CS 457 / 557 -- RenderMan and OpenGL Shaders

Winter Quarter 2017

http://cs.oregonstate.edu/~mjb/cs557

Classes	Projects	Handouts	Grades	VHR

This page was last updated: March 24, 2017

"Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects."

-- Roger Zelazny (science fiction writer)

Announcements:

• 3/6/2017 Here is the obj2rib.cpp program, a quick-and-dirty effort to turn more-common .obj files into less-common .rib files. I just compile it with g++ on Linux.
  g++ obj2rib.cpp -o obj2rib

  Use it as:
  obj2rib existing-file.obj new-file.rib

• 3/6/2017 Here is an mp4 recording describing Project #7. We will still go over this on Wednesday, but it will get you started if you are ready.

• 3/6/2017 Here's an interesting job announcement that a friend of mine sent me. It's at the Conservation Biology Institute in downtown Corvallis. They do very cool ecological simulation work, including displaying results in a number of creative ways (yes, that's right -- graphics!). As always, feel free to use me as a reference.

• 3/3/2017 Grab the file Mar06.zip and unzip it into its own folder.

• 3/3/2017 Project #6 is now due on March 7.

• 2/27/2017 Grab the file Mar01.zip and unzip it into its own folder.

• 2/26/2017 Here are the files you need if you want to use the C++ shader-loading class: glslprogram.h and glslprogram.cpp.

• 2/26/2017 Here are the files you need if you want to use the C++ vertex buffer class: vertexbufferobject.h and vertexbufferobject.cpp.

• 2/24/2017 Not shaders, but cool interaction. Check out the Tilt Brush.

• 2/20/2017 Grab the file Feb22.zip and unzip it into its own folder.

• 2/20/2017 If you haven't seen it yet, here is the Pixar short Piper. Each grain of sand is made up of 5,000 triangles. I predict that this will win Best Animated Short at the Oscars.

• 2/17/2017 The magazine Computer Graphics World has an interesting article this month on Looking for a Job in CG.

• 2/16/2017 Grab the file Feb17.zip and unzip it into its own folder.

• 2/8/2017 Grab the file Feb13.zip and unzip it into its own folder.

• 2/6/2017 Here are some of the best of the Super Bowl commercials.

• 2/5/2017 If you like movie visual effects, click here!

• 2/2/2017 Grab the file Feb06.zip and unzip it into its own folder.

• 1/27/2017 Grab the file Jan30.zip and unzip it into its own folder.

• 1/12/2017 Click here to see the How To Use Bvrman video.

• December 2016's Computer Graphics World magazine has a great article on the movie Moana. Find it here. That movie is chock-full of shaders!

• The "signature object" this quarter is an Oregon salmon. There are two sets of geometry files, one low-res (3,270 triangles), and one high-res (17,200 triangles):

  salmon_low.rib	salmon_low.obj
  salmon_high.rib	salmon_high.obj

  
  The lines in the salmon*.rib file should replace, for example, the Sphere line in the sample RIB files.

• The OpenGL 4.5/GLSL 4.50 Reference Card can be found here.
  This isn't absolutely essential to print out, but it is really handy to have around.
  

• Go to the Handouts section and please print (or at least look at):

  Tessellation Shaders	Feb 27
  Scientific Visualization Using Shaders	March 6
  Compute Shaders	March 10
  More Information	March 13

• Go to the Downloadable Files section and please download:

  salmon_low.rib	Low-res salmon .rib file
  salmon_high.rib	High-res salmon .rib file
  salmon_low.obj	Low-res salmon .obj file
  salmon_high.obj	High-res salmon .obj file

What We Will Be Doing This Quarter

The goals of this course are to leave you "career-ready" (i.e., both work-ready and research-ready) for tasks, both GPU and RenderMan, that require the implementation of graphics algorithms in the form of shaders.

You will have access to the graphics systems in OSU's Computer Graphics Education Lab (CGEL) in Batcheller Hall 244. It is also a place to get access to the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL), although you probably have it if you've bought a good graphics card in the last 3-4 years.

Access to the CGEL is by the card-reader chip in your OSU ID. I will be submitting a class roster to EECS so that you can all be enabled.

CS 457/557 topics include:

• A more advanced look at the graphics pipeline
• A more advanced look at transformations
• RenderMan
• The RenderMan Interface Bytestream
• RenderMan Surface shaders
• RenderMan Displacement shaders
• Lighting
• Color
• Opacity
• Step boundaries
• Smooth step boundaries
• Positional and gradient noise
• Fractional Brownian Motion (FBM, 1/f, octave) noise
• The OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL)
• GLSL Vertex shaders
• GLSL Fragment shaders
• GLSL Geometry shaders
• GLSL Tessellation shaders
• GLSL Compute shaders
• Using shaders in visualization
• Hiding data in textures
• Place one of your images on the "Class Poster"

Graphics Card Levels

If you are wondering what types of shaders your own graphics card supports, check this box. You can tell what shaders the card supports by looking at the Shader Model (or Shader Level) or what DirectX / OpenGL version it supports:

Shader Model	OpenGL	DirectX	Supporting
3.0	2.x	9	Vertex, Fragment
4.0	3.x	10	Geometry
5.0	4.x	11	Tessellation, Compute

We will cover all of these different types of shaders.

Prerequisites

Professor

Office:	Kelley 2117 (2nd floor, south side)
Phone:	541-737-2542
E-mail:	mjb@cs.oregonstate.edu
Web site:	http://cs.oregonstate.edu/~mjb

Prof. Bailey's Office Hours:

The TA for the course is Zhicheng Fu. fuz@oregonstate.edu.
He took this course a year ago. We are lucky to have a TA that is so experienced!

Zhicheng Fu's Office Hours:

The Virtual Hand Raise (VHR)

It takes courage to ask a question in class. But, the worst thing of all is to not ask! So, this class also has the Virtual Hand Raise. Click here to get into it. It will allow you to send me a question or comment, completely anonymously. I will answer questions submitted this way by email to the class or in class.

Optional Textbook

Other Good References

Class Schedule

To see an Academic Year calendar, click here.

Class time is: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 10:00 - 10:50.

Be sure to check the class room in the table below to see what days we will be in Owen 101 and what days we will be in the Computer Graphics Education Lab (CGEL -- Batcheller Hall room 244).

	Date	Room	Topics
1	Jan 9	Owen 101	Introductions. General course information. Project #1. The graphics pipeline -- how it really works. Homogeneous coordinates. Coordinate systems: Model, World, Eye, NDC, Clip, Screen.
2	Jan 11	Owen 101	Introduction to RenderMan: RenderMan coordinate system, RIB files
3	Jan 13	Owen 101	Shaders, built-in functions and variables Uniform and Varying variables bvrman. RenderMan surface and displacement shaders
4	Jan 16	-----	Martin Luther King holiday -- no class today
5	Jan 18	Owen 101	More RenderMan: displacement shaders
6	Jan 20	-----	Prof. Bailey out of the office -- no class today
7	Jan 23	Owen 101	Noise: Positional, Gradient. Cubic and quintic interpolation. Fractional Brownian Motion (FBM, 1/f), turbulence. RenderMan-to-GLSL transition.
8	Jan 25	Owen 101	Introduction to the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) How GLSL is similar to, and different from, RenderMan shaders Attribute, Uniform, and Varying variables GLSL built-in functions and variables glman Vertex shaders Geometry Morphing
9	Jan 27	Owen 101	Grab the file Jan27.zip and unzip it into its own folder. More glman Checkers Z-buffer pollution Stripes in model vs. world coordinates Noise stripes
10	Jan 30	Owen 101	Fun-with-one. More fun with vertex shaders: Dome projection, Hyperbolic geometry. Fragment Shaders, I Lighting
11	Feb 1	Owen 101	Registration for the February 15 EECS Industry Reception starts today! Fragment Shaders, II GLSL Textures: unsigned byte, floating point, 2D, 3D, parameters, binding, texture units, multitextures, sampler functions GLSL Noise
12	Feb 3	Owen 101	Cube mapping. Reflection, Refraction.
13	Feb 6	Owen 101	Test #1 review. Cube mapping, continued.
14	Feb 8	Owen 101	Bump mapping, I
15	Feb 10	Owen 101	Test #1
16	Feb 13	Owen 101	Go over test answers Discuss the Final Project. Image Manipulation, I Don't forget that tomorrow is Valentine's Day.
17	Feb 15	Owen 101	Image Manipulation, II The EECS Industry Reception is tonight. The Winter Quarter Engineering Career Fair is tomorrow -- you should go!
18	Feb 17	Owen 101	The optics of rainbows The optics of diffraction The optics of lenses
19	Feb 20	Owen 101	Geometry Shaders, I
20	Feb 22	Owen 101	Geometry Shaders, II
21	Feb 24	Owen 101	Written Final Project proposals due Finish Geometry Shaders
22	Feb 27	Owen 101	The GLSL API. The glslprogram C++ class.
23	Mar 1	Owen 101	Tessellation shaders, I
24	Mar 3	Owen 101	Tessellation shaders, II
25	Mar 6	Owen 101	Scientific Visualization using shaders
26	March 8	Owen 101	Scientific Visualization using shaders
27	March 10	Owen 101	Compute Shaders
28	March 13	Owen 101	Compute Shaders Vulkan
29	March 15	Owen 101	Class Evaluations Test #2 review. More Information
30	March 17	-----	Prof. Bailey out of the office -- no class today
*	March 22	Owen 101	Test #2 Wednesday, March 22, 9:30 - 11:00 AM. (You can confirm this for yourself by going here.

Projects

Project Turn-In Procedures

• Your project turnins will be electronic.

• Your electronic turnin will be done at http://engr.oregonstate.edu/teach and will consist of:
  
  1. A PDF document explaining what you did and why it worked. Your submission will not be considered valid unless you can explain why it works.
  2. The PDF file should include:
     • A cover page (name, project name)
     • Images
     • Key snippets of code
  3. Source files of everything (.rib, .sl, .glib, .vert, .frag, .geom, .tess)
  4. A Windows .exe file if needed. This file must be able to run on the CGEL machines.

  Electronic submissions are due at 23:59:59 on the listed due date.

• I know some of you know the Cg and HLSL languages for shaders, but all GPU assignments must be done in GLSL.

• Your project will be graded and the score posted to the class web page.
  If you want to know why you did not receive full credit, send me an email asking about it, or see me during Office Hours.
  You have one week to do this.

Bonus Days and Late Assignments

Projects are due at 23:59:59 on the listed due date, with the following exception:

Each of you has been granted 5 Bonus Days, which are no-questions-asked one-day extensions which may be applied to any project, subject to the following rules:

1. No more than 2 Bonus Days may be applied to any one project
2. Bonus Days cannot be applied to tests
3. Bonus Days cannot be applied such that they extend a project due date past the start of Test #2.

Click here to get a copy of the Bonus Day Submission Form. Fill this out and turn it in within a week after turning in your project.

Grading

Click here to see the current grade posting.

CS 557 will be graded on a fill-the-bucket basis. There will be 7 projects, 10 quizzes, and two tests. You get to keep all the points you earn.

Your final grade will be based on your overall class point total. Based on an available point total of 1120, grade cutoffs will be no higher than:

Points	Grade
1070	A
1050	A-
1030	B+
1010	B
990	B-
970	C+
950	C
930	C-
910	D+
890	D
870	D-

Downloadable Files

1. .rib and .sl files
2. OpenGL/GLSL-related files
3. .obj files

4. Want to use the Kelley Atrium in a cube map? Here are the files:
   kec.posx.bmp
   kec.negx.bmp
   kec.posy.bmp
   kec.negy.bmp
   kec.posz.bmp
   kec.negz.bmp

Handouts

1. noisegraph.exe
2. glman.exe

The bvrman executable is not included here because it looks for a local copy of RenderMan in order to work. Unless you have RenderMan installed on your own computer, you will need to do the RenderMan work in the CGEL.

You might also need these dlls:

1. glew32.dll
2. glut32.dll
3. libcd.dll
4. libcid.dll
5. msvcr71d.dll

Class Rules

• Lab Rules: No propping the CGEL doors open, no food in the lab, drinks only in closed containers. (I am not being a mindless jerk about the no-food requirement -- ask me to see my shrine to the cockroaches that once inhabited the CGEL. Their friends are no doubt waiting for a reason to come back.)

• Keep the air conditioning running -- we have had problems with systems in that room failing because the temperature gets too high.

• Computer Security: We take computer security very seriously. Please use intelligently-chosen passwords and protect them. Anyone caught abusing the system or causing deliberate damage will be asked to drop the class and the matter will be turned over to the Dean's Office.

• Working Together: It is OK to work together by sharing information and teaching each other, but each person's projects must be original work with no sharing of code.

• Cheating: You are expected to do your own work. Sharing code is considered cheating. Anyone caught cheating will fail this class, and the matter will be turned over to the Dean's Office.

• Academic Dishonesty: You are expected to read and understand Oregon State University's Statement of Expectations for Student Conduct, found here: http://studentlife.oregonstate.edu/studentconduct/offenses-0

  If you do not understand some part of this, ask me!

Students With Disabilities

Accommodations for students with disabilities are determined and approved by Disability Access Services (DAS). If you, as a student, believe you are eligible for accommodations but have not obtained approval please contact DAS immediately at 541-737-4098 or at http://ds.oregonstate.edu. DAS notifies students and faculty members of approved academic accommodations and coordinates implementation of those accommodations. While not required, students and faculty members are encouraged to discuss details of the implementation of individual accommodations. .

Religious Holidays

Oregon State University strives to respect all religious practices. If you have religious holidays that are in conflict with any of the requirements of this class, please see me immediately so that we can make alternative arrangements.

Other Useful Online Graphics and Shader Information

• RenderMan:
  • Central source for RenderMan information: http://renderman.pixar.com/
  • RenderMan Community Resources" https://community.renderman.pixar.com/index.html
  • RenderMan Video Tutorials: https://community.renderman.pixar.com/article/tutorials.html
  • Top of the RenderMan Documentation Tree: https://rmanwiki.pixar.com/display/REN/RenderMan+Documentation
  • Getting the Non-commercial RenderMan software for your own use: https://renderman.pixar.com/view/non-commercial-renderman
  • RIB Specification: https://renderman.pixar.com/products/rispec/rispec_pdf/RISpec3_2.pdf
  • RenderMan Tutorials http://www.fundza.com/index.html
  • RenderMan Ray Tracing, I: https://renderman.pixar.com/resources/RenderMan_20/rayTracedShading.html
  • RenderMan Ray Tracing, II: https://renderman.pixar.com/view/ray-traced-shading-2
  • A stained glass shader: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~debug/238/shader.html

• OpenGL:
  • Industry-wide OpenGL Information: http://www.opengl.org
  • The OpenGL 1.1 State Machine Diagram http://www.opengl.org/documentation/specs/version1.1/state.pdf
  • Free OpenGL textbook rscfullbook.pdf
  • Another free OpenGL textbook http://openglbook.com/
  • OpenGL 4.5/GLSL4.50 Reference Card opengl45-quick-reference-card.pdf
  • OpenGL Man Pages: http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~decarlo/428/glman.html

• The GLUT Library:
  • HTML GLUT Documentation: http://www.opengl.org/documentation/specs/glut/spec3/spec3.html
  • PDF GLUT Documentation: http://www.opengl.org/documentation/specs/glut/glut-3.spec.pdf

• The GLUI Library:
  • OpenGL User Interface (GLUI) Documentation http://www.cs.unc.edu/~rademach/glui/src/release/glui_manual_v2_beta.pdf
  • General GLUI Information http://www.cs.unc.edu/~rademach/glui

• GLSL:

• WebGL:
  • Khronos group's WebGL Page: http://khronos.org/webgl
  • OSU WebGL site: http://cs.oregonstate.edu/~mjb/webgl
  • three.js: http://threejs.org/
  • JQuery user interface: http://api.jqueryui.com/
  • Ed Angel's WebGL site for his book examples: http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel/BOOK/INTERACTIVE_COMPUTER_GRAPHICS/SIXTH_EDITION/CODE/WebGL/

• SIGGRAPH (The Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics): http://www.siggraph.org

• SIGGRAPH Online Computer Graphics Bibliography Database: http://www.siggraph.org/learn/computer-graphics-bibliography-database

• Game Information:
  • Game Developer: http://www.gamedev.net
  • Gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com

• 3D Models you can download:
  • Free 3D Models: http://thefree3dmodels.com
  • Level of Detail book support (free): http://lodbook.com/models
  • Florida State (free): http://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jburkardt/data/data.html
  • Buy 3D Models (but these are free): http://www.buy3dmodels.com/free3dmodels.php
  • ChromeSphere: http://www.chromesphere.com/3dmodels.html
  • TurboSquid: http://www.turbosquid.com/Search/3D-Models/free/obj
  • Remnants of the old Avalon site (free): ftp://ftp.uniovi.es/pub/mirrors/avalon.viewpoint.com/objects/
  • Digimation (costs money): http://www.digimation.com

• Interesting visualization of the world's intercontinental networks http://www.cablemap.info/

• WebGL isosurface of low-frequency 3D noise function http://kirox.de/test/Surface.html