Treffer: GraphicsMentor: A Tool for Learning Graphics Fundamentals

This paper discusses the functionalityofGraphicsMen- tor. GraphicsMentor permits a student to modify many parameters of the camera, objects, and light sources interactively, and to visualize the rendered result on-thefly. It also supports basic keyframe animation. With GraphicsMentor,astudent should be able to grasp the fundamentals of computer graphics quickly and easily in a learning-by-doing way. 1 Motivation Hoare once said, "You can't teach beginning programmers top-down design because they don't know which way is up." Similarly,we cannot teach graphics programming to beginners because they do not knowif their programs function properly before knowing what the anticipated effect would be. Thus,"IdoandIunderstand " (Lao-Tzu) is not enough for learning graphics, and we should add "I see and I remember" for a beginner to recognize what is correct and what is not. Our experience shows that many students have difficulties in camera setup and the use of light sources. Frequently,a blank image is generated because the camera points to a wrong direction, or the scene is not illuminated properly because of incorrect positions of light sources. Toaddress these and other problems, wedeveloped GraphicsMentor, a pedagogical tool, written in C/C++, OpenGL and GLUT, that runs on Linux, SGI, Sun Solaris, and Windows. It allows a student to alter almost all param- This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under grants DUE-9653244, DUE-9952621 and DUE0127401. y Corresponding author. eters of the camera, light source and object material property, and visualize the result on-the-fly. A limited keyframe animation capability is also available. Because of its flexibilityandinteractive nature, GraphicsMentor can help students learn most graphics fundamentals easil.