Titular Professors
It is recommended to have coursed TM005-Introduction to Graphics Programming because of the 3D graphics knowledge involved, specially in the first assignment.
It is also important to dominate the English language as well as math fundamentals such as calculus and algebra. Physics is also compulsory.
There are three main goals: getting a good level of theoretical knowledge, learning the last research techniques, as presented in important events and using some existing commercial tools as well as the most relevant peripherals.
1. Get the ability of analyze and synthesize
2. Get the ability of organize and schedule
3. Get the ability of communicate oral and writing in out mother tongue
4. Knowledge in a second language
5. Knowledge about the area of study
6. Searching for information regarding implementation of several VR paradigms (specialized books and web pages).
7.- Ability of working in an interdisciplinary team
8.- Ability of working in an international context
9. Learning to delegate, distribute and structure tasks inside the group. To time the different stages.
10. Creating a VR application from the very beginning. Therefore designing, synthesizing and structuring a complete project, as they are asked in the first term.
11. To know the actual state of the market in terms of existinf hardware and software.
1. Introduction to the Virtual Reality
2. Particle systems (I)
2.1.Automatic animation basic diagram
2.2. Structure
2.3. Particle generation
2.4. Particle inicialization
2.5.Forces
3. Particle systems (II). Solvers
3.1.Euler
3.2.Midpoint
3.3.RK
3.4.Verlet
3.5.Leapfrog
3.6.Adaptive stepsize: Step Doubling
3.7.Backwards Euler
4.Sistemes of particles (III)
4.1.Collisions
4.2.Voxels
4.3. Flocking
4.4.Extinction
4.5.Render
4.6. More applications
5. Path Finding
6. Stereoscopy
6.1. Theorical concepts
6.2. Formats
7. Peripherals
7.1.Visualization
7.2. Sensors
8. Software
8.1. VRML & X3D
8.2.Virtools / WorldUp
Two parts: theory and practice. Each scored separately and averaged at the end of the course. It is necessary to pass both separately. There are two well differentiated practical assgnments: implementation of simulation software and writing a research paper.
1. Hours of tuition: Where students talk about theory, practice and exercises with their responsible professor.
2. Forums: There´s a virtual campus that offers forum support, in terms of creation and maintainance of virtual worlds. Therefore it is possible to perform discussions where questions and answers are published. It is a suitable media, together with the electronic mail.
3. Seminars: On complementary subjects as copyright, cryptography or video games, among others. The center also offers training courses, very specific and specialized. Those are more focused on commercial tools.
4. Web resources: The professor shows them in class, with the students. Those are consulted and showed in order to retrieve interesting documentation resources. Besides that, periodic news about webs and different tricks are sent to everyone via the mailing list.
5. Practical sessions: The professor shows research papers, videos, interesting web pages and all those resources that can favor the training in class, improved via the existing audio-visual hardware.
6. Teaching at class: Fundamentally theoretical concepts, with audio-visual support depending on the specifical session, and always encouraging the participation of the student through questions and suggestions.
Where there´s a clear balance between the practical and theoretical parts. Both parts must be passed separately in order to access the final averaged score. Attitude is very important also.
A. Examinations: Where questions are of different typologies, always trying to balance between reasoning, understanding the concept and showing its application in some engineering situation.
B. Working in group: Where they are asked to specify the reasons under their decisions of design, as well as the found difficulties.
C. Different documents: Explaining the decisions made in the different projects and theoretical informs.
D. Practical works in computer: The different simulations asked in the assignments, throughout the academical course, are programmed using estandard programming languages and specific libraries. They work in a low level scheme in order to guarantee the understanding of all the implied processes.
E. Projects: Build in from the beginning and get a functional and self-sufficient application.
F. Participation in class: The participation in class, clear exponent of the interest in what it is explained, is valued very positively.
This subject has 2 written exams. Alumni must get a mark greater or equal to 4 in both examams. Also, there will be a little project, where alumni must implement one of the solvers explained in theory class and one of the multiple existing stereoscopy. This project must be passed with a mark of 5 or more than 5. Professors can ask little theory/research documents that must be passed each one separately.
Goal 1: Ability of analyze and synthesize [A,B,C,D,E,F]
Goal 2: Ability of organize and schedule [B,C,D,E]
Goal 3. Get the ability of communicate oral and writing in out mother tongue [B,C]
Goal 4. Knowledge in a second language [B,C,E]
Goal 5. Knowledge about the area of study [A,B,C,D,E,F]
Goal 6. Searching for information regarding implementation of several VR paradigms (specialized books and web pages). [B,C,D,E]
Goal 7.- Ability of working in an interdisciplinary team [B,E]
Goal 8.- Ability of working in an international context [B,C,D,E]
Goal 9. Learning to delegate, distribute and structure tasks inside the group. To time the different stages. [B,E]
Goal 10. Creating a VR application from the very beginning. Therefore designing, synthesizing and structuring a complete project, as they are asked in the first term. [B,C,D,E]
Goal 11. To know the actual state of the market in terms of existinf hardware and software. [B,C,D,E]
John Vince. VR Systems. ACM Press, 1995.
Roy Kalawsky. The Science of VR and VE´s. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., 1993.
Nadia Magnenat Thalmann, Daniel Thalmann. Artificial Life & VR. Wiley, 1994.
John David Funge. AI for games and animation: a cognitive modeling approach. A. K. Peters, Ltd. 1999
David M. Bourg. Physics for game developers. O´Reilly, 2001.
Nadia Magnenat Thalmann, Daniel Thalmann. Interactive Computer animation. Prentice Hall, 1996.
VRNews|www.vrnews.com
Boids|www.red3d.com/cwr/boids
VREfresh|www.vrefresh.com
Stereographics|www.stereographics.com
Ascension|www.ascension-tech.com
Gamasutra|www.gamasutra.com
Gamedev|www.gamedev.com
OpenGL|www.opengl.org