Marc Olano

Director, Computer Science BS Game Development Track
Co-director, VANGOGH lab
Member, MC² Multicore Computational Center

Assistant Professor
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department, ITE 354
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Baltimore, MD 21250
+1-410-455-3094
olano@umbc.edu

Fall 2007 office hours: 1:00-2:15 Tuesday, 3:45-5:00 Thursday
(full calendar)

CV

Research

My research interests are interactive 3D computer graphics, programmable shading, graphics hardware, surface appearance modeling, or almost any other combination of those words.

Major accomplishments:

Pioneered procedural shading on graphics hardware, now a standard feature on every PC and game platform. This is one of the defining features of graphics hardware today.
Developed a homogeneous (clipless) rendering technique used in many generations of PC graphics processors.
Did some of the key work on using normal maps on low-detail 3D models, now a common technique in games.
Developed automatic shader program simplification. I did it to allow more complex hardware shaders, but has lead to work by Pixar and Industrial Light and Magic for interactive previews of movie production shaders.

Research Thumbnails (in random order)

Publications

Papers, Theses, Patents & Tech Reports
Real-Time Shading book
SIGGRAPH courses organized / course notes
- SIGGRAPH 2006, GPU Shading and Rendering
- SIGGRAPH 2005, GPU Shading and Rendering
- SIGGRAPH 2004, Real-Time Shading
- SIGGRAPH 2003, Real-Time Shading
- SIGGRAPH 2002, Real-Time Shading Languages
- SIGGRAPH 2002, State of the Art in Hardware Shading
- SIGGRAPH 2001, Real-Time Shading
- SIGGRAPH 2000, Procedural Shading on Graphics Hardware

Classes

For more information on UMBC's programs on Games, Animation and Interactive Media (including game development track requirements), see the GAIM page.

Undergraduate and graduate independent study opportunities available, contact me for details.
CMSC 435/634: Introduction to Computer Graphics, Spring 2008, Fall 2006, Fall 2004, Spring 2004, Fall 2002
CMSC 635: Advanced Computer Graphics, Spring 2008, Spring 2007, Fall 2005, Spring 2003
CMSC 491G/691G: Computer Graphics for Games, Fall 2007, 491E/691E Spring 2004
CMSC 611: Advanced Computer Architecture, Spring 2006, Fall 2003
CMSC 491G/691G: Real-Time Shading, Spring 2005

Other Stuff

Conference Calendar
Notes on using CVS on AFS for electronic classwork submission