The course explores four general areas:
The course stresses portable programming. The material is illustrated using the operating system neutral OpenGL and Shader Language.
The class is in a seminar format. Each week, the first lecture is devoted to discussing the homework assignment from the previous week, including presentations by some students of their work. The second lecture introduces the topic for the next homework and includes demonstration of the example programs.
Weekly assignments comprise a sequence of programming assignments that seeks to build practical experience using OpenGL. The final assignment is a course project which a graphics emphasis of the students choosing.
Each student is expected to present their homework. The number of homework presentations depend on the class size. All students must also present their final project at the end of the semester.
Class participation is a significant component of the class. Class attendance is expected, in person or by Zoom.
The assignments for the graduate and undergraduate students are the same, but more is expected from graduate students, especially on the final project.
We will use ungrading this semester. You should keep a journal of your weekly goals and accomplishments.
Each week the first class consists of a few volunteers demonstrating their assignments. If there are insufficient volunteers a randomly generated list will be used to ensure that all students get at least one opportunity to present their assignments.
Assignments may be completed using a computer language and platform of the student's choice, although C or C++ on a Windows, OS/X or *NIX environment is preferred. Writing portable code that will run on any operating system is stressed.
Assignments will be graded on a GNU/Linux system. Programs should contain #ifdef statements to facilitate compilation on this system. Students using exotic programming languages will be expected to aid the instructor in setting up a suitable environment for grading the assignments.
Assignments must be submitted via the university Canvas LMS. Assignments are generally due by midnight on Monday, with a grace period for no penalty until 8am on Tuesday morning. Late assignments will not be accepted unless previously arranged.
Distance students are encouraged to submit assignments on the same schedule as on campus students, but special accomodations will be made on an individual basis. Real time attendance is expected from distance students.
Any project that is related to the course material would be acceptable. Students are encouraged to develop an application that is useful in some other aspect of their studies or work. To accommodate this students are given wide latitude in terms of platform and language of implementation. However, in order to facilitate grading, this should be done in coordination with the instructor.
A formal proposal is used to ensure that the project is appropriate in terms of scope and degree of difficulty.
Students are required to do an oral presentation of their project during class at the end of the semester.
Each assignment should reflect each student's individual work. However, code reuse is permitted, including example code from the class as well as code from resources on the web. A "safe harbor" in this regard is simply a comment indicating where code from another source is reused. Passing off copied code as your own is a violation of the CU Honor Code.
Where code is reused, it is expected that students should make the code their own, and improve and expand on what is provided.