As of Fall 2025, this class can still be completed in a fully remote fashion.

If you are looking for the Summer 2025 quarter website, then you can find it here!

CS 148 fulfills the General Education Requirements (GER) as a Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing (WAYS) course in the Creative Expression (WAY-CE) area. To satisfy this category, students need to enroll under the Letter Grade grading option; the WAY-CE requirement is not met by the Credit/No Credit option.

The course grade will be 50% Homework and 50% Final Project. No exams!

Course Announcements

Summary

This is the introductory prerequisite course in the computer graphics sequence which introduces students to the technical concepts behind creating synthetic computer generated images. The beginning of the course focuses on using Blender to create visual imagery, as well as an understanding of the underlying mathematical concepts including triangles, normals, interpolation, texture mapping, bump mapping, etc. Then we move on to a more fundamental understanding of light and color, as well as how it impacts computer displays and printers. From this we discuss more thoroughly how light interacts with the environment, and we construct engineering models such as the BRDF and discuss various simplifications into more basic lighting and shading models. Finally, we discuss ray tracing technology for creating virtual images, while drawing parallels between ray tracers and real world cameras in order to illustrate various concepts. Anti-aliasing and acceleration structures are also discussed. The final class project consists of building out a ray tracer to create a visually compelling image. Starter codes and code bits will be provided here and there to aid in development, but this class focuses on what you can do with the code as opposed to what the code itself looks like. Therefore grading is weighted towards in person "demos" of the code in action - creativity and the production of impressive visual imagery are highly encouraged.

Topics include: Scanline Rendering; Triangles; Rasterization; Transformations; Shading; Triangle Meshes; Subdivision; Marching Cubes; Textures; Light; Color; Cameras; Displays; Tone Mapping; BRDF; Lighting Equation; Global Illumination; Radiosity; Ray Tracing; Acceleration Structures; Sampling; Antialiasing; Reflection; Transmission; Depth of Field; Motion Blur; Monte Carlo; Bidirectional Ray Tracing; Light Maps.

Prerequisites:

• CS 107, MATH 51
• Must be fluent in Python.
• We will assume knowledge of the following mathematical topics
• Vectors, vector operations, and vector spaces
• Matrices
• Basic linear algebra, such as solving a system of linear equations

Meeting Times

• Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:00pm to 1:20pm at the NVIDIA Auditorium in the Huang Engineering Center.
• The class will be recorded for SCPD/CGOE on Canvas, as usual.
• All students (Stanford and SCPD/CGOE) can access the lecture live during the lecture times (as well as the recording afterward) through Canvas:
  • Log in to Canvas using your Stanford SUNet ID.
  • Navigate to the CS148 Fall 2025 page.
  • Look for and click on the "Panopto Course Videos" page.
  • The lecture live stream should start shortly before lecture time, and the recordings go up a few hours after processing.

Staff

• Instructor
  • Ron Fedkiw
  • Office Hours: Most Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:30pm to 2:30pm
    Given the large size of the class in recent years, Ron's office hours (held via Zoom) are by appointment only (to better address emergencies).
  • * Ron's office hours are geared towards the lecture material and final projects; for homework help, we want students to get to know the CAs, as they'll be doing the grading.
• Course Staff
  • Head CA: Kevin Li -- [email protected]
  • Course Manager: Amelie Byun
  • Course Advisor: Swati Dube
  • Please primarily use the staff mailing list -- [email protected] -- for matters too sensitive/personal for Ed. This mailing list will be monitored by the instructor, head CA, course manager, and student liasion. This is where you should submit OAE letters if you have them.
• Course Assistants (CAs) -- Refer to Canvas for the schedule and locations of office hours. Office hour changes and rescheduling will be announced on Ed. Please primarily use Ed to contact the CAs unless you need to reach out to a specific CA, in which case their emails are below.
  • Cat Fergesen (Student Liasion) -- [email protected]
  • Madison Fan -- [email protected]
  • Nicole Garcia -- [email protected]
  • Felicity Huang -- [email protected]
  • Jinhyo Huh -- [email protected]
  • Patrick Jovel -- [email protected]
  • Hannah Kim -- [email protected]
  • Brenden Koo -- [email protected]
  • June Lee -- [email protected]
  • Fengyu Li -- [email protected]
  • Wei Liu -- [email protected]
  • Abi Lopez -- [email protected]
  • Lei Shu -- [email protected]
  • Kenan Ye -- [email protected]