VOLUNTEER ANNUAL RENDERING COOK-OFF 2001

In Fall 2001, my students in the class of CS594 Computer Graphics at Computer Science, University of Tennessee (Knoxville, TN), have produced very interesting graphics renderings with OpenGL. They also competed in VARCO 2001 (Volunteer Annual Rendering Cook-Off). The winner was Nathan Fout. The grand prize was the five-star rating Advanced Renderman book. As a record and to also show off, I have collected a few cool images, according to my personal taste, on this page. Enjoy!

If you are an employer looking for student interns or permanent employees, please contact me or just go grab the student yourself. If you are a student thinking of taking a graphics course, please contact me.

The students started with simple things at the beginning of the semester:

By Zhou Long (left) and Chris Kuck (right), respectively.

As the students learnt new techniques, their creativity was unleashed.

With 2D and 3D texture mapping, by Jamison Daniel (left, middle) and Gang Li (right), respectively.

Environment/Chrome Mapping, by Markus Glatter (left), Nathan Fout (middle) and Farial Shannaz (right), respectively.

By the way, this is what it looks like if you stand outside the computer science department around 4pm on a sunny October afternoon and virtually simulate a teapot flying in the sky. You can see the ONE and ONLY Neyland Stadium, where the VOLUNTEERS win games.

By Markus Glatter (left) and Nathan Fout (right), respectively.

Every student in the class also quickly became dexterous in multi-pass rendering using OpenGL.

Emboss bump mapping and shadow mapping, by Chris Kuck (left), Zhou Long (middle) and Nathan Fout (right), respectively.

As soon as they learnt about putting together a scene, things got out of control. Well, in a good way.

George Butler rendered these. George personally did not expect the effects to be this amazing himself. Great work!

A finite sized mirror (left) versus an infinite size mirror (right) by Jin Ding. Very cool psychological effects when we don’t see the frame of the mirror.

The finale of the semester was the VARCO’2001 contest.

Thinking about the grand prize, some of the class worked really hard. How to win the prize? (by Nathan Fout)

On a pizza party, after every contestant presented the work, the whole class voted and we had a winner.

Warning: the following images are PG-17. You should only scroll down when your parents are with you.

The award-winning set of images by Nathan Fout.

Considering the fact that all the class started without any background in Computer Graphics beforehand, I am extremely proud to see these results after only three months and a half. Great job, crew! Thank you all for your hard work!