Study Guide 1

Quizzes are closed book. 30 minutes. In Lab. One written cheat sheet is allowed.

Topics:

  • Game Loop, Update pattern

  • Programming in C#

  • Graphics concepts

  • Coordinate systems, Vectors, Points

  • Matrices, Rotations

Terms To Know:

  • Framerate

  • Game Loop, Update object pattern

  • Camera, Orthographic projection, Perspective projection, Aspect ratio, View frustrum, Field of view, Near/far planes

  • Euler Angles, Quaternion, Angle/Axis representation of rotations, Normalizations, Unit vectors

  • Lights, Materials, SkyBox, Mesh (polygon and triangle), Skinned Mesh, Skeleton, Textures

  • RGB color space, Alpha and transparency

  • Lerp, Slerp

Sample Short Questions:

  • In Unity, what does a GameObject represent?

  • What is the advantages and disadvantages of a fixed framerate?

  • What is the advantages and disadvantages of a variable framerate?

  • What is the difference between an orthographic and perspective projection?

  • What role does the camera play in rendering objects?

  • Suppose your friend is having a problem in Unity. When they press play, their view is empty but they have detailed level geometry in the scene view. Give a plausible reason that might cause their problem.

  • What roles do lights and materials play in rendering objects?

  • What is the difference between a polygonal mesh and a triangle mesh?

  • What rotation does the (45, 30, 15) degree XYZ Euler angle represent?

  • Suppose your best friend’s game runs at 30 frames per second, how many milliseconds does it take to render a single frame?

  • Suppose we represent a unit quad (1x1 in the XY plane) using a triangle mesh. Draw and label the vertices of the mesh.

  • What is HTML string format (e.g in hexadecimal format, such as #ff00ff) for the color (255, 32, 32)?

  • What is the RGB representation using [0,255] color values for the hexadecimal string #0f0f0f?

  • What does alpha represent in a RGBA color?

  • Suppose our render window has width and height equal to 640 and 480 respectively. What is the aspect ratio of our window?

  • What is the difference between a skinned mesh and a static mesh?

  • Compute the quaternion (x,y,z,w) that corresponds to a 30 degree rotation around the (1,1,0) axis.

  • What subset of quaternion correspond to rotations?

  • What is an orthonormal matrix?

  • How can we compute the distance between two points?

  • Is the cross product commutative?

  • What is an inverse matrix?

  • How can we use the dot product to check if two vectors are perpendicular?

  • Suppose we compute the cross product from (4,5,0) and (-1,5,0). In a left-handed coordinate system, what direction will the resulting vector be?

  • What values should we use to resize and object so its height is half as tall?

Sample Long questions can be found in our class notes and lab exercises.