CMP 261 -- Final Project Guidelines

Important Dates:

Oct 21, 2013 -- Project proposal presenations
Nov 18, 2013 -- Project update presentations
Dec 09, 2013 (noon) -- All materials (paper, presenation slides, web pages, etc.) due

Final Project:

This is an individual project meant to be developed and completed over the course of the quarter. You get to decide what project you want to do -- after I review it. The main considerations are that:

there's sufficient visualization content in it,
it's a reasonable size project that can be completed within the given time,
there's enough variation from other students' project.

Projects are first come, first serve. It's to your advantage to get your project approved early. You'll also get a head start and have more time to do a better project.

Preliminary Project Proposal:

If you haven't communicated with me about what project you'll be working on, please do so at least a week before your project proposal presentation, which is currently scheduled for the week of Oct 21, 2013. Either way, please send me a preliminary title of your project by Oct 14, 2013

Project Proposal:

This forms the first draft of your paper (final project report). It should include the following items:

title
abstract
motivation
related work
proposed research directions

I'm looking for 2 pieces of submission:

A writeup on the order of 2-4 pages of technical materials that covers the items listed above. Use a paper template for a potential journal / conference that you can submit your work to. For example, assume a short paper submission to IEEE TVCG which is roughly similar page length as a conference submission.
Presentation materials -- this can be a ppt or pdf or doc file.

Proposal Submission.

On unix.ic.ucsc.edu, do:
submit cmps261-ap.f13 proposal proposal.zip
or
submit cmps261-ap.f13 proposal proposal.tar

NOTE: currently awaiting class locker to be set up. i'll update when it's available.

Project Update:

The presentations for the project update will be on the week of Nov 18, 2013. I am also expecting two items from each of you: (a) an updated paper writeup with a more complete related work section, a more fleshed out research approach section with prelim results, analysis, and visualizations (probably 4-6 pages of technical writeup at this point); and (b) presentation materials (ppt, pdf, doc) for your project update.

Update Submission.

On unix.ic.ucsc.edu, do:
submit cmps261-ap.f13 update udpate.zip
or
submit cmps261-ap.f13 update udpate.tar

Final Project Requirements:

Project Demonstration/Presentation. Each student will have to present their final project to the class. Try to limit this to around 15-20 minutes. Be sure to allow your window to be resized to the entire screen so everyone can see your output. The demo will be held in our lecture classroom. Most students prefer to run demos from their own laptops. If you are a Mac user, be sure to bring a video adaptor to a VGA or HDMI port.
Project Report. There are 2 parts to the project report: (a) a web page version, and (b) an 8-page technical paper reporting the results of your research project. The web page version will be an online record for your class project and should contain the following information.
- your name, which class and quarter,
- title and description of your project,
- images and/or video clips of your project (links to you-tube are NOT acceptable; watch your file size and know your disk quota -- 2 gb),
- details about your project e.g. algorithms, data structures, program structure, related works, your improvements, references, etc.
- a user's guide,
- link to your source code and executable.
- link to your technical paper.
Note that all links should be relative (not absolute paths), and that you should submit the html and all necessary image and animation files in the same directory. This time, name that directory final. Everything must be contained inside this directory. No links to external sites allowed. Create a zip or tar file of all the items of this directory for submission.
Project Submission. Create a zip or tar file of your final project folder or directory. Name this final.zip or final.tar respectively.
On unix.ic.ucsc.edu, do:
submit cmps261-ap.f13 final final.tar
or
submit cmps261-ap.f13 final final.zip
- Include the following:
  - your project report (see above).
  - source code, makefile, etc. to compile your code,
  - any *new* data sets, if any,
  - README file for information on platform, compilation, etc.,
  - at least two favorite images of your project.
  - a short movie clip of your program in action , say about 5-10 seconds. Watch the file size and keep it reasonable. Save movies as mpeg, wmv, or other popular video format.