[Archived] CS291A: Real-Time High Quality Rendering

Spring 2020

Course Description

[Mulan by Disney]

[VXGI by NVIDIA]

[Siren by Unreal Engine]

[RTRT by NVIDIA]

One of the perennial goals of Computer Graphics is creating high quality images which are indistinguishable from photographs: a goal referred to as photorealism. Another important goal is interactivity for visualization, simulation, gaming and other real-time applications. These two goals have historically been at odds with each other. In this course, we will review the history and some of the recent ideas that seek to bridge the gap between realism and interactivity. We will focus on the use of complex lighting and shading within limited computation time. Specifically, topics will cover programmable shaders, real-time shadows, interactive global illumination, image-based rendering, precomputed rendering, adaptive sampling and reconstruction, and real-time ray tracing.

This course will be constantly evolving over iterations. Lecture topics and/or reading materials will be subject to change to keep up with the latest development of real-time rendering. Currently, this course is for graduate students. In subsequent years, this course might be moved into undergraduates' curriculum.

Prerequisite: CS180: Introduction to Computer Graphics, or equivalent (e.g. CS280), or more advanced alternative (e.g. CS285). (Note, this course can be arbitrarily difficult if you haven't taken a Computer Graphics course previously. Courses in Computer Vision and Human-Computer Interaction will not help!)

Important Note

This course has been archived. Please visit Prof. Lingqi Yan's website for its latest version.