Computer Graphics Workshop '97 Syllabus

This year the lecture for 1/13 was split and combined with the lectures for 1/10 and 1/15. Therefore we had one "extra" lecture, which is dated 1/30 on the course notes (although it was actually taught on 1/29).

1/6

• Administrivia
• Purpose of the course
• The final project
• The development environment
• Paradigms of Open Inventor
• Creation of a simple scene graph

1/8

• Organization of Open Inventor
• Nodes
  • Reference counting
• Fields
• Basic data types and naming conventions
• How to read the man pages

1/10

• Reading/writing Open Inventor scene graphs
• Structuring scene graphs
  • Traversal state
  • Group nodes
• Vertex based shapes

1/13

• Vertex based shapes - completion
• Fields - reprise
  • Single vs. multiple-valued fields
  • Number of elements in an mfield
  • Notification

1/15

• Inventor application model
  • Direct control of program - disadvantages
  • Callbacks and the Inventor Xt main loop
• Sensors
  • Timer sensors
  • Idle sensors
  • Node and field sensors
• Other types of callbacks
• Full explanation of the callback mechanism

1/17

• Interactivity via selection
• Interactivity via events

1/21

• Design and implementation of Tetris in Scheme
  • Design of the game
  • Analysis of the implementation

1/22

• Networking
• SocketMan
• Client-server
• Peer-to-peer
• Group
• Source code for examples
  • client.scm
  • server.scm
  • mclooper.scm
  • mcsender.scm
  • cone-sender.scm
  • cone-receiver.scm
  • cone-network.scm

1/24

• Engines
  • Field to field connections and engine outputs
  • Reference counting and engines
  • Engine networks
  • Engines and animation
• Cameras
  • Types of cameras
  • Cameras and viewers
• Lights
  • Types of lights
  • Lights and viewers

1/27

• Using Open Inventor in C++
• How to prototype in Scheme
  • Scheme design goals
  • Conversion rules for C++
• Discussion of the prototyping strategy
• How to write better object-oriented software
• Opinions
• C++ Definitions

1/29

• Why scripting languages are useful
• How they are implemented
• Interfaces to C and C++
• Automatic interface generation
• Example applications

1/30

• VRML 2.0
• Differences between VRML 2 and Open Inventor
• Animation using VRML 2

1/31

• Final project presentations