CS594 Computer Graphics - Lab1

Directory: ~huangj/CS594F08/lab1

Objectives

To introduce you to the equipment and programming environment used in the course.
To udnerstand basic polygon mesh data structure, and three commonly used geometry file formats: OBJ, PLY and OFF.
To understand basic 3D viewing transformations

Description

A running demo package is provided to you. Your lab should mimic the way that demo package works. The basic tasks you will perform in this lab include:

To load geometry files in at least two of the three formats, *.ply, *.off, and *.obj, and parsing the data loaded in into the polygon mesh data structure that we have covered in class. By implementing the polygon mesh loader for all three file formats, you get 30% extra credit. The directory for the data files are:
```
          ~huangj/CS594F08/datasets/offFiles
          ~huangj/CS594F08/datasets/plyfiles
          ~huangj/CS594F08/datasets/objfiles
```
To correctly set the viewing, projection, viewport transformation matrices, and to manipulate these matrices for flexible rendering tasks, such as assembling a scene with multiple objects. To render a triangle mesh, without shading, with OpenGL calls. If you only use glLoadMatrix and glMultMatrix calls to set transformation matrices, you get 20% extra credit.

You are not required to program under a certain operating system or a specific window manager of any kind in this course. While the most advanced graphics hardware is now primarily manufactured for the PC platform, over the past few years, the functional difference among Linux and Windows systems has become rather minor. The same code from the demo package would work on both Linux and Windows. However, please note that all Hydra lab machines are running Linux. If you choose to do your labs on Windows, it would then be you need to do the assignments on your own computer.

Demo Package

The demo package is stored at:

      ~huangj/CS594F08/lab1

There are two directories:

      ~huangj/CS594F08/lab1/API
      ~huangj/CS594F08/lab1/DEMO

The DEMO directory contains actual binary executables for both Linux and Windows systems. Looking under the API directory, you should find the implementation that produced the demo binary. However, the part that you should implement in Lab1 provided in the form of an object file, instead of source code. The makefile under the same directory is a working makefile on all Hydra machines.

In the demo package, a simple glut based main() has been created for you. This main function, located in lab1.c, opens a window for you and calls the rendering functions to render into that drawable. You can directly use lab1.c and don't have to write your own. You only have to change the way you compile and build the executable. lab1.h defines the API for Lab1.

Deadlines

Assignment date: Tuesday, September 2, 2008.
Due date for bullet 1 under assignment description: Tuesday, September 9.
Due date for the complete Lab 1: Tuesday, September 16.

Suggested Strategy

This demo package is provided to help you to reduce the amount of time spent in doing your lab. With this package, you can incrementally design and debug each module of your code. You have the choice of choosing to either link with your own code or the *.o files provided to you, so that you can compare and debug. By the end of Lab 1, you would submit only your own code, and your own code should run by itself and perform the tasks listed in the previous section.

You are suggested to start early, and finish each separate module that you have been taught as the course proceeds. Don't wait till the last weekend!

Platform

Hydra lab has 30 dual 3.4GHz P4 workstations, each with 2GB of main memory. The graphics cards on all hydra machines are:

hydra1-10: nVidia GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB
hydra11-16: nVidia GeForce 6800 GT 256 MB
hydra17-20: nVidia Quadro FX 1400 128 MB
hydra21-26: nVidia GeForce 6800 GT 256 MB
hydra27-30: nVidia Quadro FX 1400 128 MB

Feel free to try glxinfo and lspci on your machine.