Grading

Project/Labs – 50%

There will be five “normal” lab assignments which will introduce you to openGL and graphics rendering in some simple way. These assignments need to be completed by the due date on the schedule. They will be graded as either working or not, its assumed everyone will get them working. I advise trying to get them checked off before the due date so that if you missed something we can tell you and then you still have time to go fix it. Completing the “normal” assignments is good for a “C”.

In addition to normal assignments you will be completing a variety of plug-in modules for a mesh manipulation package called MeshShop. These extras will earn you some number of points, +1 if its simple, +10 if it’s a truly amazing project. If you earn +5 additional points you’re up to a “B”, +10 and you’re doing “A” work. No one should have any surprises about their lab grade since you’ll know what you’ve been earning. I’ll provide a list of possible bells and whistles you could add to this package along with how much each is worth, but you are free to make up your own as well. I encourage you to start with something simple and then to go do something creative and amazing.

In order to encourage people not to procrastinate and then panic in the last week of class, I’m only going to allow +2 points maximum to be earned each week. If you want to procrastinate and still get an “A”, you better turn something in every week starting in week 6. If you do an amazing +10 project right away we’ll let you apply the points to future weeks (just not previous weeks).

Lastly, MeshShop is meant to be both a teaching tool, and an program used by researchers working in computer graphics. If you do something we judge to be sufficiently cool or useful we’re planning on merging your plug-in into the core package. Right now its just a skeleton. Presuming things go as planned, the class will together be creating a useful tool which we’ll post on the class web page for others to use.

Midterms/Final - 50%

Midterms and final will be in class written test. Probably short answer format. I’ll allow one page of written notes so you don’t have to memorize formulas.

Teamwork

Work in teams or work alone, either is acceptable. Instructors normally say “work alone” so they know that you learned something, as opposed to your roommate learned something and did it for you. However in practice I have no way to know what actually happened. Furthermore the “real world” nearly always requires that you work in teams. Thus, you can work with your friends whenever you like, you can download code from the web, and you can ask your roommates’ brothers’ girlfriend for help if you want. However I do need to give you a grade on what you individually learned. Thus you need to make clear what you did and what someone else did for you. If you work in teams on the project, you should plan to show something N times as impressive, if you have N people. Also everyone should be prepared to answer questions during grading so that I can verify that you all learned something. Also everyone will need to send me a private note with a percentage they think each team member contributed.

The quizzes and final exam will be the only aspects of class where I require individual work.