Crane He Chen
Email: hchen136@jhu.edu
Website: http://cranehechen.com/
Office: Hackerman Hall 136
Office hours: by appointment
Th 9:00AM - 10:15AM, Homewood Campus, Bloomberg 178
https://wse.zoom.us/j/95364532144
No prerequisites. Course is designed primarily for freshmen at Johns Hopkins University.
This course provides a practical, hands-on introduction to computer graphics, serving as an inspiring stepping stone towards the advanced 3 credit course in Computer Graphics. Central to this study is the fundamental concept of "the Laplacian" in computer graphics, an important topic, but not addressed in the 3-credit course. This technology has many practical applications, including computer game modeling, animation, and visual effects in movie production. The concept will be illuminated from both an algebraic and geometric perspective, accompanied by real-life examples and practical exercises. This course is designed to offer an expansive understanding of the role of the Laplacian in computer graphics, further enriched by hands-on opportunities coding with C++.
Specific outcomes for this course are that
| Date | Lecture Slides | Codebase / Other Resources | Video |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Overview and motivation | Introduction to USD | coming soon |
| Week 2 | Data | Pelican,Lizard,Beetle, Rebel, HappyDragon, Solution | |
| Week 3 | CMake | HelloGraphics | |
| Week 4 | “The Laplacian" Basics, 1D, 2D, 3D | ||
| Week 5 | “The Laplacian” for 3D models part1 | ||
| Week 6 | “The Laplacian” for 3D models part2 | ||
| Week 7 | “The Laplacian” as second derivative | ||
| Week 8 | Guest Lecture (Ruben Wiersma from TU Delft) | ||
| Week 9 | Lab | ||
| Week 10 | Art Contest (opening speech: Cary Philips from ILM) |
Don’t need to freak out if you find the contents below quite advanced.
Note: Our course has no prerequisites, focuses on intuitions, so we are doing lots of handwavings here and there when it comes to math. But it would be beneficial to point you to resources mathematically rigorous in case you are interested in digging further in the future. Lectures I mentioned are the most relevant. In general, the whole playlists are good contents. The books are rigorous to another level. Those are super well-written textbooks though. You might find them not that hard to follow.