What I Learned In Intermediate Graphics

There are so many things to learn about Computer Graphics that it just cannot be contained in one class (I guess that's why we had two classes about it this year huh?). Intermediate Computer Graphics covered a lot of useful techniques and methods that can really make a game pop, from Shadow Mapping to Motion Blur. The homework questions (which our class affectionately calls Hogue work) is a good application of what we learned in class (but seriously sir when you read this please note that some of those questions are just ridiculously hard) and helped with the creation of our game, since a lot of things we did in the questions were things we needed in the game. 

Personally for me I learned how to implement a lot of the shading methods like Toon Shading and Ambient Occlusion into code (I previously only knew how to do those effects by drawing them into the actual textures). In addition, I learned how Motion Blur works (outside of photography), why it is included in games and how to implement into my code (and in all seriousness just like Dr. Hogue says, it really is just three lines of code). Another thing I learned about, that I thought was super cool, was displacement mapping. It is basically using a texture to cause the geometric position of points to be displaced, changing how the model looks like with out actually changing the model (which I found really cool and super useful to know when making games). There was a lot of other topics touched upon in our class and it would take forever to go through them all, but this class was really interesting and I enjoyed learning about the techniques and tricks of Computer Graphics (if only the coding part was simpler but what can you do other than sit there and learn it right?) 

While I'm glad I learned a lot of cool things you can do to make your game look pretty (which is always a plus for me when games are pretty), Dr. Hogue I hate your class so much (in the best way) because you ruined video games for me!! I can no longer play a video game without commenting on the use of shaders and techniques used in its graphics! Cause I mean come on look at these shaders!!!