Description:
As a capstone design course, it is intended to engage the student in a group activity of an interdisciplinary nature, exercise oral communication skills, and require written documentation of the project.
The written documentation will take the form of web pages intended to document the process of designing and producing the computer animation project.
Oral communication will consist of a number of progress reports presented to the class by each group as well as a final presentation of the animation to a larger audience.
A single, quarter-long group project is the focus of this course. The project is a student-selected animation project in which students will be repsonsible for designing and producing a computer animation. Much of the group work will take place in CL112D during class hours
Maya is the course software. It is a high-end sofware product that is popular in industry. CS students will be required to learn this sofware and write some type of algorithmic control of motion. Maya has a scripting language as well as an API that can be used for this.
Inidividual Assignments | 10% |
Presentations | 15% |
Documentation | 15% |
Project | 20% |
Individual Project Contribution & Participation | 40% |
Estimated number of Classes | Material |
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1 | Introduction, overview and history of computer animation; it's relation to conventional animation, overview of digital video |
2 | Technical Background - graphics display pipeline, quaternion math, curve formulations, rendering issues for animation, introduction to interpolation |
3 | Course software - Maya |
3 | Various algorithms and techniques - content depends on animation projects selected |
3 | Viewing of example animations |
8 | Group work sessions |
Week 2 | Proposed storyboard |
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Week 4 | Final storyboard, sample still images |
Week 6 | Timing of sequences, sample stills, sample low-res animation |
Week 8 | Sample final high-res animation, storage and time requirements of final rendering |
Finals week | Final presentation of animation to class, hand in animation on DVD |