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Item Tackling Diverse Student Backgrounds and Goals while Teaching an Introductory Visual Computing Course at M.Sc. Level(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Silva, Samuel; Sousa Santos, Beatriz; Anderson, EikeVisual Computing entails a set of competences that are core for those pursuing Digital Game Development and has become a much sought competence for professionals in a wide variety of fields. In the particular case presented here, the course serves a diverse audience from Multimedia and Design students without previous knowledge in the field and low programming competences, to students that have a previous BS.c in Game Development and have already covered the basic concepts in a previous course. Additionally, the course is also offered as an elective for Computer Science M.Sc. students. This diverse set of background competences and goals motivated designing an approach to the course where each student can build on previous knowledge and have a say on its personal learning path. This article shares the overall approach, presents and discusses the outcomes, and reflects on future evolutions.Item Teaching Game Programming in an Upper-level Computing Course Through the Development of a C++ Framework and Middleware(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Hooper, Steffan; Wünsche, Burkhard C.; Denny, Paul; Luxton-Reilly, Andrew; Sousa Santos, Beatriz; Anderson, EikeThe game development industry has a programming skills shortage, with industry surveys often ranking game programming as the top skill-in-demand across small, mid-sized, and large triple-A (AAA) game studios. C++ programming skills are desired, however, educators can perceive C++ as too difficult to teach due to its size and complexity. We address the challenges of teaching C++ in an upper-level Game Programming course and demonstrate how learners are up-skilled in C++ game programming, providing insights and reflections on the course. We show how through careful educational-design choices, combined with scaffolding a C++ framework and contemporary middleware, it is possible to transition learners to C++ for game programming.Item State of the Art on Diffusion Models for Visual Computing(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2024) Po, Ryan; Yifan, Wang; Golyanik, Vladislav; Aberman, Kfir; Barron, Jon T.; Bermano, Amit; Chan, Eric; Dekel, Tali; Holynski, Aleksander; Kanazawa, Angjoo; Liu, C. Karen; Liu, Lingjie; Mildenhall, Ben; Nießner, Matthias; Ommer, Björn; Theobalt, Christian; Wonka, Peter; Wetzstein, Gordon; Aristidou, Andreas; Macdonnell, RachelThe field of visual computing is rapidly advancing due to the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI), which unlocks unprecedented capabilities for the generation, editing, and reconstruction of images, videos, and 3D scenes. In these domains, diffusion models are the generative AI architecture of choice. Within the last year alone, the literature on diffusion-based tools and applications has seen exponential growth and relevant papers are published across the computer graphics, computer vision, and AI communities with new works appearing daily on arXiv. This rapid growth of the field makes it difficult to keep up with all recent developments. The goal of this state-of-the-art report (STAR) is to introduce the basic mathematical concepts of diffusion models, implementation details and design choices of the popular Stable Diffusion model, as well as overview important aspects of these generative AI tools, including personalization, conditioning, inversion, among others. Moreover, we give a comprehensive overview of the rapidly growing literature on diffusion-based generation and editing, categorized by the type of generated medium, including 2D images, videos, 3D objects, locomotion, and 4D scenes. Finally, we discuss available datasets, metrics, open challenges, and social implications. This STAR provides an intuitive starting point to explore this exciting topic for researchers, artists, and practitioners alike.Item Holistic Approach to Modular Open Educational Resources for Computer Graphics(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Diller, Florian; Püschel, Fabian; Stockemer, Julian; Böhm, Klaus; Wiebel, Alexander; Sousa Santos, Beatriz; Anderson, EikeIn this paper, we present a novel holistic approach to open education resources (OER) in computer graphics (CG). Holistic on the one hand refers to the diversity and the interlinked integration of the materials we included in the devised educational modules, on the other hand, it corresponds to the public availability of our work, which manifests in various aspects. Each of our three-part educational modules consists of slides, an experiential education web application (''exploratory''), and a quiz for knowledge assessment. These materials are closely interlinked, as they each teach the same topic from different perspectives and refer to each other. Yet, the resources can be used independently to add additional value to various teaching styles and programs. This modularity and the overall public availability were one of the primary goals of our project. Consequently, every resource is licensed under Creative Commons and developed using open standards or freely usable tools, so that teaching staff from universities and schools can modularly include, adapt, and build upon our resources. The OER aspect is not only reflected by licensing; the complete publishing, design, and development process was formed to serve the general public. Our work is based on an experiential learning approach and does not analyze the pedagogical methodology. Instead, in addition to presenting the devised learning materials, the present paper investigates to what extent the learning materials can support teaching and learning computer graphics. We took several measures to evaluate our approach: 1) teaching staff was interviewed regarding the usability and acceptance of the technologies we used; 2) a usability expert was consulted to assess our system; 3) the developed resources were integrated into existing lectures and the performance of students with and without the assistance of the interactive education applications was compared. The responses to our approach were exclusively positiveItem An Overview of Teaching a Virtual and Augmented Reality Course at Postgraduate Level for Ten Years(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Marques, Bernardo; Santos, Beatriz Sousa; Dias, Paulo; Sousa Santos, Beatriz; Anderson, EikeIn recent years, a multitude of affordable sensors, interaction devices, and displays have entered the market, facilitating the adoption of Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) in various areas of application. However, the development of such applications demands a solid grasp of the field and specific technical proficiency often missing from existing Computer Science and Engineering education programs. This work describes a post-graduate-level course being taught for the last ten years to several Master's Degree programs, aiming to introduce students to the fundamental principles, methods, and tools of VR/AR. The course's main objective is to equip students with the necessary knowledge to comprehend, create, implement, and assess applications using these technologies. This paper provides insights into the course structure, the key topics covered, assessment, as well as the devices, and infrastructure utilized. It also includes a brief overview of various sample practical projects, along the years. Among other reflections, we argue that teaching this course is challenging due to the fast evolution of the field making updating paramount. This maybe alleviated by motivating students to a research oriented approach, encouraging them to bring their own projects and challenges (e.g. related to their Master dissertations). Finally, future perspectives are outlined.