Courses

Summer Term 2024

Seminar
Advanced Rendering Techniques
Summer Term 2024

What does it take to render stunning life-like visuals, like those from your favorite blockbusters? In this seminar, the students jointly decide on a shot they want to re-create, and then build both the virtual 3D scene, as well as the program that will produce a photo-realistic render thereof. Based on the shot, each student is assigned an advanced rendering topic (volume rendering, path guiding, etc) and is then responsible for implementing it in both the scene and the renderer. The work will be supported through close collaboration with expert advisors from our chair, funds for professional 3D assets, compute clusters of the university, and high-end workstations at our chair.

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Lecture
Realistic Image Synthesis
Summer Term 2024

This advanced lecture discusses the mathematical concepts and algorithms that are used to simulate the propagation of light in a virtual scene. The topics include Monte Carlo sampling, various Global Illumination algorithms (from the basic Path Tracing algorithm to more advanced algorithms like Vertex Connection and Merging), and HDR imaging. In the practical exercises, the students implement some of the algorithms discussed in the lecture in a lightweight rendering framework.

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Winter Term 2023/24

Lecture
Computer Graphics 1
Winter Term 2023/24

This course provides the theoretical and practical foundations for computer graphics. It gives a wide overview of topics, techniques, and approaches used in various aspects of computer graphics with a focus on image synthesis and rendering, including texturing, shading, aliasing, sampling, and many more. After introducing the two basic algorithms for image synthesis, ray tracing and rasterization, it discusses the physical foundations of ray tracing in greater depth. As part of the [practical exercises](#assignments), the students incrementally build their own ray tracing system, which they will then use to generate a high-quality rendering for the end-of-term [rendering competition](#rendering-competition). Additionally, on the discretion of the course organizers, an additional BVH speed competition may be held for bonus points.

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Seminar
Monte Carlo Ray Tracing
Winter Term 2023/24

Monte Carlo ray tracing is a popular technique to render realistic images. It is used for movies, architecture, video games, and product design. This seminar looks at a broad range of methods to make rendering via Monte Carlo ray tracing more efficient. We will look at rendering algorithms, from a basic path tracer to photon mapping, at sampling and material models, Markov chains and path guiding, and more. Each student will give a presentation on an assigned paper, write a short summary, and reproduce the key idea in a simplified setting.

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Select Previous Courses
Lecture
Computer Graphics 1
Winter Term 2022/23

This course provides the theoretical and practical foundations for computer graphics. It gives a wide overview of topics, techniques, and approaches used in various aspects of computer graphics with a focus on image synthesis and rendering, including texturing, shading, aliasing, sampling, and many more. After introducing the two basic algorithms for image synthesis, ray tracing and rasterization, it discusses the physical foundations of ray tracing in greater depth. As part of the [practical exercises](#assignments), the students incrementally build their own ray tracing system, which they will then use to generate a high-quality rendering for the end-of-term [rendering competition](#rendering-competition). Additionally, on the discretion of the course organizers, an additional BVH speed competition may be held for bonus points.

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Lecture
Realistic Image Synthesis
Summer Term 2022

This advanced lecture discusses the mathematical concepts and algorithms that are used to simulate the propagation of light in a virtual scene. The topics include Monte Carlo sampling, various Global Illumination algorithms (from the basic Path Tracing algorithm to more advanced algorithms like Vertex Connection and Merging), and HDR imaging. In the practical exercises, the students implement some of the algorithms discussed in the lecture in a lightweight rendering framework.

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Lecture
GPU Programming
Winter Term 2020/21

This course provides an introduction to CUDA and programming parallel hardware architectures like todays GPUs. We will show how to program with CUDA and what problems can be solved efficiently with modern GPUs. The discussed algorithms are not necessarily related to Computer Graphics. The course will be accompanied by practical exercises and the students will have to work on a small project to pass. The format of the course will change mid-way through the term. Two-hour lectures and one-hour tutorials will be replaced by practical work on larger projects. The course focuses entirely on parallel programming on modern GPUs. CUDA will be used to implement all practical assignments which will include common parallel primitives like parallel prefix sum, parallel reduction, and parallel sorting algorithms (e.g. radix sort). In addition to the training material available from NVIDIA and other sources, we will also use some of the recent scientific papers for up-to-date results and programming methods.

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