordner and Fong, SIGGRAPH 2000. (Read Sections 1 and 2.3.2. Reading of other sections is optional.)
      3. Introduction to Pose Space Deformation
    11. Inverse Kinematics
      1. Introduction to Inverse Kinematics with Jacobian Transpose, Pseudoinverse and Damped Least Squares methods, Samuel R. Buss, 2006.
      2. IK for Articulated Figure Manipulation, Chris Welman, Master Thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1993 (Locally Mirrored)
      3. Inverse kinematics positioning using nonlinear programming for highly articulated figures, Zhao and Badler, SIGGRAPH 1994.
      4. Inverse kinematics techniques of the interactive posture control of articulated figures, Paolo Baerlocher, PhD Thesis, EPFL, 2001.
      5. SVD (Chapter 3) from Notes on Mathematical methods for Robotics and Vision by Carlo Tomasi (locally mirrored)
    12. Physically Based Animation
      1. Stability Analysis of finite difference methods for ODEs, T Lakoba, Univ. of Vermont.
      2. Physically Based Modeling, SIGGRAPH 2001 Course Notes, Witkin and Baraff. These are the notes referred to during the lectures.
      3. Large Steps in Cloth Simulation, Baraff and Witkin, SIGGRAPH 1998
      4. Robust treatment of collisions, contact and friction for cloth animation
      5. An Introduction to the Conjugate Gradient Method Without the Agonizing Pain, Jonathan R. Shewchuk, 1994.
      6. Particle-based fluid simulation for interactive applications, Muller et al., SCA 2003
      7. Implementing SPH, David Bindell, Course on Applications of Parallel Computers, Cornell University
      8. Time Reversibility, M. Vallieres, Drexel University.
      9. Stable Fluids, Jos Stam, SIGGRAPH 1999
      10. Animating Sand as a Fluid, Zhu and Bridson, SIGGRAPH 2005 (See FLIP and PIC in Sec 4.2 and Surface Reconstruction in Sec 5 in the paper)
      11. Fluid Simulation for Computer Animation, by Robert Bridson.
    13. Motion Graphs
      1. Motion Graphs, Lucas Kovar, Michael Gleicher and Fred Pighin, SIGGRAPH 2002.
      2. Constructing good quality motion graphs for realistic human animation, Liming Zhao, PhD Thesis, UPenn, 2009 (read the chapter on standard motion graphs).
      3. Character Control using Neural Networks and ML, Daniel Holden, GDC 2018 Talk
    14. Aliasing
      1. Sampling and Reconstruction, Marc Levoy’s CS248 Notes, Stanford
      2. Aliasing, Wikipedia
      3. Antialiasing, Wikipedia
      4. Reconstruction filters in computer-graphics, Mitchell and Netravali, SIGGRAPH 1988
      5. Fourier Transforms for images, Image Processing Learning Resources, R Fisher, S Perkins, A Walker, E Wolfart
      6. Fourier Transforms for image processing, John M. Brayer, University of New Mexico
      7. Notes on Pixels, Sampling and the Nyquist Limit
      8. SIGGRAPH HyperGraph Notes on Aliasing, Prefiltering, Postfiltering
      9. Notes on Texture Filtering
      10. Temporal Antialiasing, Wikipedia
      11. Motion Blur, Wikipedia

Last updated on Dec 25, 2022