559 Accelerated Honors Spring 2025 Announcement

In the Spring of 2025, I will teach an “accelerated honors” section of CS559 (Computer Graphics).

If you are interested in taking this class, you can request permission to enrol by filling out the form: here. Be warned the class will be more work - but you will get an opportunity to learn more about Computer Graphics, and get more opportunities to try out the concepts that you learn in assignments and projects.

What is “Accelerated Honors”? Accelerated honors classes are specially designation sections of a class that provide a more rigorous/intensive experience of similar material.

Accelerated Honors is the University term for an advanced section of a class that is open to students who are not necessarily enrolled in an honors program.

The Accelerated Honors section of CS559 will be a more rigorous introduction to the topic of Computer Graphics than the regular section. It is meant to provide a more intensive learning experience for students with a deep interest in the topic. It will provide a learning opportunity in a smaller class (we will limit it to 50-60 students) with a self-selected group of students committed to exploring the topic in depth. Everyone in class has signed up to take the harder class.

The Accelerated Honors (AH) section will add to the content of the regular CS559 class. You can learn about the regular CS559 class from the web pages from recent years CS559 Spring 2023. (Note: The CS559 Spring 2024 information is not available on the web, but is very similar to Spring 2023).

What will 559 accelerated honors add? (beyond the regular section)

  • The AH section will cover all the topics covered in the regular section, and some additional topics.
  • The AH section will complete all the same assignments as the regular section, but will enhance these assignments with additional pieces.
  • The AH section exams will include the exams taken in regular section, but add additional questions on the additional material.
  • The AH section will complete similar projects as the regular section, but will allow for more creative extensions.

Will the AH section be more work? Yes! Will it be an opportunity to learn more stuff? Yes!

How will the class work? I am not sure. I am still working this out, but…

  • We won’t cover some of the basic topics in lectures - students will be expected to learn some of the material on their own. We will provide recordings of prior lectures (or you can even watch the lectures from the regular section).
  • We will use lecture time to discuss more advanced topics, and to gain a deeper understanding of some of the foundations.
  • The assignments will add extra problems that allow students to practice using some of the more advanced concepts.
  • The projects will add extra, more-open ended suggestions to allow students to explore the material more creatively.
  • The class will include activities designed to foster community and collaboration. While we will not require group projects, we will use activities such as peer feedback, group brainstorming, and sharing of results to build community so we can learn together.

What extra topics may be added? This will be worked out - and will also adapt to class interest, but some of my ideas…

  • Representing curved shapes with B-Splines
  • How Quaternions actually work
  • Representations used in 3D scanning (point clouds)
  • How web graphics are programmed (for example, to make interactive visuals in news articles)
  • More realistic lighting
  • How deferred rendering enables modern games to use graphics hardware effectively
  • The history of GPUs
  • High dynamic range imaging, and how we mix real and synthetic imagery
  • Color models and human perception
  • Issues in representing images, and how this related to making textures look good

Is this for me? Maybe. If you are interested in computer graphics and want to learn about it more deeply than you could from the regular CS559 class, then this is a great opportunity. If you want the chance to dig deeper into an aspect of computer science with a set of like-minded students, this should be great. If you’d like a smaller advanced CS class, this will be a rare opportunity. But it will be more work.

The form to apply is here. Because we need to limit the class size (to 50-60 students), we need to have students “apply” first.