Cloud-based CG Educational Material

In consideration of interdependency between Computer Vision (CV) and Computer Graphics (CG) in visual computing, Keio University, Department of Information and Computer Science, reorganized its first course on CV and CG into “Visual Computing IA/B, II” in the 2019 academic year. This series of courses cover fundamental to advanced visual computing topics systematically.

“Visual Computing II” gives two programming assignments each focused on advanced topics in CV and CG. The CG programming assignments have two goals: to experience GPU computing and to understand the path tracing algorithm. To achieve these goals, a cloud-based CG educational material has been developed.

Our educational material is built on Google Colaboratory, a cloud-based development environment, and has the following two features: no environment construction is required, and no high-performance devices are required. In general, CG programming tends to be highly dependent on software and hardware and requires complex environment setup and high-performance devices. However, our educational material takes full advantage of cloud computing power and it makes the trouble on environment setup and the device performance requirements minimized. In fact, our educational material can be run on laptop PCs, tablets, and even smartphones.

In the 2020 academic year, when COVID-19 forced us to conduct distance education, our educational material was especially valuable, and it contributed to maintaining the quality of CG education at Keio University. Fortunately, It has decided that our educational material will be used at Keio University also in the subsequent academic years. We would like to continue to sophisticate the educational material and further consider its more effective usage.