CPSC 324, Spring 2004
Final Project
AS YOU KNOW, the final project for this course is due at the scheduled final exam period: Monday morning, May 10. This project counts for 17% of your final grade. The project should be a substantial effort, and you should start planning it as soon as possible.
In addition to the final project, you will receive a final grade on your Web portfolio. This overall evaluation of your Web portfolio counts for 8% of your total course grade. As stated in the class handout, the grading will be simple: If you have fulfilled the basic requirements, you get 6 points. Extra effort or particularly nice appearance will get you a 7 or 8. If material is missing or obviously sub-standard, you will get less than 6 points.
Here are some ideas for a final project (most of them repeated from the class handout). You are not limited to choosing one of these topics:
- Write a graphics program using OpenGL. For example, an interactive game or a program that lets the user sketch a curve and then does lathing on that curve to produce a 3D object.
- Create a substantial Blender animation.
- Create a series of image compositions with Gimp.
- Learn more about POV-Ray and create an animation or a series of still images.
- Investigate and work with some other graphics program. For example, you might look at Maya Personal Learning Edition for Windows or MacOS X, a free version of one of the premier commercial 3D modeling programs. See http://www.alias.com/.
- You might do a comparison of Gimp with Photoshop.
- Look at another Graphics API such as Java's 2D and 3D graphics, and do some programming with it.
- Write a traditional ten to fifteen page research paper on some aspect of computer graphics, such as: Using 3D on the Web (see http://www.web3d.org/, which is developing X3D, an XML-based standard for publishing 3D content); Graphics file formats; How computer graphics is used in Hollywood; or Techniques for hidden surface removal.
The final project is an individual assignment. You are responsible for choosing your own topic, in consultation with me. Two weeks before the last day of class, on Monday, April 19, you should turn in a description of your project. The description must include some detail. I suggest that you meet with me to discuss your ideas one or more times before the outline is due. This outline will be graded for 10 homework points. This outline should include:
- For a graphics programming project: A description of what the program will do and a specification of the major functions and/or classes that you will be writing.
- For a research paper: A thesis statement and short outline of the paper, and a bibliography of references that you plan to use. The bibliography must contain at least six sources, and at least half of those sources must be books or articles rather than Web resources.
- For a Blender animation: A scenario describing the objects that you will model and how you will animate them.
- For any other project: An outline of the paper, program, and/or other work that you will be doing. You should check with me in advance that the project that you are planning will be a suitable final project for the course.
David Eck, March 2004