A practical new scheme for the experiment teaching of computer graphics based on Cg Shading Language

摘要

It is the core of the education reform to foster the innovation and comprehensive practice ability of the students in the 21st century. By analyzing shortcomings of the traditional teaching method for experiment of computer graphics curriculum, the necessity and feasibility to replace it with a new flexible scheme has been put forward based on the rapid development of programmable GPU (Graphic Processing Units) in recent years and the advent of Cg (C for Graphics) shading language, a new high-level programming language specialized for programmable GPU. This new scheme is also suitable for other similar shading languages such as HLSL and GLSL. The paper makes a comparison between the traditional experiment teaching method of computer graphics curriculum and the new one, and then presents the detailed reasons for the benefits from the inner rendering pipeline framework of the modern programmable GPU that this new kind of experiment teaching method using Cg shading language instead of the fixed OpenGL or DirectX can foster and enhance the students' creative spirit and ability to develop the graphics application system. Finally, a practical and intuitive experiment platform specialized for Cg, an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) developed by NVIDIA has been provided. Using this practical new method in recent years has demonstrated that the students can not only get a clearer picture of the complete modern 3D graphics rendering pipeline, but also foster themselves the interest in computer graphics and ability to develop more complex graphic programs.