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HOMEWORK AND ASSIGNMENTS

PLEASE NOTE:

Whenever a homework file is handed in, please label it in the following manner:
• Unless otherwise specified, put your entire project folder into a folder with your name as the folder title
• Put this folder in the appropriate homework folder inside of the Drop Folder for our class

Homework 1

Polyforms: Using polygon modeling, create two examples of a complex branching network. Your models can be abstract, realistic, or somewhere in between, but you should strive for an aesthetically interesting and well-constructed forms. As always in this course, creativity should be an integral part of your exploration. One of the goals of this assignment is to become more comfortable with your own free-form use of the Polygon toolset, so make sure to explore a variety of methods for form creation. If you feel your models require supporting text to be properly understood, please include it in your folder. Render your polyforms with a ramp texture, a 2D texture, a 3D texture, a bump map, and a displacement texture. For extra credit add lights, shadows, and raytracing to your polyform renders.

Project Description 1

Write: a 500 Word (at least) description of your final project. It should describe in detail the environment or object(s) you wish to create. Remember: this is a virtual world you are creating so any limitations on scale and sophistication of the space (even the direction of gravitational pull) should be very conscious choices. You aren't limited by money - so don't make generic choices!

Give explicite references (the names of the artists, set designers, designers, etc) in your description to designers, architects, or artists who work in a similar vien. Add at least 6 - 8 images (photographs or stlls) from outside sources (books, digital images, magazine images) to this description that provide clear illustration of the overall style, color scheme, lighting scheme, and general 'feel' that you are going for. Include these elements:

• Describe the feel of it, ie, is the space contemporary or futuristic or rustic? Within that genre, got into specifics about the context. Set the scene for us. This should read something like the opening of a script or a stage setting.

• Describe the materials - ie, wood, metals, plastic, glass, etc. Be specific! Velvet vs felt, granite vs lava rock, etc. Be prepared to discuss/ defend your material choices - expecially if you are an industrial design major.

• Talk about the components of the space. Who is the space designed for? How many inhabitants? Who is the object desgined for? How old are they? Where do they live? Define your target audience.

• Or, if the space/ object is more abstract in concept, talk about what you hope people looking at it will understand of it. Describe the metaphors behind it. Define the context for the space: Would this space be for a gaming environment, a film, a fine art piece, an interior or architectural or industrial design concept?

Overall I am looking for you to be original + thoughtful here and to genuinely take chances. Again, because you are designing this yourself, there is no reason why your environments or design objects should look 'generic'. They should look like they come from you, as the artist/ designer who is an up and coming author and artistic director.

Homework 2

Throwing Down A Space: Concentrate on creating the environment (film set), designed object, or site specific sculpture from your description. Using polygons as constructors of space/place/environment, you are to create 2 different "sketches" of the environment you will be creating for your final project. These represent two initial approaches to the look/ scope of your project. This means 2 different scene files.

First, photoshop together or hand sketch the front and side views (or side and top views) of two different approaches to the spaces Use these sketches (which you will have to scan in if they are hand drawn) as image planes to model from. I will collect these sketches or photoshop files. To clarify, each scene must include two images that you work from to grow out the space. So, in all, you will produce 4 images for this assignment.

By roughing out the space, I mean use modified primitives to start building out the space and defining it. The details don't have to be articulated - that is why this is called "throwing it down." You will be require to discuss the two approaches you have made during the class crit and narrow your approach. This approach is what you will build upon for all the next assignments for the semester.

You will hand in the two scene files as well as the four digital files used as image planes. I will look for the image planes in your scenes as well. Images should be scanned in at 72 or 96 dpi, and roughly sized at 600 x 800 ppi.

It’s important that you organize your scenes in sensible hierarchies and get used to working with the Outliner. The main purpose of this homework is to engage your creativity in the imaginative creation of spaces/objects/environments. The space may be anything you want it to be: your room, inside your mouth, inside a refrigerator, a cave, "suburbia", a nest, inside a camera, outer-space, the space inside of your polyform, etc. If your interests are leaning towards gaming, modeling for film animation, modeling for fine arts (digital images or prototyping of sculptures, etc), or modeling for industrial design, please focus on designing your rough environments to reflect your interest in one of these areas. I will ask you to contextualize your rough environment this way. This way, we begin to start building your portfolio.

Homework 3

Still Life with Materials: Using your Homework 2 environment, concentrate on creating the best atmospheric lighting and shadows for the space and its surfaces. Apply appropriate materials to the objects in your scene - ie, raytracing on glass, subtle bump maps on walls, blinns for plastic, shiney surfaces, etc. Render 6-8 scene images in .tif format of resolution 720 x 480. Your goal for this homework is to approach material accuracy as much as possible with the texturing and lighting you have learned so far and paint the mood of the scene. Use raytracing on lights (in their shadows attributes) and refraction control in the textures for when it is appropriate. (Make sure to turn on raytracing in the render globals.) Render using mental ray. Give yourself plenty of time for the renders as they will take a while to crunch. Some images should give us a medium distance overview of the scene while others focus on close-ups that showcase your eye for detail. Be sure to use depth of field in order to add realism for large spaces or monumentally sized objects. ALWAYS bevel edges on box-y polygon shapes unless they are situated far in the background.

Assignment 1

Filling out the Polygon Environment: Using techniques of Polygon and poly proxy modeing continue to fill out your complex environment. You should be building an environment (or an object in a specific context) that relates a full experience. As such, this assignment requires that you not only pay attention to rendering large spaces, but also to modeling/ rendering those detailed areas that bring that place to life and make it specific to your imagination and design aesthetic (ie, anything but generic). In your environment you should include models previously created for Still Life with Material, but ONLY as a starting to the work for this assignment - I expect to see the space and objects in it as recognizable now. For this assignment, at least 4 completed new models (not just primitives or stand ins). The full background "setting" of your scene should be clear. Make 12 renders (in TIF format!!!) that wiil serve as the storyboard or 'keyframes" of your final camera flythrough. Consider how you introduce the space/ objects to your audience through interesting camera work.

Blogs

Your review entries must be thoughtful and though provoking, written in your own words (not paraphrased or copied from the originating site), and concise. Contextualize the project or infomation you find. Why is it relavent or of particular interest? Why should people care? Each entry should be at least 5 sentences in length + include a picture or video illustration. Please also add comments to other's entries and enter into dialogues with each other.

Assignment 2:

1) Choose two objects of medium complexity (like a lamp or chair) from your current environment.

2) Put those object into an empty poly cube 'room' (you can delete off a couple of the cube faces so that you can see in clearly). Make sure the walls of the poly cube are textured with a Lambert shader. You can color the walls if you want to.

3) Set up one spot light for your objects.

4) Set up one simple flat plane as a light source (via final gather) in the scene.

5) Make sure that one object is textured to look like glass (which means applying the right texture settings + raytrace settings as well as the right lighting + mental ray, caustics, and raytracing settings) and the other object is covered with a colored blinn texture, with a bump map. Use your own current objects, not the ones from previous tutorials.

6) Keep the camera that you are rendering from locked in place (or that angle of viewing bookmarked) - all renders should be of the same camera view.

7) Render 7 different renderings of the scene - I will check your render layer settings. All renders should be in tif format.

- one render with straight maya software rendering + raytracing on (no global illumination or final gather)
- one render with mental ray + raytracing on (no global illumination or final gather)
- one render with all lights off except for the flat plane as the final gather lighting for the scene
- one render with global illumination and final gather on together for soft light effects + color casting
- one render with caustics, mental ray, and global illumination for the best glass render
- one render as an occlusion pass

Seven images are due in all (as well as the scene files) all at the start of class on Monday.
I will no longer accept scene files where the textures are not properly linked in the project folder (ie, where you open your scene and the textures show as non-existent or black).

For Extra credit:
1) Create, in a separate scene, an object that has a two sided texture where one side is glowing (as found in the lamp tutorial). Hand in the scene files and the render.

- and, or -

2) Create an object that emits a tv glow + glowing image (as found in the computer monitor). Hand in the scene files and the render.

If you want Extra, Extra credit:
Prepare a 5 - 10 minute demo for the class on a tutorial that relates to one of these lighting/ rendering/ texturing issues - on a subject that hasn't been already covered in class. Email me in advance to let me know the content demo you plan to do - and I'll send you an ok back. You can present your tutorial this thursday or next tuesday.

Assignment 3

UV Mapping: Using previously constructed models, UV Map at least three of them with textures that are image based. Hand in a text (.txt or .rtf)) file with this assignment that lists the 3 objects with the UV maps.

Continue populating your chosen environment with a full set of sophisticated materials. All of the surfaces in your environment should be shaded by the time you hand in this assignment. Consider not only how each individual surface looks but how they go together to create an aesthetically interesting experience as a whole.

Render 10 seconds of your camera fly through on the renderfarm. Use the final, high quality render settings and high quality lighting settings that you plan to use in your final render. Make sure that you choose 10 seconds of your fly through where the viewer gets to see a general wide views of the environment, as well as a close-ups of more detailed work.
(Ten seconds is 300 frames if you have your time base set correctly to 29.97 (or 30) frames per second.)

Assignment 4

Playblast your entire flythrough - at least 600 frames. Make sure your camera isn't always in motion. Give your viewer's eyes a rest and a chance to absorb the scene. The camera movement should be smooth, well choreographed, and it should make the most of the depth of field and focal length possibilities that Maya offers.

Final Project

FINAL PROJECT Rendered environment. Render a series of ten high-resolution images of your project in .tif file format. You should make sure that you have at least ten distinctly different viewpoints on the project represented. In other words, render your environment from at least ten angles (including wide view, aerial, and a number of ambient, detail "still life" shots) to fill out our understanding of the space. Make the most of the depth of field and focal length possibilities that Maya offers.

Also, hand in a 15 - 30 second flythrough animation of the space rendered at full resolution.

It is absolutely essential to make sure that you start rendering your animation tests early and the final high resolution version should be sent to render with great care!