Grade breakdown
| Component | Weight | Window | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Practical exam | 20% | Week 7 · Oct 16 | In-class, no AI. Optional geo station (georeference + globe anchor + sun). |
| Geo Brief portfolio | 10% | Weeks 1–12 | GB1 Postcard, GB2 Drift, GB4 Splat, GB5/GB6 cores, the Atlas — graded once as a body of work at Week 12. |
| Realistic Virtual Environment | 10% | Weeks 3–6 | The environment build — exterior, landscape, light, air. |
| Architectural Visualization | 10% | Weeks 5–9 | The interior build at true 1:1 — sited at real coordinates. |
| Project of Choice / VP Collaboration | 10% | Weeks 10–12 | The existing options plus the geo menu. |
| Final Project | 40% | Weeks 12–15 | Exhibited in the VP Studio, finals week. Any Geo Brief is an approved direction to scale up. |
Scale. 95–100 A · 89–94 A/B · 84–88 B · 77–83 B/C · 72–76 C · 66–71 C/D · 60–65 D · below 60 F.
Master semester grid
One table, the whole term. Brief + Guided Lab is the teaching (10:00–12:00). AI Lab is the same problem, agent-assisted (12:00–1:15). Geo is what the parallel track is doing that day. Due is shown at the 1:15 crit.
| Wk · Date | Brief + Guided Lab | AI Lab (12:00) | Geo layer | Due at crit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Sep 4 | Orientation + First Flight. From zero to infinity, inside one Friday. What spatial computing is; the toolchain; agent ground rules. Editor navigation, project setup, source control from minute one, the Cesium stack — then every student flies somewhere that matters to them. Screens up at 1:15. | First supervised agent session: set georeference from a lat/long, wire SunSky to a date and hour, scaffold a Level Sequence. Verify the sun by hand. | GB1 · Postcard + Atlas assigned | — |
| 2 · Sep 11 | The Camera. Cinematic language in-engine: Cine Camera anatomy, rigs and rails, Sequencer, Movie Render Queue. Composition at planetary scale versus room scale. | Agent-generated camera paths between coordinates; fly every path before rendering — agents clip terrain and never notice. | GB1 crit · GB2 · The Drift assigned | GB1 |
| 3 · Sep 18 | RVE launches — Environment I: Land. Landscape sculpt and import, UE 5.8 Mesh Terrain (experimental) versus classic Landscape, Nanite, Fab/Megascans kits, foliage systems. | PCG scatter graph or agent placement pass on your terrain; hand-review density and intersections. | Atlas ritual continues under everything | Atlas #3 |
| 4 · Sep 25 | Environment II: Light + Air. Lumen, Megalights (production-ready in 5.8), volumetric fog, sky and atmosphere, post-process. Light the Week 3 scene three ways. | Prompt a full lighting rig from a written mood; compare against your hand-lit version. Log the diff. | GB2 crit — screening room mode, lights down | GB2 |
| 5 · Oct 2 | ArchViz launches — Architecture at 1:1. The interior build spec. Twinmotion → UE pipeline, Datasmith, true-scale discipline (door heights, tread depths, sightlines). Block the interior. | Agents clean Datasmith imports (naming, material slots); compute the real sun for the real site and hour. | GB3 · Tampa 1:1 assigned inside ArchViz | — |
| 6 · Oct 9 | Materials + exam rehearsal. PBR logic, material instances, decals, vertex paint. Final polish pass on RVE. | Unplugged. The exam is no-AI, so this hour is rehearsal without agents — the skills have to live in your hands. | Atlas | RVE due |
| 7 · Oct 16 | PRACTICAL EXAM. Stations, timed, no AI. Optional geo station: supplied FBX and coordinates → georeference, globe-anchor, SunSky to Oct 16, 4:30 pm, screenshot. Non-Google stack only. | — | — | Exam |
| 8 · Oct 23 | CAPTURE DAY. Short brief: photogrammetry versus Gaussian splats, capture technique (orbit, overlap, exposure). Then the field session — campus, minarets, riverfront. Photograph one subject, 60–150 frames, upload to ion before 1:50. Reconstructions cook over the week. | In the field or on return: script contact sheets and capture-metadata logs from the photo sets. | GB4 · Splat the Block assigned | — |
| 9 · Oct 30 | Blueprints I + splat import. Blueprint anatomy: events, variables, triggers, timelines. Build an interactive door and light state in your ArchViz interior. Pull splat tilesets into UE 5.8; begin the composite. | Agent wires a Blueprint from a plain-English spec; you review it node-by-node at crit speed. | ArchViz + GB3 crit | ArchViz + GB3 due |
| 10 · Nov 6 | Data-driven worlds. Metadata, attribute-driven materials, UMG widgets. Guided lab is GB5 · Data City core: everyone loads one real Tampa dataset as a styled vector overlay, restyles it away from GIS-rainbow, captures a titled still. | Agents fetch and clean GeoJSON, write the attribute-to-material mapping. Verify five features against the source portal by hand. | GB4 crit · PoC assigned with geo menu | GB4 |
| 11 · Nov 13 | Ship it: exhibition builds. Packaging work that survives opening night: cooked Windows builds, kiosk and auto-relaunch behavior, gamepad and touchscreen input mapping, performance locked at wall/projector resolution, soak testing. Guided lab is GB6 · Surge core: waterline scrubber on real Tampa terrain, first-person at street level, gamepad in hand. (Headset packaging: a 20-minute optional demo for anyone planning a VR final — see P5.) | Agent-generated profiling reports and packaging scripts; a human checks the vertical datum on the water. | GB6 core built in-lab | GB5 core |
| 12 · Nov 20 | The Volume I. VP Studio anatomy: video server → nDisplay → tracking → LED cabinets. PoC crit. Final proposals pitched — geo directions explicitly on the menu. | Agents draft nDisplay configs and wall-day checklists; verify against the studio's actual node map. | Final proposals include geo scale-ups | PoC due + GB6 core |
| 13 · Nov 27 | No class — Thanksgiving. (Verify against the UT academic calendar.) | — | — | — |
| 14 · Dec 4 | The Volume II. Running the wall: crew roles, camera tracking calibration, troubleshooting the cabinets. Final production; wall tests for geo pieces; VP Studio scheduling locked. | Movie Render Queue scripting, shot checklists, batch renders overnight. | Geo Brief portfolio assembled | Final WIP check |
| 15 · Dec 11 | Polish + pack. Final production. Build soak tests on the actual exhibition machines, Google-attribution audit on anything exhibited, ion token validity check, exhibition logistics and labels. | Agents compile each student's semester AI dev log into the final portfolio document. | Atlas locked for the loop | Exhibition-ready builds |
| F · Dec 14–17 | EXHIBITION — VP Studio. The LED wall runs cinematic and interactive geo work at architectural scale; gamepad stations run navigable builds on screens; the Atlas loops as ambient projection in the entry. A headset appears only if a Final opted in and passed the Week 13 hardware check. | — | — | Final due + Atlas |
The Friday rhythm
| Hour | Block | What the geo track does with it |
|---|---|---|
| 10:00 | Brief — demo and concepts on the projector | Geo topics fold into the demo when the week carries a brief (W1, W2, W8, W10, W11); three Atlas frames open every Friday. |
| 10:45 | Guided Lab — build the same thing, step by step | GB cores are built here, in the room (Data City W10, Surge W11), not assigned as extra homework. |
| 12:00 | AI Lab — the same problem, agent-assisted | Every geo assignment has a defined agent exercise and a defined verify-by-hand step. |
| 1:15 | Crit / share — screens up | Geo deliverables land here on the alternating cadence: W2, W4, W9, W10, W11, W12. |
Projects
P1 · Realistic Virtual Environment — the environment build
10% · Weeks 3–6 · Due W6 crit
An exterior environment, built from a real place you can stand in or document: landscape at true scale, Nanite geometry, a Fab/Megascans kit made your own, foliage with intent, and a full Lumen/Megalights lighting pass with atmosphere.
Deliverables. A navigable level (keyboard or gamepad pawn), a 60-second cinematic through it, and the AI dev log.
Rubric rows. Terrain and assembly craft · lighting and atmosphere · fidelity to the referenced place · performance sanity (it runs) · process and log.
P2 · Architectural Visualization — the interior build (+ Tampa 1:1)
10% · Weeks 5–9 · Due W9 crit
A designed interior at strict 1:1 — Twinmotion into UE via Datasmith — with two honest lighting states (day/night or on/off), material truthfulness, and human-scale verification: door heights, counters, and sightlines checked against your own body.
New this year, the GB3 siting requirement. The building stands at true coordinates on Cesium World Terrain with real neighbors and a matched sun — a before/after pair, one 30-second approach shot in context, coordinates documented in the repo. Siting quality is a rubric row inside this 10%.
Deliverables. Interior still set (5 or more), a walkthrough, the sited context shots, AI dev log.
P3 · Geo Brief portfolio
10% · Weeks 1–12 · Graded once at W12
The body of work from the parallel track: GB1 Postcard (W2) · GB2 The Drift (W4) · GB4 Splat the Block (W10) · GB5 Data City core (W11) · GB6 Surge core (W12) · the Atlas (weekly, all term).
Individual briefs get crit feedback in real time; the grade lands once, on the portfolio as a whole — trajectory counts.
P4 · Project of Choice / VP Collaboration
10% · Weeks 10–12 · Due W12 crit
The existing open slot, with an expanded menu. Choose one: a self-directed UE/VR project · a VP Studio collaboration · or a geo menu item — full Data City, full Surge, extended Splat, City as Backdrop (Cesium plates or live on the LED wall), Tabletop Tampa (projected), Point Cloud Elegy (Florida LiDAR), or Procedural Counterpoint (City Sample/PCG against the streamed real).
Same PoC rubric as always; menu items each carry one extra named deliverable per their brief.
P5 · Final Project
40% · Weeks 12–15 · Exhibited finals week, VP Studio
Geo directions are explicitly approved scale-ups: the Drift becomes a scored short; the Splat becomes an installation; Surge becomes the room-scale wall piece; City as Backdrop becomes a directed VP shoot with crew roles.
Exhibition formats. LED wall (cinematic and interactive, architectural scale) · gamepad stations (navigable builds) · ambient projections (the Atlas in the entry) · at most one attended VR station, if earned.
The Week 15 pre-show audit is mandatory: Google attribution visible on every piece that touched Google tiles, data-source credits on data pieces, ion tokens valid through the run.
P6 · Practical exam
20% · Week 7 · Oct 16 · No AI
Stations, timed, hands-only — the standing rule holds: no agents, no chat, no AI TA. The recommended station set now includes one geo station (georeference + globe anchor + SunSky to the exam hour + screenshot; Cesium World Terrain and OSM Buildings only, so nothing depends on Google quota under time pressure). Week 6's AI Lab hour runs unplugged as rehearsal.
The AI Lab arc
The 12:00 hour tells its own story across the term:
- W1–2 — first supervised sessions, small verifiable tasks: georeference, sun, camera paths.
- W3–5 — agents as production assistants: scatter passes, import cleanup, lighting rigs. Always diffed against hand work.
- W6 — unplugged, on purpose.
- W8–9 — agents as pipeline tooling: contact sheets, Blueprint scaffolds reviewed node-by-node.
- W10–11 — agents on data and deployment: GeoJSON cleaning, profiling reports, with mandatory ground-truth spot checks.
- W12–15 — agents as crew: nDisplay configs, render scripting, log compilation.
Policies
University policies — Title IX, ADA, attendance, academic integrity, campus closure, disruption — are stated in full on the official syllabus in SpartanLearn / Canvas, and that document governs. This companion is informational.
More than three absences: NF. No AI assistance of any kind during the Week 7 exam.