Syllabus | Schedule | Homework & Assignments | Resources | Final

HOMEWORK AND ASSIGNMENTS

Assignment 1: In Motion

Using a variety of basic animation and deformation tools, create a complex action that incorporates at least two of the four animation principles (anticipation, follow through, secondary action, and squash and stretch). Keep your modeling simple, and focus all of your creative energy on the orchestration of movement in your scene. Do not use any skeleton rigging, but rather use hierarchical structures in combination with translate, rotate, and scale to control basic movements. Remember to approach your animation in passes, layering in more detailed movements after you have established your basic blocking. You will need to turn in your project directory as well as a playblast (at least 30 seconds) of your scene on disk.

Project Description: for Blog

Write: your 400 word (at least) description of your final project should describe in detail the environment and animation 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 material choices!

Give explicite, direct 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 2 - 3 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:

• Are you looking for collaborators? If so, on which aspects of the project?

• Include your final video from Maya I (if applicable) as well as 2-3 renders from that piece if you wish to continue with that environment.

• Describe the feel of the environment, 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.

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.

Assignment 2: Particle Motion

Create a short motion sequence (1min minimum) using dynamics. Make sure to include some of the following dynamics techniques that have been introduced since the last assignment as needed to accomplish your goal: Particles, Soft Bodies, Rigid Bodies, Fields, and Collisions, etc. Some tips for success - build up the layers of your effects one at a time, test early and often, make sure when running your dynamics to always start at the beginning of your timeline, and always set it to Play Every Frame. Do a real render of this - as shown in class - not a playblast. Give yourself plenty of time for the rendering.

Assignment 3: Rigged Motion System

Finesse your character's skeleton rig and use it in a short animation (to be a scene from your final project). Make sure to include use Set Driven Key and Inverse Kinematics. One of the goals of this assignment is to be able to develop a skeleton system by thinking through the unique requirements of motion your object will have. You need to use your rig in an playblast animation as well - so make sure to design it in a way that you can really use it! Make sure to skin your geometry to the rig. For the critique day you will need to:

1. Demo your animation rig live from a Maya scene file: show us how the controls are formed and how they function to control the skeleton in a sophisticated way.
2. Show us a small animation: using your rig, create a short 30 second animation (approx) that inventively portrays an action.

FINAL PROJECT