Grading

Your grade in this course will be determined as follows:

40% Homework Assignments
30% Final Project
15% Participation
15% Quizzes

Homework

There will be 5 homework assignments. Homework 0 is smaller and worth fewer points than the other four homeworks. You will have 2 weeks to complete Homeworks 1-4, so be sure to manage your time effectively. At the halfway point (1 week before the due date) for Homeworks 1-4, you are required to post an informal but informative progress status report with sample output images (which may still be buggy) on Rensselaer LMS. The progress post will be worth 25% of the homework grade (points awarded for effort), so make sure you have something to report. The full homework submission (your code & README.txt) will be submitted to the homework web server.

Final Project

For the final project you will select your own topic. It can be an extension of one of the homework assignments, a portion of your graduate research, a significant module of a final project for another course, or a brand-new project. You are highly encouraged to work in a team of 2 for the final project. Individual projects or teams of 3 must have advance approval from the instructor. The project must include a significant graphics programming component. You will share your results through an in-class presentation to your peers and a publication-quality writeup (e.g., motivation, related work, algorithm/technique, results, conclusions, and bibliography). Graduate students are expected to complete a more extensive project and are required to format their project report for submission to an appropriate graphics-related conference or journal (e.g., SIGGRAPH, Symposium on Computer Animation, Symposium on Geometry Processing, Eurographics Symposium on Rendering, Graphics Interface, etc.)

Participation

Participation is a very important component of the course. You are expected to regularly attend lecture, ask questions, and join in the in-class and on-line discussions. All students are expected to have downloaded and read the assigned paper for that day's lecture. It's "ok" if you don't understand all of the details. Each student should submit at least one relevant and non-trivial question or comment (to the corresponding discussion on Rensselaer LMS) about the assigned paper by 10am on the day the paper will be discussed in class.

Each student will lead the in-class discussion of one research paper during the semester. The student who will lead the discussion should spend some extra time to understand the details of the paper. During lecture this student will give an oral summary (~ 5 minutes) of the paper's technical contributions and broader impact, and then lead the class in a discussion of the paper, beginning with the comments posted to the forum.

Laptops are allowed in lecture for reference and note-taking, but students are encouraged to keep their laptop closed if they are prone to distraction from email/web-surfing/games.

Quizzes

We will have 2 in-class quizzes covering the lecture material.