You know Notch, the creator of Minecraft? He made this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVbPf0aJnbk a while ago using Dart and WebGL. Dart is a language which compiles to Javascript, so it can run in the browser. WebGL is a browser API for 3D graphics based on modern OpenGL. Together, you can use them to do graphics programming in the browser without having to deal with Javascript. We'll be doing a brief overview of how OpenGL works and then do a basic WebGL tutorial using Dart.

Everything you see in a video game is a lie. It's a mix between a puppet show and origami. A very clever, but similar, combination of art, math, and physics is the basis for games like Battlefield 3, Minecraft, and even the newer Pokemon generations. This class will focus on the process that transforms data, such as points and triangles, into an image on your screen that you can interact with. This class will give a high-level overview of how modern 3D graphics, especially in video games, actually work. It will cover the rendering pipelines of OpenGL and DirectX. Shading algorithms, 3D modeling, and the details of writing graphics programs will not be covered.