These are photos we took at the CS488 midterm this fall. It was on halloween, so the students were required to dress up. They get bonus points for dressing up as the puppet they modelled in assignment 3, so of course everybody dressed up for it.... The reality is that only a quarter of the class made any attempt at dressing up for the midterm, so we had to improvise. This scene is modelled vaguely after the classroom for the term, CPH 3388. The classroom had barely enough tables for the students writing the exam so we had to fill every table with puppets. We decided to throw in a few typical uninteresting puppets students tend to model: one with eyes and wearing clothes; a similar one with Selina's attempt at "sinfully ugly colours"; a minimal puppet (just a nose) with a dull matte material; and another minimal puppet with a shiny gray material. We were able to use the raytracer and OpenGL raypreview modified for last term's scene for this term. Steve hacked in some code to raytrace cylinders, so we were able to put in a couple of puppets modelled with cylinders. The puppets with additional primitives the raytracer doesn't support, or fly apart and distort (for a reason other than one on our list of reasons as to why things fly apart) were texture mapped as posters. The side view rendered in 1:04:16 hours, and the top view rendered in 31:49 minutes, with hierachical bounding spheres on for both. The modelling and positioning of things took a tad longer. We hope this scene will set the standard for raytraced scenes this term and inspire students of future terms to create more interesting puppets for their assignment 3.

A few notes about the scene: It is only loosely based on reality. Nobody cheated in the exam (to the best of our knowledge). Nobody shoved tables aside so they can have room to sit. No student disrupted other students. Nobody gouged out their eyes or chopped off their hands. Jasmin wasn't there. Steve is not really the devil (although some might argue otherwise, as one student did on his exam).

Examinees:

Man by Mark Antkowski Devil by Trevor Champagne Halloween Man by Michael Colp Boss also by Michael Colp

Hand by Chris Ingram Snuffy also by Chris Ingram Polar Bear by Rick Knowles Bear by Mark McKay Skeleton by Dave Pettypiece

Arthur by Derek Phillips Homer by Chris Taylor Elf by Mathew Thorne Pill Boy by Mat Trudel

Proctors:

Stephen Mann
   positioned Man, Devil, Boss, Halloween Man, Hand, Polar Bear, Pill Boy
   provided midterm for class enjoyment

Jasmin Patry (TA)    provided script for Jasmin (Penguin)    edited image of Steve

Selina Siu (TA)    positioned Skeleton, Snuffy, Jasmin, Selina and miscellaneous uninteresting puppets    modelled Selina (Owl), uninteresting puppets, classroom, midterms

Other Credits:

Thanks to Robert Kroeger for the phrase "sinfully ugly colours" and to Stuart Pollock for setting the standard that inspired the phrase.

last updated 5 March, 2001.