H79.2548 Lecture 4 Credits
Instructor(s): Napier
This course explores OpenGL as an artistic medium. The computer provides artists with a bewildering variety of options for creating images: image editors, 3D modeling tools, animation tools, and dozens of programming languages. Yet at the lower level of all computer rendering lies a relatively simple and very powerful graphics processor. OpenGL provides access to this lower level of rendering, and gives artists the opportunity to create their own "brush and canvas" to produce high performance animated graphics in both 3D and 2D. The purpose of this course is to introduce OpenGL and provide a working knowledge of this powerful API. We use Java, Eclipse and an OpenGL library to explore basic concepts of OpenGL such as coordinate systems, navigating in a 3D space, cameras, rendering models, mouse and keyboard input, lighting, texturing and blending. The course consists of weekly programming assignments and a final project. This class is intended for students who are comfortable with programming. Prerequisites: Programming in Java and/or Processing.
