CIS 700/003: Real-Time Rendering

Spring 2014
Patrick Cozzi

University of Pennsylvania
Computer Graphics @ Penn

This pragmatic course prepares you to be an engine or tools developer in games or any industry using real-time graphics. As a class, we will build a graphics engine from the ground up designed for today's GPUs with programmable vertex, fragment, geometry, tessellation, and compute shaders. In addition to graphics, we'll learn software design, teamwork, source control (git), profiling tools (web tracing framework), and software development best practices (code reviews in particular).

This course is run like a startup with the students as founders, the teaching assistant as CTO, and the instructor as the board of directors.

Expect a ton of work. We will write a lot of code, read lots of papers, and give talks.

Prerequisites

This course is limited to 10 students, who must have:

Passion for computer graphics.
Strong C++ and basic familiarly with OpenGL.
CIS 460/560: Introduction to Computer Graphics. Preferably received an A.

Instructor

Patrick Cozzi, pjcozzi+cis700@gmail.com
Office Hours: By appointment

Teaching Assistant

Cheng-Tso Lin, otaku690@gmail.com
Office Hours: By appointment

Meeting

Monday, 6-9pm, SIG lab conference room

Google Group: cis700-003-spring-2014@googlegroups.com for discussion
GitHub Organization for code collaboration

Guest Lectures

04/21 - Programming GPUs for non-graphics worloads. Tim Kaldewey, IBM Research (slides)
04/28 - Rendering in Marmoset Toolbag: A Game Engine for Artists. Jeff Russell, Marmoset. (abstract, slides)

Projects

We will build:

A content pipeline for optimizing geometry and texture assets

A traditional forward shading engine in WebGL targeting the web and mobile devices

A deferred shading engine in OpenGL 4.3 targeting desktops

Engines will include

Asset important
Visibility system for efficient culling
Shadows (shadow map pass)
Reflections and refractions (cube map pass)
Sorting opaque geometry for performance
Order-independent translucency
Script-driven particle system for smoke, fire, etc.
Script-driven PostFX system for depth of field, motion blur, etc.
Anti-aliasing

We will also have an open-ended project where we each extend the engine. Potential projects include:

Deep shadow maps for translucent shadows with compute shaders
Forward+ shading with compute shaders
Terrain and ocean rendering with tessellation shaders
Animation system with vertex-shader skinning and compute-shader flocking
Non-photorealistic rendering
Volumetric clouds
Major optimizations such as instancing
GPU-accelerated collision detection and physics
Input devices such as leap motion controller and Kinect
Foliage system, tools + engine
Decal system
Skin, hair, and fur
Building an app on the engine

Papers and Talks

To support our engine development, we'll read selected

Chapters from the OpenGL SuperBible (2013), Real-Time Rendering (2008), and OpenGL Insights (2012)
Papers and courses from major journals and conferences including JCGT, SIGGRAPH, GDC, and I3D

See the reading list.

Each student will give a couple 40-minute talks throughout the semester to bring the rest of the team up to speed on a topic so we can collectively decide how it will fit into our engine. Every week a student will either be preparing a talk or writing engine code.

Profiling

We will have a major focus on performance. In addition to our topic talks, we will each select an open-source WebGL engine/app to profile with Web Tracing Framework. We will give a 10-minute talk on our analysis including optimization recommendations.

Grades

40% engine development: 20% class and 20% individual
30% final project (engine extension)
30% talks, including profiling analysis

Academic Integrity

An academic integrity violation will result in an F in this course. See Academic Integrity at the University of Pennsylvania: A Guide for Students.

Hardware

You must have a video card that supports OpenGL 4.3. These cards have been available since 2009 starting with the NVIDIA GeForce 400 series and Radeon HD 5000 series.

Visual Studio is also required for our C++ development. Our JavaScript and WebGL development can be done on any platform.

Relationship to CIS 565

This course and CIS 565 (GPU Programming and Architecture) both cover graphics development using the GPU. The difference is that CIS 565 covers more GPU architecture and GPU computing (general massively parallel programming) and has several smaller projects. This course focuses purely on graphics, using WebGL and OpenGL, and engine development in general.

This course is recommended for students who can't take CIS 565 in Fall 2014.