This course will teach you everything about offline rendering, so you will be able to write a fully functional industry-level renderer (such as Disney's Hyperion and Pixar's RenderMan) that produces stunning graphics. Topics in this course will cover the physics of light, the rendering equation, Monte Carlo integration, path tracing, physically-based reflectance models, participating media, other advanced light transport methods, production rendering approaches, and so on.
This course is the stepping stone if you want to find a job in the animation companies and/or if you want to apply for graduate school focusing on Computer Graphics research. Like CS180, our CS190I will not be very easy, but will be both interesting and rewarding.
This course does not have any strict prerequisites, since as upper-division students, you should have already learned the following topics:
- C++ Programming [CS 16/24/32]
- Algorithm and Data Structure [CS 130A/B]
- Multivariable Calculus [MATH 3A/3B/6A]
- Probability Theory, Statistics or Stochastic Processes [CS 40, PSTAT 5A, PSTAT 120A/B/C, PSTAT 160A/B]
The listed course numbers are for your reference only. In general, as long as you have taken one course (or equivalent) in each of the four categories, you are ready to take this course. Also, it is recommended that you go through the (publicly available) slides in CS180 before the start of this course, especially the "Ray Tracing" related topics.