About CS465
Professor:
Steve Marschner, srm@cs.cornell.edu
Office hours: Tues 2:00–3:00,
Thurs 1:00–2:00, 5159 Upson
TAs:
Staff List, cs465-staff-l@lists.cs.cornell.edu
Andy Scukanec (head TA),
ags@cs.cornell.edu
Dhruva Karle, dk243@cornell.edu
Pet Chean Ang, pa54@cornell.edu
Masato Ikura, mi46@cornell.edu
Alex Liberman, al262@cornell.edu
Time and place:
MWF 2:30–3:20, 401 Hollister
TA Hours:
Andy Scukanec: WF 11:00-12:00 in Upson 5162
Pet Chean: R 5:00-6:30 and Saturdays before projects are due 10:00-12:00
Masato Ikura: M 4:30-5:30, T 8:00-9:00
Alex Liberman: M 5:30-6:30, T 7:00-8:00
Alex's, Pet Chean's, and Masato's office hours will be in Rhodes 455, or the Upson CSUG
Lab in the event that Rhodes 455 is closed or not working
Help Sessions:
W, R 6-8 in Rhodes 455
Help sessions will be held in order to provide a forum for smaller group discussions
in a less formal setting than class would allow. We will cover some of the basic
lab tools, current programming assignments, and questions pertaining to any of the
material covered in class. Attendance to these sessions is not required, as you
are not required to use the lab, and we will only talk about material already
presented in class. The same material will be presented in both the Wednesday and
Thursday help session.
Textbooks:
Shirley, Fundamentals of Computer Graphics (required)
[Note errata]
Foley et al., Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice (supplementary)
Coursework
Homework
There will be (usually) weekly homeworks, due in class on Fridays, consisting of one or two problems. See the schedule for the exact due dates. They will involve things like working out numerical or other short answers (which should always be backed up by some brief reasoning), answering "why" questions, and drawing graphs or other pictures.
The homweworks may be handwritten or printed and are to be turned in at the beginning of class.
Programming assignments
There will be five programming assignments:
- Ray I: A very simple ray tracing renderer that renders spheres and triangles using a perspective camera, point light sources with shadows, and basic surface materials.
- Resample: A program that dynamically scales an image to fit in a resizable window, exploring the speed/quality tradeoff using several different filtering techniques.
- Pipeline: A software model of a modern programmable graphics processor, using vertex and fragment processing to achieve a variety of rendering effects.
- Model: A simple modeling application that allows the user to create and transform simple objects and spline surfaces.
- Ray II: A more full-featured ray tracer than the first assignment that can handle larger models and do more advanced shading, including texture mapping and reflections in shiny surfaces.
These programs are to be done in teams of two. If you really want to work by yourself, that is OK but you will still have to do all the work. If you want to work with a partner but can't find one, please contact the course staff and we will help.
The programs must be written in Java using the framework code we'll provide. The CSUGLab in Rhodes 455 is set up to support this course. You are free to work on whatever computer you like, using any programming environment, but your code must compile and work using the basic command-line tools on the machines in our lab. You will hand in your source code using CMS.
Exams
There will be two evening prelims and a final exam:
- Prelim I: 7:30 pm on 5 October in Kimball B11
- Prelim II: 7:30 pm on 2 November in Olin 165
- Final: 9:00 am on 10 December in Phillips 219
Together the two prelims cover the first 2/3 of the course. The final is comprehensive, so it covers all material from the whole course.
All three 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.
Policies
Grading and late assignments
Your final grade will be computed from the grades on the assignments and exams. The homeworks will account for 30% of the grade, the programs will account for 30%, and the three exams will account for 40% (12% for each prelim and 16% for the final).
Homework assignments are due at the start of class on the due date (normally Friday), and are accepted with a late penalty until the start of the next class (normally Monday). Programming assignments are due at 11:59 pm on the due date (normally Tuesday) and are accepted with a late penalty until 12:00 noon two days after the due date (normally Thursday). The implications of handing in late for either kind of assignment are as follows:
- Hand in by late deadline: 10% off score (about 1 letter grade)
- Hand in within 1 week of due date: graded pass/fail; pass receives 50/100
- More than 1 week late: no credit
Assignments that are handed in under option 2 will not be graded carefully and may be returned very late. That option is just intended to give you a chance to reduce the effect of zeros averaged into your grade.
Extra credit
For the programming exercises you are welcome to implement extra features for extra credit. Don't expect large numbers of points—the idea is just to encourage you to have fun exploring the material in more depth.
Some ground rules:
- The default behavior of your program must always be a correct implementation of the required features. The presence of extra features must not interfere correct operation—so include switches to turn on extra features if they change the basic behavior in any way.
- You can only get extra credit if you score at least 95/100 on the basic requirements.
- You can't get more than 10 points of extra credit on any one assignment.
Extra credit points will be tabulated separately, and the overall grading curve will be established without extra credit factored in. This means you don't need to do extra credit to get a good grade—it is extra, after all!
Collaboration
The principle is that an assignment is an academic document, like a journal article. When you turn it in, you are implying 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 the material of this class among yourselves in general terms. But when it comes to the details of the assignments, you need to be working alone. In particular, it's never OK for you to see another student's homework writeup or another team's program code, nor to discuss the solutions to the specific problems in the homeworks.
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 homework 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.
Steve Marschner (srm@cs.cornell.edu)