Introduces theory and techniques of 3D computer graphics. Topics include: capabilities of modern graphics hardware; 3D coordinate spaces; modeling with polygons; NURBS and subdivision surfaces; applying textures and materials; lighting; and simple effects. Students develop proficiency in 3D modeling via lectures and assignments focused on the use of a 3D modeling tool.
Instructor
The Staff, Jim Whitehead, Christopher Yonge
General Education Code
PR-C
Introduces theories and techniques of 3D computer animation. Topics include: character animation; rigging; simulation of cloth, liquids, and fire; motion capture; rendering; and editing animated scenes. Students develop proficiency in 3D animation via lectures and assignments focused on the use of a 3D animation tool and use of motion-capture software.
Instructor
The Staff, Christopher Yonge
General Education Code
PR-C
Introduction to the development of physically based materials in Substance Designer and Substance Painter. These are then applied to a range of character and machine models within either the Blender or Maya 3D modeling applications.
Instructor
Christopher Yonge
Introduction to common data structures, algorithms that operate on them, and techniques for implementation. Uses digital authoring of interactive media as a frame to motivate asymptotic (big-O) analysis of design scalability. Students will program in a strongly typed language.
Instructor
Adam Smith, Angus Forbes
Overview of the physical, psychological, cultural, and psychosocial aspects of disability and how they impact game play. Discusses implications for universal and accessible game design.
General Education Code
PE-T
A generally accessible course in which students explore how video games (and games generally) shape experiences and express ideas. Students develop novel games, engage in game interpretation, and survey related topics (e.g., game history, technology, narrative, and ethics) through lectures and readings. Programming experience is not required.
Instructor
Adam Smith, Jim Whitehead, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Nathan Altice
General Education Code
IM
Quarter offered
Winter, Spring, Summer
Provides a framework for leadership in entrepreneurial organizations. Topics include leading with authenticity, motivation and personality, storytelling, teamwork and management, organizational culture and processes. Learning is integrated with practice through deep engagement with entrepreneurial leaders and a time-intensive entrepreneurial project. (Formerly Technology and Information Management 80L.)
General Education Code
PE-H
Provides a means for a small group of students to study a particular topic in consultation with a faculty sponsor. Students submit a petition to the sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Provides a means for a small group of students to study a particular topic in consultation with a faculty sponsor. Students submit a petition to the sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Teaches the concrete programming and collaboration skills associated with making a digital game from start to finish, including but not limited to: establishing a team, concepting, storyboarding, prototyping, producing, and testing a game for release. Students are organized into groups and work together to create and produce a playable game. This course is taught in conjunction with
ARTG 120 which covers the skills required to design and critique digital games.
Instructor
Adam Smith, Nathan Altice, Jim Whitehead
General Education Code
PR-E
Introduction to construction of games using game engine technology, using a specific game engine as a focus. Covers major game engine features: input, collision, animation, model import, lighting, camera, rendering, textures, particle systems. Introduction to a specific game scripting language, custom game logic, game programming patterns.
Instructor
Adam Smith, Jim Whitehead
Theories and practices for approaching the design problems of interactive media holistically, beyond usability and accessibility. Includes hands-on learning, application of human-centered design and evaluation skills in group projects, and peer critique.
Instructor
Sri Kurniawan, Steve Whittaker
Practice-based interaction design studio course. Students learn about design-led approaches to Human-Computer Interaction through participating in group projects. Course offers introductions to design methods and actionable strategies to do interaction design work and design-led technology research.
Course provides a comprehensive introduction to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in computer games. Building on fundamental principles of AI, course explains how to create non-player characters (NPCs) with progressively more sophisticated capabilities.
Instructor
The Staff, Adam Smith, Michael Mateas
Introduces generative methods for design. Uses algorithmic techniques to generate and evaluate game content (images, sounds, map designs) along with mechanics and progression systems. Search-based and learning-based techniques with connections to artificial intelligence are also covered.
Covers a range of design approaches and technologies including storytelling in games, interactive fiction, interactive drama, and artificial intelligence-based story generation. Through a mixture of readings, assignments, and project work, students explore the theoretical positions, debates, and technical and design issues arising from these approaches.
Instructor
The Staff, Michael Mateas
Introduces digital sound recording and editing technologies, sound synthesis, and concepts in sound design for media production. Covers the basics of sound capture, microphones, audio manipulation and editing, effects, sound formats, mixing and dynamics, synthesizers, audio software, and game audio.
General Education Code
PR-C
Introduces compositional techniques and procedural audio as exhibited in the sound and music of video games. Surveys different styles of music implemented in video games and associated compositional approaches. Students develop skill in procedural audio via a series of workshops and assignments.
Surveys the relationship between music and data as exhibited in industry and research implementations of sonification and music information retrieval. Students introduced to various styles and algorithms of sound analysis and modeling and develop skills to program unique approaches in this area.
Introduces real-time, hardware-accelerated graphics programming suitable for game development, visual effects, and interactive multimedia projects. Emphasizes contemporary shader-programming techniques and developing custom effects using game engines and multimedia software.
Covers the graphic elements in computer games. Topics include modifying, optimizing, adding components, and building a game engine. Course evaluation based on exams and several programming projects, including a game built using the student's game engine.
Instructor
Angus Forbes, Adam Smith
Provides hands-on experience in using, designing, and building game engines. Students also explore different special effects, such as particle systems, spring systems, and game physics.
Instructor
Angus Forbes, Adam Smith
Surveys seminal and contemporary artworks and interactive installations that utilize and critically analyze new media, new technologies, and new algorithms. Students introduced to creative coding practices and encouraged to emulate existing digital arts techniques and to develop their own computational arts projects.
First of a three-course capstone sequence for the computer game design program. Students work in teams to develop a comprehensive game design for a substantial computer game, including detailed storyline, level design, artistic approach, implementation technologies, and art-asset pipeline. Emphasis placed on creating novel, artistic game design concepts. Includes design reviews and formal presentations. Companion lectures cover advanced topics in game design, game programming, and software project management. Students are billed a materials fee.
Instructor
The Staff, Jim Whitehead, Michael Mateas, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Nathan Altice
Second of a three-course capstone sequence for the computer game design program. Students work in teams on the software design, implementation, and testing of the computer game designed in
CMPM 170. Includes design reviews, progress reviews, and formal presentations. Companion lectures cover topics in software engineering, including design, testing, and project management. Game design and game programming also covered. Students are billed a materials fee.
Instructor
Jim Whitehead, Michael Mateas, Eddie Melcer
Third of a three-course capstone sequence for the computer game design program. Students work in teams on the software design, implementation and testing of the computer game designed in courses 170 and 171. Includes progress reviews and formal presentations. Companion lectures cover topics in software engineering, including user and software testing, release engineering and project management; also covered are game design and game programming. Students are billed a materials fee.
Instructor
The Staff, Jim Whitehead, Michael Mateas, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Michael John
Presents game design as the interplay of multiple interacting game systems. Surveys various game systems: movement, combat, reward, economic, logistics, quest, information visibility, narrative. Students explore systems via study, design, and play of board, card, and computer games.
Instructor
The Staff, Nathan Altice
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter
Surveys tactical, structural, contextual, and other methods to enhance creativity and innovation in the design of games and other interactive media. Investigates strategies for creativity and innovation drawn from diverse fields, including interactive affordances, narrative and poetics, biology, contextual inquiry, and design research. To innovate in a field of fixed genres is challenging: the allure of modeling exemplars is strong. Although imitation can be successful in the marketplace, the most creative action occurs on the leading edge of change. Innovation benefits from strategies and methods that are directly aimed at exploring new perspectives and structures to learn through the process of discovery.
Instructor
Katherine Isbister
Students move through a rigorous design-research process involving skills and principles in human-centered design research as well as selected formal research methods. They learn to use tools for ideation, human-centered qualitative research, domestic probes, mock-ups, and prototypes.
Instructor
Sri Kurniawan, Katherine Isbister, Leila Takayama
General Education Code
PR-C
Provides the opportunity to practice the creation of novel computer games. Students learn a new game-making technology, then create three games using this technology.
Cross Listed Courses
ARTG 179
Instructor
The Staff, Jim Whitehead, Nathan Altice
General Education Code
PR-C
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter
Provides a means for a small group of students to study a particular topic in consultation with a faculty sponsor. Students submit a petition to the sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer
Provides a means for a small group of students to study a particular topic in consultation with a faculty sponsor. Students submit a petition to the sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer
Students submit a petition to the sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer
Intended for majors. Students submit a petition to the sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer
Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer
Intended for majors. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer
For fourth-year students majoring in computational media. Students submit a petition to the sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer
For fourth-year students majoring in computational media. Students submit a petition to the sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer
Provides a broad foundation in the history, theory, and contemporary practice of computational media, examining its roots in a variety of fields and current structures of participation. Also covers a selection of key critical lenses for understanding computational media.
Instructor
Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Nathan Altice, Angus Forbes
Overview of computational media research strategies. Includes case studies of how particular projects were defined and completed and how interdisciplinary concerns have been successfully integrated. Considers the expressive and authorial affordances of different system architecture approaches.
Instructor
Michael Mateas, Angus Forbes
Overview of major methods in computational media research. Includes non-numerical methods such as playtesting, arts critique, ethnographic observation, and humanistic interpretation. Also includes numerically oriented methods such as survey instruments, data mining, user experiments, and characterizing expressive/generative spaces.
Instructor
Katherine Isbister, Sri Kurniawan
Students define the topic, approach, and scope for an M.S. thesis or project. Includes discussion of successful past projects and theses, visits from faculty presenting open problems, reviews of related literature, topic and timeline presentations, and critiques.
Instructor
Sri Kurniawan, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Nathan Altice, Katherine Isbister, Leila Takayama
Covers skills for finding relevant literature for a novel research topic, integrating that literature, and communicating the results. Also covers how to select work for a research portfolio, present that work, and describe contributions. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. Prerequisite(s):
CMPM 201,
CMPM 202, and
CMPM 203 for an understanding of media creation and computer programming; good standing in the Ph.D. program. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.
Instructor
Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Michael Mateas
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Presents a variety of evaluation methodologies to assess usability, acceptance, and effectiveness of technology with the intended users. Combines lectures and exercises for students to gain firsthand experiences of these methodologies with real users.
Instructor
Sri Kurniawan, Katherine Isbister, Steve Whittaker
Study of current topics in human-robot interaction design and research. Topics vary, but are expected to include how people think, act, and behave around robotic agents; telepresence and teleoperated robotics; applications of human-robot systems; collaborative robotics; and social robotics.
Instructor
Leila Takayama
Provides an interdisciplinary view of computational systems and human interaction, with an emphasis on human-computer interaction and algorithmic economics. Students learn about seminal and cutting-edge research contributions and methodologies, and carry out a quarter-long research project. (Formerly Technology and Information Management 243.)
The use of AI techniques to enable new player interactions, game mechanics, and genres. Combines elements from academic AI and machine learning with industry game AI techniques. Includes lecture and paper discussions as well as AI programming exercises and projects.
Instructor
Adam Smith, Michael Mateas
Covers wide range of practices including hypertext, interactive fiction, embedded narratives in games, interactive drama, and artificial intelligence-based story generation. Through a mixture of readings, assignments, and project work, explores the theoretical positions, debates, and technical and design issues arising from these different approaches.
Instructor
Michael Mateas
In-depth exploration of algorithms for the automated generation of 2D and 3D models and content. Covers multiple approaches, including noise, grammars, genetic algorithms and programming, parametric design, and answer-set programming. Includes application of techniques to computer-game content and level design.
Instructor
Adam Smith, Jim Whitehead, Michael Mateas
Investigates how new immersive display technologies and interaction techniques can support analytical reasoning and decision making in a variety of contexts.
Introduces contemporary techniques in deep learning focusing on the application of these techniques to a range of tasks related to art and design outputs.
Graduate seminar with speakers from academia and industry. Covers state of the art research and industry trends in Computational Media and related areas.
Instructor
Sri Kurniawan, Angus Forbes
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Covers advanced topics and current research in creative coding as it intersects computational media. Focuses on student presentations and seminar participation. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students and by permission of instructor. This class can be taken for Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory credit only.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Weekly seminar covering advanced topics and current research in generative methods--the field focused on algorithms for creation of 2D and 3D models and content.
Instructor
Jim Whitehead, Adam Smith
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Covers advanced topics and current research in human-computer interaction as it intersects computational media. Focuses on student presentations and seminar participation. Enrollment restricted to graduate students and by permission of the instructor.
Instructor
Katherine Isbister
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Ongoing participatory seminar toward staying informed about the current state of the art in Human Computer Research, both within the Computational Media department, as well as in the broader field. Course consists of weekly lectures and discussion. Graduate students will take part in giving presentations.
Instructor
Katherine Isbister, Sri Kurniawan
Covers advanced topics and current research in interactive systems for individuals who have special needs. Focuses on student presentations and seminar participation.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Focuses on human-centered design and research approaches to the development of robotic technologies. Students read primary research papers, examine prototype robotic systems, and build upon those materials to lead group discussions, propose research projects, and conduct HRI research.
Instructor
Leila Takayama
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Weekly seminar series of current research on a special topic in information systems and technology management. The theme of research presented throughout the course selected by the instructor. Topics may include, but are not limited to, knowledge planning, new product development and management of technology. Enrollment with permission of instructor. (Formerly Technology and Information Management 280S.)
Instructor
The Staff, Ramakrishna Akella, Yunfei Chen, David Lee
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Covers advanced topics and current research in digital media—the interdisciplinary field at the intersection of computer science, media authoring, and models of interpretation from the humanities and social sciences. Focuses on student presentations and seminar participation.
Instructor
Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Nathan Altice
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Weekly seminar covering topics of current research in artificial intelligence applied to interactive art and entertainment, including computer games. Enrollment by permission of instructor. Enrollment restricted to graduate students.
Instructor
Michael Mateas, Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Students learn about a current research area in computational media and make a contribution. Each course offering focuses on a different aspect of technical, creative, and/or interpretive work in the field.
Instructor
Adam Smith, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Nathan Altice, Angus Forbes
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter
Focuses on media, such as computer games, that invite and structure play. Work includes building and critiquing a series of prototypes; studying major examples in the field; and discussing both theoretical and practice-oriented texts. Enrollment by permission of instructor. Enrollment restricted to graduate students.
Cross Listed Courses
DANM 250D
Instructor
Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Robin Hunicke
Focuses on enhancing social and emotional capabilities and qualities in interactive systems. Students read research, look at sample systems, and engage in evaluation, design, and prototyping exercises. A research project and helping to lead class discussions are also required.
Instructor
Katherine Isbister
Focuses on discussion of recent advances in visual storytelling in graphical environments. Major topics covered are: intelligent camera control, shot-compositions, lighting design, interactive storytelling, and computational techniques associated with these applications. Class consists of in-class discussions and student presentations of research papers and a final student project.
Cross Listed Courses
DANM 290P
Independent study or research under faculty supervision. Although this course may be repeated for credit, not every degree program will accept a repeated course toward degree requirements. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter
Independent study or research under faculty supervision. Although this course may be repeated for credit, not every degree program will accept a repeated course toward degree requirements. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter
Independent study or research under faculty supervision. Although this course may be repeated for credit, not every degree program will accept a repeated course toward degree requirements. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter
Independent study or research under faculty supervision. Although this course may be repeated for credit, not every degree program will accept a repeated course toward degree requirements. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter
Thesis research conducted under faculty supervision. Although this course may be repeated for credit, not every degree program will accept a repeated course toward degree requirements. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Thesis research conducted under faculty supervision. Although this course may be repeated for credit, not every degree program will accept a repeated course toward degree requirements. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Thesis research conducted under faculty supervision. Although this course may be repeated for credit, not every degree program will accept a repeated course toward degree requirements. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Cross-listed Courses
Focuses on classic and current theories and research topics in the computational modeling of discourse and dialogue, with applications to human-computer dialogue interactions; dialogue interaction in computer games and interactive story systems; and processing of human-to-human conversational and dialogue-like language such as e-mails. Topics vary depending on the current research of the instructor(s) and the interests of the students. Students read theoretical and technical papers from journals and conference proceedings and present class lectures. A research project is required.
Cross Listed Courses
LING 245, CMPM 245
Instructor
Marilyn Walker