#302 overall
15-462 Computer Graphics
Carnegie Mellon University
2 recommenders · 2 threads · recommended in 2 years, 2019–2023 · score 1.5
Carnegie Mellon's undergraduate computer graphics course covering the fundamentals of rendering, geometry processing, and animation, with programming assignments built on the Scotty3D codebase where students implement modeling operations, a path tracer, and animation features. Lecture slides and recorded lectures are available online.
Commenters recommend it as a free, high-quality way to learn the math and fundamentals of computer graphics, with one noting the Scotty3D starter codebase is a great way to explore the material.
Science & Engineeringintermediatefreevideo lectures#computer graphics#path tracing#geometry processing#animation#keenan crane
Recommendations by year
20062026
I second this recommendation, Inigo Quilez is amazing!
If you're interested in learning the fundamentals of some of the math he uses, I can highly recommend the CMU computer graphics course. It's free on YouTube.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9_jI1bdZmz2emSh0UQ5iOdT2...
The professor, Keenan Crane, puts out a ton of super interesting, high-quality research as well. His website is awesome.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kmcrane/
For anyone looking for a great starter codebase that you can poke around in to learn the fundamentals of CG, check out Scotty3D [0], the base code for CMU's computer graphics class 15-462/662 (I am a TA for this class). It is a supplemental codebase to the lecture slides [1], which are all available online. The idea is that Scotty3D is a full 3D modeling suite akin to Blender or Maya, but all of the actual functionality is stripped out, waiting to be implemented by students.
It includes code for 3D model loading, linear algebra, basic (OpenGL) rendering, and UX, and provides stubs for you to implement:
- local geometry operations (ex: edge split, vertex/edge/face bevel, vertex/edge/face delete, etc) - global geometry operations (ex: upsampling via catmull clark subdivision, downsampling using quadric error, etc) - a path tracer that supports Diffuse/Mirror/Glass materials with Fresnel reflections and environment lighting (ex: you can render the cornell box) - an animation suite that implements skinning, spline interpolation, and basic simulation (wave sims)
There's a lot of documentation in the wiki [2] to help you get started. A great resource, even if you can't take the class yourself!
[0] https://github.com/cmu462/Scotty3D
[1] http://15462.courses.cs.cmu.edu/fall2018/lectures
[2] https://github.com/cmu462/Scotty3D/wiki