Description
This is a new reading and projects course, which is intended to offer an in depth study of an active research topic in computer graphics. Topics will change each spring. This semester's course covers recent results in modeling of select natural phenomena and processes. Topics include terrains, trees and plants, water, fire and smoke, lightning, rugged surfaces, materials, weathering, light-surface interactions, and physically-based glare effects.

Format
A typical class meeting will consist of an instructor or student presentation of papers from the literature and a discussion of the material.

Course project
Each student will complete a substantial programming project related to natural phenomena. Students are encouraged to work in groups of two. A list of suggested topics will be provided. Acceptable projects include but are not limited to an implementation (and improvement) of an algorithm from a paper, a synthesis of techniques from several papers, or a work that attempts to advance the state of the art. The projects are expected to have some research content and should be designed with that in mind.

Grades
Course grades will be based on the presentation of papers (20%), participation in class discussions (15%), and the quality of the exercise and final project(65%).

Milestones

• February 28: Short exercise due

• March 4: Written project proposal due (2 pages)

• March 5-7: Proposal meetings

• April 10-12: Progress meetings

• May 17: Final presentation (time and location TBA)

• May 20: Final writeup due

Late work is discouraged and will not be accepted without my prior approval.

Registration
To enroll in the course for credit, you must register using the online registration form by Friday, 2/9 at 5:00pm. I will analyze the registration information and assign a topic and date to each student. The enrollment will be limited to 30 students. If the enrollment is too large, I will register students based on previous coursework and their reasons for taking the class.

WWW
The homepage for the course is http://graphics.lcs.mit.edu/classes/4.208-6.891/

Class e-mail list
4.208-6.891-class@mit.edu

Since the class will be small, you can feel free to use this list as a way to find a partner for the projects.

Last modified: February 4, 1996