Dear students,

Welcome to the PB009 Principles of Computer Graphics course! Here you will find the basic information about the course organization.

Course Organization

The course consists of lectures and seminars. The lectures will explain the basic principles of computer graphics and will be happening every Monday at 12:00 in the A138 lecture room at FAST VUT.  (Map; Enter building A through the main entrance from Vevří street. There will be a reception on your right hand. Climb up 11 stairs and turn right around the first corner. Go through the glass door to a Cafe and the last door on the right will be number 138). 

The seminars will be taught biweekly, and you have to enroll in one of the available seminar groups.  There you will get practical experience with selected topics and algorithms that were explained in the lectures. Seminars are mandatory (you can miss only one seminar without any excuse). 

Task assignments, how and when they will be announced, when are the deadlines

At each seminar (starting from the second one), you will get a new task assignment. These will include mainly programming of selected algorithms with some theoretical exercises.  In total, you will then get five tasks within the semester. For each seminar group, you will have a dedicated folder in the study materials in IS (in the Seminars folder). There you will find all the necessary templates and information just before your seminar.

You will start working on the task within the seminar with the assistance of the tutor. In case you don't finish the whole assignment within the seminar, you have to finish it by yourself. You will need to submit each assignment to the corresponding Homework vault before the next seminar, so the deadline is two weeks from the actual seminar. Again, there is a dedicated folder for your seminar in the Homework vaults, where you will be submitting your solutions. 

How the tasks will be evaluated

The points for the seminar tasks will be based on the following principle. For each task, you can get up to 6 points (there will be five tasks in total). With the assignment, you will also get a set of unit tests that will help you to check if your solution is correct. It is highly advisable to check that your solution passes all the tests before you submit it to the Homework vault. All solutions will also be manually checked by the tutors. If there is some error in the solution, or the solution is incomplete, you will lose maximally 3 points (3 points if some of the unit tests fail, up to 3 points for errors undetected by tests) and you will have to fix and resubmit your solution (you will have one month for this). If the resubmission is still incorrect, you will lose maximally another 3 points, which means that for this task, you will get 0 points.  But you will still have to submit the correct solution to successfully complete the course, even in this case. For this second resubmission, the deadline will be before the final written exam. The main rule is that you must have the solutions for all five tasks submitted and accepted, preferably before going to the final exam. If you don't manage that (for example, the exam is before your deadline for submission of your last task), you can still write the exam. In such a case, if you pass the exam, you will get your grade only when all tasks are submitted and corrected by your tutor. If you fail the exam, you will get a notification immediately so you can enroll in another exam term. 

So if you submit all solutions on time (two weeks after getting the assignment) and with all unit tests passed, there is a high probability that you will get 30 points for the seminars. Oppositely, in the worst-case scenario, you can end with 0 points for the seminars, but if you complete all five tasks, you can still attend the final exam and successfully pass the course. 

Final grade

The final evaluation of the course will consist of two parts: 30 points for seminar tasks and 70 points for the written final exam (here, you have to get at least 35 points to pass the exam). To pass the whole course, you have to obtain at least 50 points.

The grading system will be the following:

• A ... 91 - 100 points
• B ... 81 - 90 points
• C ... 71 - 80 points
• D ... 61 - 70 points
• E ... 51 - 60 points
• F ... 0 - 50 points

The final written exam will consist of open questions on selected topics discussed within the lectures. 

Where do I find the study materials?

The study materials will consist of slides and recorded lectures, which will appear in the Information system a few days after the lecture. Both will be available at https://is.muni.cz/auth/el/fi/jaro2025/PB009/ in IS. These should be sufficient for the successful completion of this course. 

For more information on selected topics, you can check:

• The book Moderní Počítačová Grafika (Czech only, freely available here)
• One of the books:  Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice  or  Fundamentals of Computer Graphics  (available in the university library)
• The online version of the book Physically Based Rendering, freely available here: http://www.pbr-book.org/.
• Some lectures will have supporting online materials here. However, these materials are work-in-progress, and will probably not be complete by the end of the semester.

Questions and problems

Questions regarding the lectures: send an email to furmanova@mail.muni.cz 

Questions regarding the seminar: contact your tutor of the seminar -  furmanova@mail.muni.cz, byska@mail.muni.cz 

If you encounter any problems within the semester, please contact Katarína Furmanová ( furmanova@mail.muni.cz ) - the sooner, the better. All problems can be solved...