About CS4620/4621, 5620/5621

Professor:
Steve Marschner ( )
     ofc hrs: 3PM - 4PM Tuesday, 1PM - 2PM Thursday in 5159 Upson

TAs:

Daniel Schroeder (Ph.D. TA, )
     ofc hrs: Wednesday 3:35PM - 4:35PM in Rhodes 590
Tim Langlois (Ph.D. TA, )
     ofc hrs: Tuesday 4:30PM - 5:30PM in Rhodes 590
Eston Schweickart (Ph.D. TA, )
     ofc hrs: Tuesday 11AM - Noon in Rhodes 590
Ariana Mott (undergraduate TA)
     ofc hrs: Wednesday 1:00PM - 2:00PM in Rhodes 590
Debarghya Das (undergraduate TA)
     ofc hrs: Tuesday 1:30PM - 2:30PM in Rhodes 590

Contacting Staff:

If you have questions for the course staff, please submit a private question to the instructors on Piazza.

Time and Place:

CS4620: MWF 2:30PM - 3:20PM, Phillips Hall 101
CS4621: F 3:35PM - 4:25PM, Location Hollister Hall 110

Textbook:


Shirley & Marschner,
Fundamentals of Computer Graphics
third edition

Supplemental Books and Materials:


Gortler,
Foundations of 3D Computer Graphics
first edition

Piazza:

Coursework

Homework

There will be about 3 homeworks.

Programming Assignments

There will be 3 programming assignments, two of which come in two parts.

Exams

There will be two evening prelims, roughly at the middle and at the end of the semester:

There is no final exam.

The exams are closed book, but you're allowed to bring one letter-sized piece of paper with writing on both sides, to avoid the need to memorize things.

After the fact, you can find the exams and solutions on the exams page.

Practicum

In the optional practicum course, CS4621/5621, you will get a more in-depth exposure to the course material by implementing various extensions to the programming assignments. Students taking the practicum will be required to attend a few lectures during the Friday meeting time for CS4621/5621 (to be announced in advance), where the projects and the background information required to implement them will be discussed. The practicum page on this site will be used for information specific to the practicum and can be ignored by students taking CS4620/5620 but not CS4621/5621.

Grading

The prelims account for 40%, programming assignments (done in pairs) for 40%, and homeworks (done alone) for 20%. All numbers are within 5 percent of the final allocation and are not set in stone.

Policies

Collaboration

The principle is that an assignment is an academic document, like a journal article. When you turn it in, you are claiming that everything in it is your original idea (or is original to you and your partner, if you're handing in as a pair) unless you cite a source for it.

You are welcome (encouraged, even) to discuss projects among yourselves in general terms. But when it comes to writing up the homeworks or implementing the projects, you need to be working alone (or only with your partner if you are doing a project as a pair). In particular, it's never OK for you to see another student's homework writeup or another team's program code, and certainly never OK to copy parts of one person's or team's writeup, code, or results into another's, even if the general solution was worked out together. Homeworks can be discussed in general terms, but must be worked on alone.

You're also welcome to read any published sources—books, articles, public web sites—that help you learn. If you find an idea in one of these sources that becomes part of your solution (or even gives you the whole solution), that's fine, but it's imperative that you credit that fact on your homework or in a comment in your code. Otherwise you would be falsely claiming to have invented the idea yourself.

Academic Integrity

In this course we expect complete integrity from everyone. School can be stressful, and your coursework and other factors can put you under a lot of pressure, but that is never a reason for dishonesty. If you feel you can't complete the work on your own, come talk to the professor or the TAs, or your advisor, and we can help you figure out what to do. Think before you hand in!

Clear-cut cases of dishonesty will result in failing the course.

For more information see Cornell's Code of Academic Integrity.