Objectives: Basics of 2 and 3 dimensional computer graphics systems, modeling and rendering, and selected graphics software APIs. Other topics may include interactive graphics, animation, graphical user interfaces, image processing, and the graphical presentation of information.

Prerequisites: CS307, CS313e, CS314, CS314H, EE422c, OR EE322c with a grade of at least C-.

Lecture: 52870, MWF 11 am - 12 noon, UTC 3.134

Instructor: Mike Scott, <scottm@cs.utexas.edu> Painter Hall 5.68,
Office Hours: MW 3 - 4:30  pm Painter Microlab (5th floor lab), Fridays noon - 4 pm (PAI 5.68 and Microlab. Priority given to students in CS378) and by appointment. Email me for an appointment.

Teaching Assistant: Sarah Abraham, email: , Lab Hours: M 12 - 2 pm, T 1 - 3 pm, W 9 - 11 am, Th 11 am - 1 pm

Textbook (Required): Filthy Rich Clients - Developing Animated and Graphical Effects for Desktop Java Applications by Chet Hause and Romain Guy, ISBN 978-0-13-241393-0

Website: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~scottm/cs324e. Course materials and announcements are available there.

CS Lab Account:

• Students must obtain an account for the CS department microlab. Visit this website to request account: https://apps.cs.utexas.edu/udb/newaccount/ (If you had an account the previous semester it should renew automatically.)
• Accounts take at least a day for account to become active. Please request your account as soon as possible. Even if you do not work in the lab, you will use this account to turn in your homework.
• These accounts are only for the CS microlab, and not any other labs or networks at UT. This account is not the same as your UT Direct account.

Computing Facilities:

• Painter Hall Microcomputer Lab. PCs are available for assignments in the CS Department microcomputer lab located  in  Painter Hall, room 5.38. There are also public machines available in ENS rooms 1 and 2. You are free to work on your own computer if you wish.

Software: We will use Java and the Java3D API. Required software for homework is available on the computers in the CS department microlab. If you wish to work on your own computer the software is free. See the class web page for links to download Java and Java3D.

Class Discussion Tool: I have set up a discussion group for the class on Piazza.

• Go to the Piazza web site and join the CS324E group for The University of Texas at Austin.
• I will post class announcements and information to the discussion group.
• Post your questions about the class to the discussion group. Do not post solutions or chunks of code > 2 lines on Piazza.

Schedule: A schedule of lecture topics, reading assignments, and assignment distribution and due dates is available online, via the class web page, www.cs.utexas.edu/~scottm/cs324e/schedule.htm.  The schedule lists topics and readings. The schedule is subject to change.

• The final letter grades will be assigned based on your total points. The grading systems consists of 1000 points. The grade cutoffs are: <600 = F, 600 - 699 = D, 700 - 799 = C, 800 - 899 = B, >= 900 = A. Plusses and minuses (+ and -) will be assigned to scores within 25 points of the cut offs. So for example a score of 875 to 899 earns a B+ and a score of 900 to 924 earns an A-.
• Depending on the results of an exam, exam scores may be curved. If so, exam scores may stay the same or improve. Exam score will never be lowered to a curve. Assignment grades are not curved.
• You have 6 slip days to use through out the term on your assignments if you are not able to turn an assignment in on time. You may use no more than 2 slip days on one assignment. Any portion of a day counts as 1 slip day. The slip day clock does not stop on weekends or holidays. Slip days are to account for life circumstances (My hard drive crashed!! I got a virus downloading mp3s!!) and emergencies. Do not use your slip days frivolously. If you use up your slip days and then have an emergency of some type you will receive a 0 if you do not turn in an assignment on time. Other than the use of slip days as explained previously no late work is accepted. You must turn in the right thing (correct file, with correct name, with the code you have written) on time or you will receive a 0 on the assignment. It is your responsibility  (not the teaching staffs') to ensure you turn in the right thing.
• Assignments will be available on the class web site
• For assignments turn in you Java source code files. Ensure you turn in the correct file. If you turn in the wrong file (such as the original template or an older version of your program) that is the version that will be graded. If you turn in the template unchanged or a program that dos not compile then the grade will be 0. If you program causes a runtime error under normal conditions you will lose significant credit.
• You must fill in the header of the programs you turn in. Failure to do so will result in a major loss of credit on the assignment.
• Some assignments may be completed with another student in the class. These are referred to as pair assignments. The intent of pair assignments is that you work together with your partner. Do not simply divide the work and complete it separately. When working as a pair you will turn in the program to one student's turn in account. Include both students information at the top of the program in the header. If you do not complete the header information the credit will go to the student whose account the assignment was turned in to. If you fail to fill in the header and later claim you worked as a pair the credit will be split in half and assigned to each student.
• If you are dissatisfied with a grade you receive on an assignment or test, you must submit your complaint via email, along with supporting evidence or arguments, to me or the TA within five days of the date the teaching staff first attempted to return the assignment or test to you.
• Grades are maintained on the Canvas website.

Important Dates for Changing Academic Status and Dropping the Course: Refer to the Registrar's academic calendar for the deadlines for changes in academic status. Highlights are:

• Tuesday, September 4: Last day of the official add/drop period; after this date, changes in registration require the approval of the department chair and usually the student’s dean.
• Friday, September 14: (12th class day) Last day to drop for a possible refund. Last day to add a course.
• Tuesday, November 6: Last day an undergraduate student may, with the dean’s approval, withdraw from the University or drop a class (Q drop) except for urgent and substantiated, nonacademic reasons. Last day a student may change registration in a class to or from the pass/fail or credit/no credit basis. In practice I always grant approval for "Q drops" up to this date as long as their are no issues with academic integrity.
• After Tuesday, November 6, students must go to the academic advisors in their college Dean's office. To be eligible for an incomplete (UT uses the symbol X to indicate incompletes) you must have a letter grade of C- or better and a written, verifiable excuse for missing the last test. This is a necessary but insufficient condition for receiving an incomplete.

Students experiencing significant nonacademic problems (extended health problems or family emergencies) should contact the CNS Dean’s Office (WCH 1.106, (512) 471-4536) or the Dean of Student’s Office (http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/emergencyresources.php) for assistance.

See the College of Natural Science Guidelines and Procedures page for more information. (http://cns.utexas.edu/academics/advising-and-resources/guidelines-and-procedures)

Academic Dishonesty: Taken from the CS department Code of Conduct.

"The University and the Department are committed to preserving the reputation of your degree. It means a lot to you. In order to guarantee that every degree means what it says it means, we must enforce a strict policy that guarantees that the work that you turn in is your own and that the grades you receive measure your personal achievements in your classes:

Every piece of work that you turn in with your name on it must be yours and yours alone unless explicitly allowed by an instructor in a particular class. Specifically, unless otherwise authorized by an instructor:

• Students may not discuss their work with anyone except the instructor and other members of the instructional staff (instructor, TA, lab proctor or partner on a pair assignment).
• Students may not acquire from any source (e.g., another student or an internet site) a partial or complete solution to a problem or project that has been assigned.

You are responsible for complying with this policy in two ways:

1. You must not turn in work that is not yours, except as expressly permitted by the instructor of each course.
2. You must not enable someone else to turn in work that is not theirs. Do not share your work with anyone else. Make sure that you adequately protect all your files. Even after you have finished a class, do not share your work or published answers with the students who come after you. They need to do their work on their own. This means do not post your solution code to any public web site such as pastebin. Also, do not post your work to the web even after you have completed CS324E.

The penalty for academic dishonesty will be a course grade of F and a referral of the case to the Dean of Students. Further penalties, including suspension or expulsion from the university may be imposed by that office.

One final word: This policy is not intended to discourage students from learning from each other, nor is it unmindful of the fact that most significant work in computer science and in the computing industry is done by teams of people working together. But, because of our need to assign individual grades, we are forced to impose an otherwise artificial requirement for individual work. In some classes, it is possible to allow and even encourage collaboration in ways that do not interfere with the instructor's ability to assign grades. In these cases, your instructor will make clear to you exactly what kinds of collaboration are allowed for that class."

For CS324e the policy on collaboration is modified as follows:

If you are repeating the course you may reuse code you completed on your own You may not use code from a program you worked on as part of pair or code that was from a program involved in an academic dishonesty case.. On programs your worked with a partner on or were part of an academic dishonesty case, you must start from scratch.

You are encouraged to study for tests together, to discuss methods for solving the assignments, to help each other in using the software, and to discuss methods for debugging code. Essentially if you talk about an assignment with any one else you are okay, but the moment you start looking at someone else's source code or showing someone else your source code you have crossed the line into cheating. You should not ask anyone to give you a copy of their code or, conversely, give your code to another student who asks you for it. Similarly, you should not discuss your algorithmic strategies to such an extent that you and your collaborators end up turning in exactly the same code. Discuss high level approaches together, but do the coding on your own.

Understand the difference between cheating and collaboration. Collaboration is allowed, cheating will lead to failure in the course.

Examples of cheating are many and include accessing another student's account, looking at someone else's solution code, copying or downloading someone else's solution code, referring to solutions from previous semesters, and / or allowing others to copy of access your solution code. This means you shall not look on the internet for code to solve your problems.

Examples of allowable collaboration include discussions and debate of general concepts and solution strategies and help with syntax errors.

The code you can reuse in this course are:

1. You may use any code you develop with the instructor, TAs, or proctors.
2. You may use code (with attribution) from the class slides and the class coding examples.

You shall not make use of code you find from other sources including the world wide web. Materials from the web should only be used for educational purposes. Thus, you can read about linked lists and look at examples of linked list code, but you must not copy any code from the web or be looking at any of this code from the web when writing anything you turn in. If you discuss an assignment with another student or look at examples from the web you should employ the World of Warcraft Rule:

World of Warcraft Rule: After a discussion with another student or looking at example code you should do something that has nothing to do with computer science or programming for al least half an hour. Playing World of Warcraft or other similar activity. (Watching a sitcom, reading a book.)

You are also allowed to post short segments of code (2 lines or less) of code that are giving you syntax errors to the class listserv in order to get help on fixing the syntax error.

If you have any doubts about what is allowed ask the instructor.

Plagiarism detection software will be used on assignments to find students who have copied code from one another. 

For more information on Scholastic Dishonesty see the University Policy on Scholastic Dishonesty
 

Religious Holidays: By UT Austin policy, you must notify me of your pending absence at least fourteen days prior to the date of observance of a religious holy day. If you must miss a class, an examination, a work assignment, or a project in order to observe a religious holy day, you will be given an opportunity to complete the missed work within a reasonable time after the absence.

Students with Disabilities: students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Services for Students with Disabilities, 471-6259, www.utexas.edu/diversity/ddce/ssd/.