Exam Topics and Notes

midterm
final

NOTES:

Write down answers that convince me you know what you're talking about. Some questions will require short discussions - I'm looking for the reasons that you gave an answer, not so much the answer itself.
For transformation matrices, you don't need to multiply the matrices out. If you set up the transformation matrices correctly, that will get you credit.
I expect you to know the simple equations that we've covered in class, e.g.,
- computing a normal vector from a corner of a polygin (v1, v2, v3).
- diffuse illumination: dot_product(N,L)
- computing the reflection vector
I don't expect you to memorize the more complex equations e.g.,
- summation method of normal vector calculation,
- the full illumination equation
- computing the refraction vector
but you should be able to
- explain an equation that we covered in class if I give it to you, and
- tell me in words what the equation does and how it does it if I don't give it to you but just ask you about it.
Be able to intelligently discuss issues. When there are various ways to do things you should know the alternatives and be able to compare advantages and disadvantages of each, for example:
- for computing ray-object intersections, inverse transforming ray to object space
- in specular reflection, comparing angle made by E+L to N v. angle made by R and L
- directional v. point light sources
- shadowing by transparent objects
- in transparency, blending v. adding colors
- what normal to use for inside intersections of transparent objects

Midterm

Closed book, closed notes

Midterm Topics

Computer Graphics - general terms and concepts
- vector graphics
- raster graphics
- frame buffer
- scan conversion
3D Graphics - general terms and concepts
- Perspective, orthogonal projection
- z-buffer
- scanline algorithms
- ray tracing
Vectors and Transformations - use to compute quantities of interest
- normalizing vectors
- dot product
- cross product
- parametric equation of a line
- modeling and viewing transformations
- Affine transformations
- Composing transformations
- Homogeneous coordinates
- scale - uniform and non-uniform
- translation
- rotation - x, y, z axis rotation
- shearing, reflection
- coordinate frames, right v. left hand coordinate system
- transforming data v. transforming coordinate system
- transforming vectors
- transforming normal vectors
- inverse transforming back into object space
- compute inverse from polygon (2 methods)
- compute reflection and refraction ray
Ray Tracing Geometry
- Forming camera coordinate system
  - view direction vector
  - up vector
  - third coordinate axis ('over' vector)
- Forming rays through pixels
  - positioning the virtual pixel screen
  - finding the upper left-hand corner of the screen
  - looping through pixel centers
Basic illumination and shading
- Calculating normal vectors
- Ambient: what is it, how is it calculated
- Diffuse: what is it, how is it calculated
- Specular: what is it, how is it calculated
- Shadows: how are they calculated
- Full illumination equation with multiple light sources - be able to explain it
- Light source modeling: point, directional, directed & hooded (Warn)
Recursive Ray Tracing
- Calculating the reflection vector
- Calculating the refraction vector
  - Snell's Law
  - index of refraction
  - Critical angle
  - Wavelength dependence
Intersection Calculations
- Implicit v. explicit forms
- Solve implicit plus parametric ray
- Ray & sphere (algebraic, geometric) intersection
- Ray & infinite plane intersection
- Ray & axis-aligned cube intersection
- Normal vector calculation: first corner v. summation method
- Ray & convex-polyhedron intersection
- Ray & concave-polyhedron (convex/concave polygons) intersection
- Point inside a convex/concave polygon test
- Transforming rays back to object space and intersecting
Solid Texturing
- texturing - the general idea
  - complexity on demand
  - can texture may any display attribute
- solid texturing - the general idea
  - objects sits in 3D texture space
  - F(x,y,z) = <some display attribute>
- checkerboard - modulo arithmetic to alternate between values
- rings - as in checkerboard but use radial distance
- noise
  - random values at integer lattice points
  - interpolate random values
  - index into 3D table using scaled pixel centers
- turbulence - summing scaled multiples of base frequency
- marble - add more variation by using sine function, undulation function, etc.
2D Texturing
- Mapping surface to (u,v) space
- Mapping (u,v) space to indice space for table of values
- Value from table: Closest value, bilinear interpolation
- Pixel size considerations: Mip-mapping

Approximate Point Distribution

Topic	Percent
General Graphics	5
Vectors and Transformations	15
Ray Tracing Geometry	20
Intersection Calculations	20
Basic Illumination	20
Shadows, Reflection, and Refraction	10
Texturing	10

Sample Questions

What is vector graphics?
Given: a normal vector,N, and another vector, A. Assume the vector A is coming into a surface at a point, p, with normal N. Calculate the vector of reflection. Neither N nor A are normalized.
Set up the transformation matrices to (in order) rotate an object around the x-axis, scale it by 2 along the y-axis, and translate it to (3,-5,7).
Set up the transformation matrices to roll an airplane along it's longitudinal axis if it's tail is at (3,4,5) and its nose is at (4,5,5).
Given the diagram for the geometric ray-sphere intersection procedure, how do know when the ray misses the sphere?
In the algebraic ray-intersection procedure, how do you know when the ray misses the sphere?
How do you calculate the intersection of a ray and a plane?
How could you calculate the intersection of a ray defined by source point S=(Sx,Sy,Sz) and direction vector C=(Cx,Cy,Cz) with a rectangular solid which is a copy of an axis-aligned cubed transformed by an affine 4x4 transformation matrix M?
In diffuse illumination, what does N.L model?
How is a refractive color combined with other colors to form the final color?
What is the color of diffuse reflection and why?
What is the color of specular reflection and why?
What is the constant ambient term an approximation for?
Under what object-to-world space transformations can illumination calculations be done in objects space by inverse-transforming the appropriate information, such as light, camera, and intersection point, back to object space.
What is Snell's Law?
How is the refractive ray calculated from the incoming ray and normal vector?
When a ray of refraction has passed through an object and has hit a surface ready to exit an object, what normal vector do you use? how is that surface illuminated by the light source?
How would you make a "ring" solid texture that has one color of stripe twice as wide as the other color stripe?

Final Exam

Format

Closed book, closed notes
The final exam will be about two hours long.
Review what you have programmed in the labs. There will be questions concerning specific things required by the lab assignments.
The final is comprehensive with an emphasis on the material not covered in the midterm.
There will be approximately sixteen questions which will require short descriptions of algorithms, pseudo code, setting up matrices, explaining terms in equations, etc.
I'm looking for answers that convince me you know what you're talking about. If I ask a yes/no question, a simple 'Yes' or 'No' will receive little value - you always need to explain your answer. Sometimes I ask questions for which I'll accept either a 'Yes' or a 'No' if accompanied by appropriate explanations.
I give partial credit. It's never a good idea to leave an answer blank. Tell me what you know about the problem/answer to get at least partial credit.
I don't expect you to memorize complicated equations, but if I give an equation to you, you should be able to explain its terms, describe what it does, be able to modify it appropriately, etc.
You should read the relevant sections in the book to reinforce what we've covered in class.
You are responsible for what's been covered in class.

Material

Terms: know these terms and how they relate to Ray Tracing

pinhole camera
ambient, diffuse, specular
solid texture, noise, turbulence, marble
surface texture mapping
recursive ray tracing
shadows
reflection
transparency, Snell's Law, index of refraction, critical angle
bounding sphere, axis-aligned bounding box, slabs, convex hull
anti-aliasing, convolution, sampling, comb function, reconstruction
distributed ray tracing: jittering, Poison distribution, subsamples
motion blur
depth of field
gloss
translucency
soft shadows
CSG
implicit surufaces, blobs, metaballs
volume visualization

Topics

basics of Computer Graphics
- 2D v. 3D
- scan conversion v. ray tracing
- Raster graphics v. Vector graphics
Vectors and Transformations *
- normalizing vectors
- dot product
- cross product
- parametric equation of a line
- modeling and viewing transformations
- Affine transformations
- Composing transformations
- Homogeneous coordinates
- scale - uniform and non-uniform
- translation
- rotation - x, y, z axis rotation
- shearing, reflection
- coordinate frames, right v. left hand coordinate system
- transforming data v. transforming coordinate system
- transforming vectors
- transforming normal vectors
- barycentric coordinates>
Ray Tracing Geometry and Intersection calculation *
- Forming camera coordinate system and rays through pixels
Basic illumination and shading *
- Ambient: what is it, how is it calculated
- Diffuse: what is it, how is it calculated
- Specular: what is it, how is it calculated
- Shadows: how are they calculated
- Full illumination equation with multiple light sources
Recursive Ray Tracing *
- Calculating the reflection vector
- Calculating the refraction vector
  - Snell's Law
  - index of refraction
  - Critical angle
  - Wavelength dependence
Intersection Calculations *
- implicit v. explicit forms
- solve implicit plus parametric ray
- Ray-sphere (algebraic, geometric)
- Ray-infinite-plane
- Ray-oriented-square
- Normal vector calculation: first corner v. summation method
- Ray-convex-polyhedron
- Ray-concave-polyhedron (convex/concave polygons)
- Point inside a polygon test
Solid Texturing **
- texturing - the general idea
- solid texturing - the general idea
- checkerboard
- rings
- noise, turbulence, marble
Speed-ups **
- Bounding volumes
  - spheres
  - axis-aligned bounding box
  - slabs
  - convex hull
  - Hierarchical organization
- bounding rectangle of projected image
- Spacial partitioning
Anti-aliasing ***
- spatial domain & frequence domain
- convolution & multiplication
- sampling
- reconstruction
- ideal v. practice in graphics
Distributed Ray Tracing ***
- Supersample, adaptive supersampling
- Poison distribution
- Jittering
- Temporal sampling: motion blur
- gloss, tranlucency
- soft shadows
- depth of field
Smooth shading *
- Gouraud smooth shading
- Phong smooth shading
CSG models
- boolean operations of primitive objects
- tree structure & traversal
- determining the normal
Implicit surfaces
- blob, metaball
- density functions
- threshold value, threshold radius
- radius of influence
- weighted sum of density functions
- distance-based implicit functions
- distance-based elements: point, line, polygon, polygonal mesh, polyhedron
- searching along the ray
- determining the normal
- bulge problem: use of max v. sum
Volumes: density grid
- attenuation integral
- illumination, self-shadowing
- contributions to light leaving cell

Sample Questions

Given: a normal vector,N, and another vector, A. Assume the vector A is coming into a surface at a point, p, with normal N. Calculate the vector of reflection. Neither N nor A are normalized.
What is Snell's Law?
Given the diagram for the geometric ray-sphere intersection procedure, how do know when the ray misses the sphere?
In the algebraic ray-intersection procedure, how do you know when the ray misses the sphere?
In diffuse illumination, what does N.L model?
How is a refractive color combined with other colors to form the final color?
What is vector graphics?
How do you caculate the intersection of a ray and a plane?
How would you model a coffee cup using a CSG model?
How is sampling in the spatial domain represented in the frequency domain?
Explain why you can't transform a vector the same way you transform a point.
How is motion blur calculated?
What is turbulence and how is it related to noise?
What is the convex hull of an object? How could it be used in a ray tracer?
Discuss the possibilities/problems of using hierarchical bounding boxes together with spatial subdivision. Would the combination work? If not, why not.
Could adaptive anti-aliasing work with jittered sampling? Discuss the possibilities.
What are the 3 contributions to the light leaving a cell in volume visualization?

Approximate Point Distribution

Topic	Percent
General Graphics	10
Forming rays, calculating intersections (including CSG, implicit surfaces)	15
Illumination & texturing, combining shading effects	15
Speed-ups	10
Anti-aliasing	20
Distributed ray tracing	20
Other topics	10

Last updated 3/6/08