Australia

Abstract

This overview of computer graphics education in Australia offers a few surprises in the diversity demonstrated by university curricula, and the languages and hardware used. Computer graphics is taught as a third year course at most Australian universities, with some universities also offering an additional advanced graphics course at the fourth year level.Most universities include what has evolved into a set of core topics that are common to most graphics courses. Most have also added some extra flavor to their courses by providing some unique topics that, although vaguely related, are not normally considered under the heading of mainstream graphics.Each curriculum generally includes all the expected graphics topics, such as line and curve generation, antialiasing, 2D transformations, 3D transformations and 3D viewing, hidden line and hidden surface algorithms, polygon fill algorithms, clipping, illumination and shading models and solid modeling. A good proportion of universities also include texture mapping, color modeling (e.g., RGB and CIE representations), animation, virtual/synthetic camera modeling, GUI design, splines and Bezier surfaces, fractals, ray tracing and human visual perception. Less commonly offered topics are dithering, radiosity and mathematical models.Approximately half of the courses are centered around device independent graphics standards such as GKS and PHIGS, and the SRGP software package is popular in courses based on the PHIGS standard The core topics in these graphics standards courses include graphical input techniques, graphical display devices for output, coordinate systems (world, virtual, and device), graphics primitives, windows and viewports and metagraphics commands.