Extra Credit Lecture Opportunities

Extra Credit Lecture Opportunities

There are several lectures coming on to campus in the next couple of weeks that are related to this class:

Wayne Wooten of Pixar Animation is speaking at the GVU Brown Bag at 12:30 pm on April 19 . "The Rendering Technology Behind the Making of 'Cars'" Wayne Wooten, GVU Alum, Pixar Animation Studios. The talk will be 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. in Klaus Room 1116.
Pixar has developed some of the world's most advanced techniques for generating computer animated feature films, recently receiving an Oscar nomination for "Cars." In this talk, I plan to discuss the rendering research and development that occurs at Pixar and the techniques behind the feature film production process. My talk will touch on a number of topics that students should master in order to be attractive candidates for the feature film industry. Sequences from Pixar's latest feature film, "Cars" will be used as a case study for presenting the various pieces of technology required to create the final product.
Bio:
Wayne Wooten works in the RenderMan Tools group at Pixar Animation Studios. He works as a member of the research and development team at Pixar to develop new rendering software for use on animated feature films. His film credits include "A Bug's Life," "Toy Story 2," "Monster's Inc.," "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles." Wayne's recent film credit is for "Cars" where he helped develop new rendering techniques for many effects in the film. Wayne currently works for Pixar in Seattle and is busy developing new rendering techniques for Pixar's next movie, "Ratatouille."
Wayne received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1998. His graduate research at the Animation Lab involved generating motion for computer animated human athletes by using control systems in combination with physically realistic dynamic simulation.

The Video Digital Video Special Effects class will be presenting their semester projects on April 26 at noon http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/events/brownbags/index.html in TSRB 132

Abstract:

The Digital Video Special Effects class of Spring 2007 (CS 4480) will present their final productions. Students will show and discuss the short video segments (less than one minute each) that they have produced to showcase the technical special effects they have generated during the course of the semester. This class is an interesting blend of understanding the technical issues underlying the generation of special effects and expressing artistic creativity by producing a short video.

The following 11 videos (shorts) and their "making-of" will be presented:

"Automated Basketball Player and Shot Tracking" by Team Squirrel (McCarthy, St. Clair, Vargas)
"Football Player Tracking" by Team Win (Hitt, REMOVED)
"P!NG" by Dream Capturers (Octa, Su, Zhang)
"Real-Time Tracking of Football Players" by All-Seeing Eye (Hecht, Kazian, Mansour, St. John)
"Visualizing Football Playbooks" by MerFanKan (DeArment, Hoskinson, Scukanec)
"Tennis" by A.T.U.L.D. (Welch, Groves, Cruz)
"Clippy Attacks" by BSOD (Burke, Gill King)
"A Fading Dream" by Destructive Symmetry (Bowman, McGarr, Rintamaki)
"Public Nuisance #9" by Turkey (Goodson, Perkerson, Shrader, White)
"Product 3MI-Z24: Trajectory Drums" by 3Measure Industries (Bleigh, Cook, Dwyer)
"Interactive 3D Visualization of Archived College Football Video" by GANG: GANG, another nameless group (Roberts, St. Clair, Wojtan)

Dr. Glorianna Davenport will be giving a presentation in Skiles 002 at 4:30 on Thursday, April 19. Refreshments will be served. Dr. Davenport is a Principal Research Associate and founding member of the Media Lab at MIT. She is the founder and director of the Media Fabrics Group, whose mission evolved from her earlier research and leadership of the Interactive Cinema Group. More information on her work can be viewed at: http://ic.media.mit.edu/people/gid/.
She will speaking on: The Media Fabric and the Politics of Expression
The media fabric is a semi-intelligent organism where lines of communication, threads of meaning, chains of causality, and streams of consciousness converge and intertwine to form a rich tapestry of engagement and emergent understanding. It is a multifaceted, technologically enabled, creatively ready network of media that invites us to create and share our own expressions as it immerses us in the expressions of others through asynchronous and synchronous construction, navigation and dialoguing.

You MUST attend one of these lectures, to replace the class not held on April 23.

You MAY write an essay on the talk that you attend. The topic is: "What media, programming, and modeling techniques discussed in CS1316 appear in the work described in this lecture?" Please give some specific instances of things you saw in the talk that are related to specific techniques discussed in CS1316. The essay should be typed, no more than 2 pages long, and handed in HARD COPY in class on April 27. Email submissions will not be accepted. These will be graded by me (Mark Guzdial) for up to 20 points which will be added to your EXAM average (i.e., after computing the average exam grade for Midterm 1, Midterm 2, and the Final, these points will be added into that average).

Questions? Concerns?

Will we only get credit for one essay?

Yes – more strongly, I will only grade one essay. Mark Guzdial

Are the brown bag lectures only online?

No – that URL will have the updated information when it's established. Mark Guzdial

I'm confused as to the location of the lectures. Could someone please clarify.

Watch that URL. They're probably trying to figure out what room will most easily hold the audience. My guess is that they will be in CoC Building Room 16 or 17, or the TSRB auditorium, or the Klaus building auditorium. NOTE: The Brown Bags will be in a larger room than the Glorianna Davenport lecture. If you wait for that, and the room is too packed to hold everyone, you're hosed. Mark Guzdial

Mark, Could you elaborate on how the extra credit will be counted in the final grade?

MidtermAverage = ((Midterm1+Midterm2)/2); ExamAverage=(.25*(MidtermAverage+ExtraCreditEssay))+(.25*Final) Okay? Mark Guzdial

Yea im confused by how its added up and calculated since the 2 midterms are 12.5% each and the final is 25%.

See above. Mark Guzdial

How is attendance going to be tracked if going to one of these is mandatory..?

All lectures are mandatory. They will be tracked in exactly the same way. Mark Guzdial

Mark, this is how I interpreted the formula for Exam Average.

It is possible to earn up to 20 points extra credit from the essay, which will be added to the midterm average. So if you have a 70 average for the midterms, you may boost it up to 90, in theory.

The final grade will be 30% homework grade, 20% quiz grade, 25% midterm grade (may be adjusted with extra credit from the essay), and 25% final grade.

Could you confirm?

Yes, and then .25 * 90 would be added to your final grade. Mark Guzdial

Ah, so attendance will be tracked the same way as lecture; meaning not at all? Or is there some super secret device taht actually takes attendance that we (I) are unaware off... that's a scary thought.

Can we get some sort of rubric for what you're looking for to earn the total 20 points or is it just a shot in the dark?

I feel that this is a reasonable rubric: The topic is: "What media, programming, and modeling techniques discussed in CS1316 appear in the work described in this lecture?" Please give some specific instances of things you saw in the talk that are related to specific techniques discussed in CS1316. Mark Guzdial

that seems really vague...but if you say it's the rubric, then i guess it's the rubric.

More Detail on Opportunity

I figured out why that was vague, and why you're looking for a rubric. I hadn't made one point clear: There will be no partial credit! I plan to give zeroes or 20's, and I do expect that few people (<20%) will get credit. This is extra credit – neither free nor easy.

I am looking for two elements:

A clear description of something you saw in the talks: A cool effect, a neat scene, a great multimedia gizmo.
A clear explanation of how it might be implemented using things we talked about it in the class. I expect to read terms like linked list, graph, trees, insertions, deletions, rendering, traversals, MIDI, models, queues, events, and so on.

If you know what you're doing, this could be 1/2 page and get 20 points. If you don't know what you're doing, you can write two pages and get zero. (More than two pages will be an automatic zero.) You may need to do some extra reading besides the lecture to make a convincing case. I will be grading them myself, and plan to spend no more than 30 seconds on each. Mark Guzdial

If the extra 20 points for extra credit boosts our grade up past a 100 will that be counted into the final average or will the cut off be at 100?

The formula is above, there is no cut-off. Mark Guzdial

is 2 pages double spaced or single

Sure. Either. Mark Guzdial

when will we know if we've earned the points or not? will it be up on webct?

Plan to. Mark Guzdial

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Announcements-Spring 2007 last edited on 24 April 2007 at 12:05 am by c-76-17-114-206.hsd1.ga.comcast.net
Syllabus-Summer 2007 last edited on 25 July 2007 at 9:36 am by lawn-128-61-121-65.lawn.gatech.edu
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