UW CSE
Computer Graphics Education and Research

We organize this report in terms of education and research.

Education

The conversion of the SGI teaching lab into an Intel teaching lab is progressing in stages:

In the Winter of 1998, we ported the course projects from the SGI's to the Intel boxes.
In the Spring of 1998, David Salesin taught the Professional Masters Program course in computer graphics, CSE/591, using a lab that consisted of a hybrid of Intel and SGI machines. Most students used the Intel platforms for their projects.
Also in the Spring of 1998, Brian Curless taught a graduate course in advanced computer graphics techniques, CSE/558, in which students implemented significant projects. A number of students developed their ideas on Intel-donated equipment.
We have ordered the next batch of Intel machines and expect to receive them in time to complete the conversion in the Fall of 1998. During that quarter, Brian Curless will teach the core undergraduate course, CSE/457, in the newly completed Intel teaching lab.

Here are descriptions of the new graphics projects, ported to Intel platforms:

1	Impressionist	An interactive impressionistic paint system, similar in spirit to Paul Haeberli's The Impressionist.
2	Articulate	A hierarchical model, built with the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), containing various animated movements that can be triggered by a user.
3	Trace	A program to create beautiful raytraced images of the VRML models, complete with shadows, reflections, and transparent effects.
4	Animate	An interactive keyframe animation system, used to animate the VRML model from Project #2.

More details on the various courses in computer graphics offered at UW can be found here.

Research

We have begun using Intel machines as the platform for several new research projects. These include:

Computer-Generated Floral Ornament: Algorithms for creating floral ornaments that are tailored to fill a particular space. To be presented at SIGGRAPH 98.
Layered-Depth Images: Algorithms to allow very rapid walk-throughs of environments using images that have multiple layers and depths associated with them. To be presented at SIGGRAPH 98.
Automatic Escherization: Algorithms for creating space-filling tilings based on specific shapes.
Two of the projects begun in the graduate course CSE/558 described in the teaching section above are expected to continue later this summer. This work will also proceed on Intel donated equipment.