CS888 Advanced Topics in Computer Graphics — Winter 2026



Course Overview

This seminar-style course will consist primarily of paper presentations and discussions. Students will take turns presenting papers, followed by a group discussion of the relative merits and limitations of the paper in question. Students are also expected to study the presented papers, prepare paper reviews/reports and engage in discussion.

Students will encounter and use a variety of numerical, computational, and mathematical techniques and tools, such as numerical integration, efficient spatial queries, integral equations, stochastic models, signal processing, optics, parallel computation, efficient memory accesses, and so on.

Grading: presentation, paper reviews, and engagement in discussion.

How to read a paper?

Additional resources

Schedule

13th Jan, Tue

  • Yiwei — An unbiased ray-marching transmittance estimator, Markus Kettunen, Eugene d’Eon, Jacopo Pantaleoni, Jan Novak, 2021
  • Ben — A simple and robust mutation strategy for the metropolis light transport algorithm, Csaba Kelemen, László Szirmay-Kalos, György Antal, Ferenc Csonka, 2003

15th Jan, Thu

snow day

20th Jan, Tue

  • Enming — Stochastic Ray Tracing of Transparent 3D Gaussians, Xin Sun, Iliyan Georgiev, Raymond Fei, Miloš Hašan, 2025
  • Wenyu — You Can Find Geodesic Paths in Triangle Meshes by Just Flipping Edges, Nicholas Sharp, Keenan Crane, 2020

22nd Jan, Thu

  • Leo — Modeling and Rendering Glow Discharge, Venkataram Sivaram, Ravi Ramamoorthi, Tzu-Mao Li, 2025
  • Ruomai — A Practical Extension to Microfacet Theory for the Modeling of Varying Iridescence, Laurent Belcour, Pascal Barla, 2017

27th Jan, Tue

  • Saba — Meschers: Geometry Processing of Impossible Objects, Ana Dodik, Isabella Yu, Kartik Chandra, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, Joshua Tenenbaum, Vincent Sitzmann, Justin Solomon, 2025
  • Yiwei — Continuous Multiple Importance Sampling, Rex West, Iliyan Georgiev, Adrien Gruson, Toshiya Hachisuka, 2020

29nd Jan, Thu

  • Ben — From microfacets to participating media: A unified theory of light transport with stochastic geometry, Dario Seyb, Eugene d’Eon, Benedikt Bitterli, Wojciech Jarosz, 2024
  • Enming — Physically-Based Real-Time Lens Flare Rendering, Matthias Hullin, Elmar Eisemann, Hans-Peter Seidel, Sungkil Lee, 2011

3rd Feb, Tue

  • Wenyu — Manifold exploration: a Markov Chain Monte Carlo technique for rendering scenes with difficult specular transport, Wenzel Jakob, Steve Marschner, 2012
  • Leo — Blue Noise through Optimal Transport, Fernando de Goes, Katherine Breeden, Victor Ostromoukhov, Mathieu Desbrun, 2012

5th Feb, Thu

  • Ruomai — Scratch iridescence: Wave-optical rendering of diffractive surface structure, Sebastian Werner, Zdravko Velinov, Wenzel Jakob, Matthias B. Hullin, 2017
  • Saba — Non-linear sphere tracing for rendering deformed signed distance fields, Dario Seyb, Alec Jacobson, Derek Nowrouzezahrai, Wojciech Jarosz, 2019

10th Feb, Tue

  • Yiwei — Vector-Valued Monte Carlo Integration Using Ratio Control Variates, Haolin Lu, Delio Vicini, Wesley Chang, Tzu-Mao Li, 2025
  • Ben — Progressive photon mapping, Toshiya Hachisuka, Shinji Ogaki, Henrik Wann Jensen, 2008

12th Feb, Thu

  • Wenyu — A Theoretical Analysis of Compactness of the Light Transport Operator, Cyril Soler, Ronak Molazem, Kartic subr, 2022

24th Feb, Tue

  • Enming — Differentiable Monte Carlo ray tracing through edge sampling, Tzu-Mao Li, Miika Aittala, Frédo Durand, Jaakko Lehtinen, 2018
  • Leo — Physically-based simulation of rainbows, Iman Sadeghi, Adolfo Munoz, Philip Laven, Wojciech Jarosz, Francisco Seron, Diego Gutierrez, Henrik Wann Jensen, 2012

3rd Mar, Tue

no class

5rd Mar, Thu

  • Ruomai — A null-scattering path integral formulation of light transport, Bailey Miller, Iliyan Georgiev, Wojciech Jarosz, 2019
  • Saba — Spatiotemporal reservoir resampling for real-time ray tracing with dynamic direct lighting, Benedikt Bitterli, Chris Wyman, Matt Pharr, Peter Shirley, Aaron Lefohn, Wojciech Jarosz, 2020

10th Mar, Tue

  • Yiwei — A radiative transfer framework for non-exponential media, Benedikt Bitterli, Srinath Ravichandran, Thomas Müller, Magnus Wrenninge, Jan Novák, Steve Marschner, Wojciech Jarosz, 2018
  • Ben — Light transport simulation with vertex connection and merging, Iliyan Georgiev, Jaroslav Křivánek, Tomáš Davidovič, Philipp Slusallek, 2012

12th Mar, Thu

  • Enming — Real-time Neural Radiance Caching for Path Tracing, Thomas Müller, Fabrice Rousselle, Jan Novák, Alex Keller, 2021
  • Wenyu — Neural Importance Sampling, Thomas Müller, Brian McWilliams, Fabrice Rousselle, Markus Gross, Jan Novák, 2019

17th Mar, Tue

  • Leo — Practical Path Guiding for Efficient Light-Transport Simulation, Thomas Müller, Markus Gross, Jan Novák, 2017
  • Ruomai — A two-scale microfacet reflectance model combining reflection and diffraction, Nicolas Holzschuch, Romain Pacanowski, 2017

19th Mar, Thu

  • Saba — Microfacet Models for Refraction through Rough Surfaces, Bruce Walter, Stephen R. Marschner, Hongsong Li, Kenneth E. Torrance, 2007
  • Yiwei — Gaussian Wave Splatting for Computer-Generated Holography, Suyeon Choi, Brian Chao, Jacqueline Yang, Manu Gopakumar, Gordon Wetzstein, 2025

24th Mar, Tue

  • Ben —
  • Enming —

26th Mar, Thu

  • Wenyu —
  • Leo —

31th Mar, Tue

  • Ruomai —
  • Saba —

2nd Apr, Thu

  • Yiwei —
  • Ben —

Additional Papers

  • Spectral mollification for bidirectional fluorescence, A Jung, J Hanika, C Dachsbacher
  • Path-space differentiable rendering, Zhang, Miller, Yan, Gkioulekas, Zhao
  • Monte Carlo estimators for differential light transport, Zeltner, Speierer, Georgiev, and Jakob
  • A Monte Carlo framework for rendering speckle statistics in scattering media, Chen, Alterman, Gkioulekas, Levin
  • Microfacet Models for Refraction through Rough Surfaces, Bruce Walter, Stephen R. Marschner, Hongsong Li, Kenneth E. Torrance