CS348b2007

CS348B Final Project Instructions

Proposal Due: Tues May 22th, 11:59PM

Rendering Competition (Demo Day): time TBD, Monday June 11th, Gates B08

Write-up Due: Wednesday June 13th, noon

Late days are not allowed on the final project!!!!

Please create a page for your final project on FinalProjectWriteups. You will need to add your project proposal and your final project writeup to this page.

If you need a partner, make a posting on the INeedAPartnerPage.


Description

For your final project we ask you to produce a realistic image of a real object or scene. The scene or object should be challenging enough to require you to design and implement an advanced rendering algorithm. The final project is your chance to investigate an area that interests you in more depth, and to showcase your creativity. To get an idea of our expectations, check out these descriptions of projects from past course participants (pay special attention to projects from the past 2-3 years). On Monday June 11th, you will present your project to an independent panel of judges as part of the CS348B 2007 rendering competition. Teams creating the best projects (as determined by the judges) will receive exciting prizes! As extra incentive, we are offering a grand prize that includes a free trip to SIGGRAPH 2007 in San Diego in August. Here are some things to think about following when choosing a project:

Some Project Ideas

Here are some examples of challenging projects.

Resources

Your main task should be to implement cool rendering algorithms, rather than spending all of your time modeling a complex scene. However, you do need to provide pbrt with a scene to render! Check the RenderMan resources page for info about the RIB file format. You can convert this file form to a pbrt scene file using the utility rib2pbrt. the pbrt website also has some plugins on its download page that might be useful to you, such as a Maya-to-pbrt scene exporter, and a .obj file reader.

Project Proposal

As a first step you should write a one page project proposal and add it to your project page linked from FinalProjectWriteups. The proposal should contain a picture of a real object or scene that you intend to reproduce. We suggest that you first pick something that you would like to simulate, and then investigate what techniques need to be used. A real object that you can carry around with you is best, but a good photograph or painting is almost as good. In addition to having illustrative pictures, your proposal should state the goal of your project, motivate why it is interesting, identify the key technical challenges you will face, and outline briefly your approach. If you are implementing an algorithm described in a particular paper, provide the reference to the paper. Please list all group member's names clearly at the top of the page, and if you plan on collaborating with others, briefly describe how each person's piece relates to the others.

Here is an example project proposal made by your beloved TA.

The purpose of the proposal is to get everyone organized early, and it will give us the opportunity to provide feedback as to whether we think your idea is reasonable, and to offer some technical guidance, e.g. papers you might be interested in reading.

Rendering Competition

On the day of the rendering competition (see dates at the top of the page), each group will be given 15 minutes to demonstrate their system to the class and rendering competition judges and show some images that they produced. You can show off your images on any machine you see fit. Remember to bring the object/images that you are modeling and reproducing. The goals and technology that you developed should be obvious from the image itself. After all, this is graphics. Keep in mind that you absolutely need to have your rendering done by this date. Late days are not allowed on the final project.

As there is a tendency for these presentations to go long, here's some guidelines on how to prepare for the final presentation so everyone remains entertained and the judges get an adequate impression of your work.

It is useful (but not required) to get a web page or Powerpoint presentation prepared to keep your presentation organized.

Final Writeup

Your final project writeup should be added to your project page by NOON on Wednesday, June 13th (no late days allowed). The writeup should be roughly 3-4 pages, and contain the following:

Please take the time to create a high quality writeup for your project (think about it as writing a tech report you'd like to keep permanently on the web). We will be archiving the final project pages and they will be viewed for years to come.

Example final writeups from recent years:

Rendering Competition Judges

The judges for the rendering competition will be announced shortly.

Grading

The final project will count 1/2 (or more, if based on our judgment, we consider the project truly outstanding) towards your final grade in the course. We will consider strongly the novelty of the idea (if it's never been done before, you get lots of credit), your technical skill in implementing the idea, and the quality of the pictures you produce. Tons of coding does not make a project good. When you are finished with your project you should post the source for your system and any test scenes and images that you have created. As stated above, you are permitted to work in small groups, but each person will be graded individually. A good group project is a system consisting of a collection of well defined subsystems. Each subsystem should be the responsibility of one person and be clearly identified as their project. A good criteria for whether you should work in a group is whether the system as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts!

The final project can be a lot of fun. Good luck!

last edited 2007-05-15 02:56:34 by KayvonFatahalian