Description:	Special effects; compositing; effects animation. Image manipulation and high-end production software.
Prerequisites:	Consent of instructor.
Required texts:	Paolini, Marco, Shake 3: Professional Compositing and Special Effects (Apple Pro Training Series) Peachpit Press, Berkeley, CA, 2004 [ISBN: 0-321-19725-9]
Recommended texts and references:	Brinkmann, Ron, The Art and Science of Digital Compositing Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, CA, 1999 [ISBN: 0-12-133960-2] Hammel, Michael J., The Artists' Guide to the Gimp Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. (SSC), Seattle, WA, 1999 [ISBN: 1-57831-011-3]
Supplemental texts:	Gomes, Jonas and Velho, Luiz, Image Processing for Computer Graphics, Springer, New York, NY, 1997 [ISBN: 0-387-94854-6] Watt, Alan and Policarpo, Fabio, The Computer Image, Addison-Wesley, Harlow, England, 1998 [ISBN: 0-201-42298-0] Wolberg, George, Digital Image Warping, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 1990 [ISBN: 0-8186-8944-7]
Outside reading:	Current literature. SIGGRAPH papers, e.g., on artistic rendering, NPR, etc.
Professor:	Dr. Andrew Duchowski
Office:	Edwards 444, 656-7677, andrewd@cs.clemson.edu
Office hours:	Tue,Thu 2:00-3:00 and by appointment.
Objectives:	To gain an understanding of image-based operations used in special effects production, and to obtain experience with high-end production software.
Laboratory content:	Graphics workstations located in Martin and Jordan Halls will be used for experimentation with high-end software as well as for implementing various image processing algorithms.
Evaluation: % Grade 90-100 A 80-89 B 70-79 C 60-69 D	Midterm 20% Lab Assignments 50% Final Project 20% Final Project Presentation 10%
Programming assignments:	Problem specification and due date will be given in class.
Assignment grading:	Source code and demonstrations will be required.
Assignment format:	Web page for assignment hand-in must include the following: Description of the problem. Solution images/vidoes. Gzipped tar archive of source code (if applicable).
Assignment late policy:	Late assignments generally will not be accepted.
Attendance:	Roll will be taken for the first one or two weeks while the class roll fluctuates. However, attendance is not required. Absence, excused or not, does not change the responsibility for assigned work. Tests missed due to excused absences will normally result in the test not being counted in the average grade (i.e., there will normally be no makeup tests). An unexcused absence from a test will normally result in a grade of zero for that test. Students are expected to give at least one week advance notice for excused absences.
Independent work:	Unless otherwise stated explicitly (e.g., in the case of the final project), each student must do his or her work independently.
Academic dishonesty:	The University policies on academic dishonesty apply. Publicly-available code or other material may be freely used if appropriately attributed. Each student is responsible for protecting his or her files from access by others. Work that is essentially the same and submitted without proper attribution is considered to be a violation of academic dishonesty policy by all those submitting the work, regardless of who actually did the work.
Class cancelation:	Students are expected to wait for 15 minutes after the class beginning time before leaving if the instructor is late.
Topical outline:	The course is designed along three major tracks leading to the final production of a short movie: (1) learning to use a video editing/effects production software package (Apple Shake), (2) learning to use a still image manipulation software packages (The Gimp), and (3) learning to design and implement image processing algorithms. The course starts on the first track by introducing a professional video compositing software package (Apple Shake). This ``canned'' software will be used for projects assigned throughout the course as well as for the production of the final project. Following video editing, an image manipulation software package is introduced (The Gimp) to give students an idea of static image processing. The Gimp can be thought of as a nice model for students' own image processing programs they'll require to write in the latter section of the course. In the third part of the course, the track switches to focus on the theory behind the operations provided by canned software. Two main programming projects, supplemented by shorter assignments, are planned. Having grasped theoretical concepts, students will: (a) develop an intuitive understanding of canned operations, and (b) be able to create custom operations and scripts. Thus the course aims at providing an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at special effects production. Track 1: Multi-pass rendering Video compositing Match moving HSV equalization Animation curve editing Sound effects synchronization Movie frame rendering Track 2: The Gimp Image Compositing Track 3: Introduction The image Image channels and layers File formats Compression schemes Image I/O Image Mapping Image Warping Image Morphing Convolution and Image Filtering Frequency Analysis Image and Video Compression Proposed assignments: Movie production (Apple Shake) Simple compositing Bluescreening / Chroma-keying / Matte creation & extraction HSV equalization Match moving Animation Animation curve editing Image manipulation and compositing (The Gimp) Compositing (matte channel) Bluescreening Programming Image resizing, rotating (mapping) Image warping Image morphing (warping + blending) Image convolution Discrete Wavelet Transform (time permitting) Compression simulation (wavelet decimation) (time permitting)