Appearance Modeling and Shading - NPGR042

• Title: Appearance Modeling and Shading
• Guaranteed by: Department of Software and Computer Science Education (32-KSVI)
• Faculty: Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
• Actual: from 2025
• Semester: summer
• E-Credits: 5
• Hours per week, examination: summer s.:2/1, C+Ex [HT]
• Capacity: unlimited
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Additional information: https://cgg.mff.cuni.cz/courses/appearance-modeling-and-shading/
• Guarantor: RNDr. Tomáš Iser, Ph.D.
• Teacher(s): RNDr. Tomáš Iser, Ph.D.
• Class: DS, softwarové systémy; Informatika Mgr. - volitelný
• Classification: Informatics > Computer Graphics and Geometry
• Incompatibility : NPGR027
• Interchangeability : NPGR027
• Is incompatible with: NPGR027
• Is interchangeable with: NPGR027

Annotation

English

This course focuses on appearance modeling of various objects and materials important for photorealistic 3D graphics, from elementary physically-based models to advanced and modern approaches. The course also covers shaders and shading programming languages.

Last update: Holan Tomáš, RNDr., Ph.D. (02.06.2025)

Czech

Předmět se zabývá modelováním vzhledu různých objektů a materiálů důležitých ve fotorealistické 3D grafice, od těch nejzákladnějších fyzikálně založených modelů až po pokročilé a moderní přístupy. Součástí výuky jsou také shadery a používání stínovacích programovacích jazyků (shading languages).

Last update: Holan Tomáš, RNDr., Ph.D. (02.06.2025)

Course completion requirements

To pass the labs, the student has to submit assignments and get at least 55% points from the assignments in total.

To pass the final exam, the student has to receive at least 55% points from the exam questions.

The final grade will be decided based on the total points from the labs and final exam together.

Last update: Iser Tomáš, RNDr., Ph.D. (04.12.2025)

Literature

• Shadertoy

https://shadertoy.com

• OpenPBR

https://academysoftwarefoundation.github.io/OpenPBR/

• Physically-Based Shading at Disney

https://disneyanimation.com/publications/physically-based-shading-at-disney/

• The Book of Shaders

https://thebookofshaders.com/

• SIGGRAPH 2025 Course: An Introduction to Neural Shading

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3721241.3733999

• SIGGRAPH 2025 Course: Physically Based Shading in Theory and Practice

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3721241.3733991

https://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/s2025-shading-course/

• Inigo Quilez's articles

https://iquilezles.org/articles/

And many more will be introduced later

Last update: Iser Tomáš, RNDr., Ph.D. (05.01.2026)

Syllabus

This course focuses on appearance modeling of various objects and materials important for photorealistic 3D graphics, from elementary physically-based models to advanced and modern approaches. The course also covers shaders and shading programming languages.

The following topics and more will be covered:

• Writing shaders for Vulkan and OpenGL in GLSL

• Different types of noise functions, Voronoi, tiling, fractals, and similar

• Ray tracing and ray marching examples in shaders

• Shaders, shader graphs, and nodes

• Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) and textures (SVBRDF)

• Physically Based Shading (PBS, PBR)

• Subsurface scattering (SSS)

• Anisotropic and layered materials

• Measuring BRDF

• Modern neural shading with neural networks

• Generative neural models for generating SVBRDF textures from photographs

• and more...

During the labs, you will get homeworks in which you will write your own shaders and experiment with state-of-the-art neural networks on SVBRDF measurements.

Last update: Iser Tomáš, RNDr., Ph.D. (05.01.2026)