Assignments and Grading

Assignments will be published here every Thursday. Until then, the links below will be broken links.

• Homework Schedule: Weekly homeworks are assigned Thursday and due the following Thursday.
• Evaluation: Grades will be 50% homeworks, 50% final project (5% final project proposal, 45% final project itself). The weekly graded homeworks are designed as building blocks towards the final project. There are 5 homeworks (excluding the setup homework 0), and they each count equally. For samples of student final projects from previous years, see the project showcase page.
• Collaboration: You may work with a partner for both the homeworks and the final ray traced image. Use this sheet to help you find partners or study buddies. You may change partners as often as you wish throughout the quarter.
• Grading: Grading sessions will be held live every Thursday over Zoom. Please look at the home page for Zoom and queue details. All of the assignments will be graded in a live-demo format since graphics, like art, is partially about presentation. Computer graphics professionals typically deliver only the final image, with the coding behind the image considered disposable. Please show up to the grading time that you are available for and sign up in the queue. The CA will pull you into a breakout room when it's your turn.
  You are required to attend and consult a CA for a (very) short live grading session. The CA will ask you to demonstrate your solution to the assignment, look at both the code and results, and ask you questions to assess your understanding of the material. Make sure you can answer questions about all parts of the assignment, regardless of which parts you or your partner may have done individually.
  If you cannot attend the weekly grading sessions, then it is your responsibility to contact us to schedule a recurring appointment for grading.
• Quiz Questions: As part of each HW grading session, there will be 1 randomly chosen quiz question that you should prepare for ahead of time. If you are doing the grading session with a partner, you will get one question each that are different to each other. Each person must answer their question independently. You can then showcase the rest of your assignment together.
• Rubric: Assignments are graded on a 0-8 point basis. You will receive a score of 0-3 on live quiz portion and a 0-5 on the assignment portion. The rubric is provided in each homework handout. If your homework grades are not going well, then do not be surprised if your final grade is lower than what you expect. Feedback is very important in computer graphics, so please take each homework seriously and attend the grading sessions each week.
• Late Assignments: As discussed in the first lecture, we allow one missed homework / grading session, no questions asked (no need to email us). Please use this for extenuating circumstances like sickness or travel. There are 5 graded assignments with 8 points each. You get a 100% in the assignments portion of class if you reach 32 points. Any points received from 33-40 will count as extra credit. As a general rule, no late assignments will be accepted. Exceptions will be made for unforeseeable circumstances and as required by university policy.
• Lecture Attendance: Attending lectures in-person is optional. Lectures will be recorded and posted to Canvas. Please stay updated on the lectures, as they will help with the homework, the final project, and your graphics experience! Those who attend lectures in-person will receive a tiny bit of extra credit (we will have a sign in sheet at the front of class for you to sign at the end of lecture). Online students can earn extra credit by achieving 33-40 points on the homework assignments.
• Extra Credit: As previously mentioned, this quarter, we will award small amounts of extra credit to those that attend all the grading sessions and lectures in person. We will not release extra credit percentages. We will use extra credit to favorably evaluate students who are on a grade boundary at the end of the course.
• AI Policy: It is against the Stanford honor code to use AI in the following ways: having AI directly answer quiz questions, using AI to generate code or scripts for the coding-heavy homework assignments, and having AI somehow generate your final project / scene in Blender. You may use AI to clarify course concepts or for general Blender assistance (asking it for shader/texture/node advice or installation/setup help).

Hardware and Software

You are encouraged to do class assignments on your personal computer. Computers should contain a modern graphics card capable of running Blender. Blender is readily available on Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms, and the starter code has been tested on all of these platforms.