EG 2016 - Education Papers

Permanent URI for this collection

https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/15063

Browse

Browsing EG 2016 - Education Papers by Subject "Computer and Information Science Education"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Aiming High: Undergraduate Research Projects in Computer Graphics and Animation
    (The Eurographics Association, 2016) Anderson, Eike Falk; Adzhiev, Valery; Fryazinov, Oleg; Beatriz Sousa Santos and Jean-Michel Dischler
    Among educators, the promotion of undergraduate research is a much debated topic, with issues arising from questions as to how it can be integrated with undergraduate degree programmes and how to structure its delivery. Undergraduate research is also considered important by employers, as can be seen in case of the computer game development and visual effects industries who demand that universities produce graduate software developers with not only vocational but also with rather advanced research skills. In this paper we present a successful undergraduate research course, implemented for one of our undergraduate degree programmes. It includes teaching and learning focussed on the nature of small team research and development as encountered in the creative industries dealing with computer graphics, computer animation and game development. We discuss our curriculum design and issues in conducting undergraduate research that we have identified through several iterations of the course.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Lowering the Entry Barrier for Students Programming Virtual Reality Applications
    (The Eurographics Association, 2016) Lambers, Martin; Beatriz Sousa Santos and Jean-Michel Dischler
    In Computer Graphics, it is common practice to accompany lectures with hands-on tutorials and/or project assignments that allow students to write and run their own interactive graphics applications. In the special case of Virtual Reality courses, this approach is difficult to maintain since the software requirements pose a high entry barrier to students. In this paper, we propose a technique to significantly simplify Virtual Reality application programming, and implement it in an easy-to-use framework that supports the full range of typical Virtual Reality hardware setups, from head-mounted displays to multi-node, multi-GPU render clusters. The framework lowers the entry barrier for students and allows them to focus on course goals instead of fighting software complexities.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    A Trip to Arts for Computer Graphics Students
    (The Eurographics Association, 2016) Svobodova, Lucie; Slavik, Pavel; Zara, Jiri; Beatriz Sousa Santos and Jean-Michel Dischler
    Complex and sophisticated projects, on which information technologists and artists meet and cooperate, often require an understanding of possible problems and solutions seen from both sides. While artists (creators) are usually somewhat familiar with current technologies, e.g. the Computer Graphics (CG) field, programmers are not well educated in the arts and their understanding of artistic needs is thus insufficient. In order to improve the education of CG students towards fine arts, we have created a BSc course on Art and Graphics design and have been running it for seven years. We consider this approach to education at a technologically oriented university as unusual and rare, but highly valuable for CG students. This paper describes the content of the course, summarizes the experience gained, and evaluates its usefulness for CG students in the subsequent MSc study program.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    A Video Games Technologies Course: Teaching, Learning, and Research
    (The Eurographics Association, 2016) Amador, Gonçalo; Gomes, Abel; Beatriz Sousa Santos and Jean-Michel Dischler
    In the last decade, several higher education institutions began to provide courses and/or degrees in games content creation, games design, and games development, largely because of the astonishing growth of games as one of the most powerful industries worldwide. This paper presents the course entitled “Video Games Technologies”, including its history, goals and methodology, as part of a MSc degree in Computer Science and Engineering. The focus is on the technologies, techniques, algorithms, data structures, and mathematics behind the design and development of game engines, instead of games themselves.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    A Visualisation Course in a Game Development Curriculum
    (The Eurographics Association, 2016) Sundstedt, Veronica; Beatriz Sousa Santos and Jean-Michel Dischler
    Visualisation courses can often be found as part of a computer science curriculum. These basic or advanced level courses are often taught in terms of information visualisation, scientific visualisation or a combination of both. Other visualisation courses focus more on visual aesthetics. This paper presents and discusses a visualisation course curriculum which is aimed at students specifically studying computer science programmes with a focus on digital game development. Since computer games of today keep generating an increasing amount of data it is more important than ever to educate our game development students with the theory behind visualisation and key data visualisation techniques. In the design and evaluation of the visualisation in games curriculum, it was found that concepts within the area of visualisation are relevant to many areas of digital games. This paper describes the curriculum for a university course which might not be commonly found in traditional game development programmes. It particularly presents the course structure and the lessons learned which together with existing literature demonstrate important concepts to consider in the area of visualisation in games.