CGEMS Best Classroom Materials 2008

by Frank Hanisch

This year, awarded materials were presented at the SIGGRAPH 2008 Roundtable on Educational Resources. The winner received free conference access.

Materials are available for free and can be downloaded from http://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/13864

Best Material

X3D: Extensible 3D Graphics for Web Authors

Don Brutzman
Naval Postgraduate School

Don Brutzman has provided a complete module for introducing beginning students to computing and graphics from a programmer’s perspective without sacrificing the sensitivity needed by artists and graphic designers. A very comprehensive collection of materials that has received very thorough testing in practice and presents a carefully constructed and well-argued covering document. It is worth to mention that one of our reviewers teaches an introductory computer graphics course in just this way, using X3D, supported by X3D-Edit. He could testify to the value of this tool and that the approach is well-liked by students. Try it yourself!

Honorable Mentions

Parametric Polynomial Curves

David Stahl
US Naval Academy

A well designed module on parametric curve fitting that makes the topic very accessible to students with varied mathematics backgrounds. It engages the students and lets them focus on the curve fitting techniques, not having to worry about the rest of what’s needed to make the graphics work. Our reviewers agreed with many of the author’s observations about students and their learning of curve approximation, and strongly recommend using the material here (and the approach) with your students.

Realtime 3D Graphics Programming Using the Quake3 Engine

Daniel Wagner, Bernhard Kainz, Dieter Schmalstieg
Graz University of Technology

This module enables students to easily integrate 3D special effects in the Quake3 engine and allowing their development without having to deal too much with the inner workings of the engine. Background material, resources, notes, and program code are provided in order to illustrate the tools and techniques necessary to produce a special effect and animation with various computational resources. Our reviewers agree with the authors when they say that the use of a 3D engine such as Quake 3 turned out to be highly motivating for students.

Award Jury

Colleen Case
Past-Director for Education, ACM SIGGRAPH

Tony Longson
Cal State University at Los Angeles

Jacki Morie
University of Southern California

Anne Spalter
Brown University, Anne Spalter Studios