CSE 682: - Project Notes
It seems this course is always being tweaked a little bit to make it better (hopefully).
The notes below are generic.
Specifics about the course for a particular quarter may vary - these specifics (like number of students in a group, or how long the animation should be) will be discussed in class.
- Capstone Projects: The main activity is a single, quarter-long, group project.
As a capstone project, the intent is to point you, the student, in the right direction and then let you go.
There will not be a lot of detailed review of your work (e.g., code review), although there will be progress reports to make sure everyone is on track for completing the project on time.
- Project groups: We usually shoot for 4-5 groups with 3-5 CS students in each group.
There may be one, sometimes two, additional Art students in a group in classes when there is ACCAD participation. This happens most, but not all, classes.
- A short animation:
The objective is to produce a short animation.
By short, I mean something on the order of a couple to several minutes in length.
This is something that will be discussed in class.
- Algorithmically controlled animation:
The animation must incorporate some algorithmically controlled animation and/or some motion control algorithm that you program yourself.
It can also contain procedural animation produced using Maya tools as well as any other tools you might find useful.
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Possible techniques for the animation project include basic physics (gravity, ballistic trajectories, springs), flocking, particle systems, autonomous behaviour, rigid body collision detection and response, flexible body animation, plant growth, and articulated linkages.
- Project topic: Sometimes the general topic for the animation is given in class - other times it is left completely up to the groups.
This will be discussed in class.
- Group responsibilities:
- Make several presentations during the quarter explaining the progress they are making, presenting the design of the animation as it progresses, and showing partial results, culminating in the final presentation of the finished animation.
- Document the project by keeping one or more web pages up-to-date on progress, including the current storyboard, a written discription, sample stills, and sample animations.
- Produce a final animation that includes a non-trivial amount of procedurally animated objects.
The objective is to produce a computer animation.
The final animation will be designed using:
- a concept statement - giving the overall idea of the piece
- a storyboard - the description of what the animation will look like.
- reference material - images and videos showing similar effects, objects, atmosphere, etc. that you want your piece to have
The entire group should work on the story ideas and development of the storyboard.
It is important to have certain group members be primarily responsible for the different tasks: model building, shading, scene layout, motion, lighting, camera control, and rendering.. or for different scenes in the animation.
Don't underestimate how hard it is to do good animation.
Animation is very much a trial-and-error process.
As such, it requires a lot of time to do right.
You save yourself a lot of time by attacking the problem intelligently.
Plan how you're going to test the different facets of the animation and how you're going to progress from one stage to the next.
It is important that you develop the animation using various levels of complexity. For example,
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Use simple rendering to test motion
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Use simple objects and shading to test motion and camera positioning.
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Use simple motion (or no motion) to test rendering and camera placement
- The CS software available for the class this quarter will be Maya and Premier. There are 10 Maya licenses and 5 Premier licenses for the machines in CL112D.
- CL112D is reversved for this class MWF 1:30-3:30, although we'll only use it for class a few times at the beginning of the quarter.
- Outside of class, You have priority on the CL112D machines (along with other graphics students).
Each group is to maintain a web site containing the following information:
- Web page design
- Navigation
- easy to find information - links are well organized, logical
- easy to read text because of placement, colors, font.
- For the project:
- project information
- Name of group and List of members
- Storyboard
- Animatic
- Presentation slides
- progress - in enough detail that I can follow the progress of the project
- Timeline with milestones and status - should be specific enough so that I can tell how the group is making progress toward getting the project done.
- Sample stills - as they become available
- Sample videos - as they become available
- For the individuals
- responsibilities: itemized tasks, explanation of procedural elements - be specific so that I can determine the workload required by the project and the complexity of the procedural elements.
- progress: journal (at least weekly) of accomplishments, current tasks, images, test videos, etc.
Again - be specific; this is one of the factors I use to determine how much an individual is contributing to the project and helps determine your individual grade for the course.
As I understand it, the M drives cannot be used to hold the web pages (bummer), so it will have to reside in some user area.
So the number of images and video will have to be limited because of space limitations.
I will announce specific dates during the quarter that I will evaluate and grade the web site documentation.
Part of your grade is based on your participation of group presentations.
I expect everyone to have significant participate in the presentations throughout the quarter.
An individual does not have to participate in each presentation, but must do his/her share.
Presentation grade will be based on amount and quality of presentation.
There will be five presentations, roughly every two weeks, by the group concerning the status of the animation throughout the quarter:
- 1: sketch storyboard
- 2: developed storyboard, sketch models, sketch frames
- 3: final storyboard, developed models, developed frames, sketch animation
- 4: final models, final frames, developed animation
- 5: final animation, presented at the final exam time slot or some other time agreed to by the class
- This presentation should take about 30 minutes, plus time at the end for any discussion or questions.
- Be prepared and professional - you will be graded individually and as a group on your presentation organization and mechanics.
- Every group member should participate in the presentation.
- Prepare a powerpoint presentation - or use your website but only if it's designed well for a presentation.
- See the rubric for oral communication skills for individual presentations and Team Presentations
Each group will present, for critique by the rest of the class, the following:
- a storyboard consisting of one to two dozen (hand-drawn or digital) key frames and an explanation of the action, including timing estimations for the shots
- an animatic, showing the timing of the scenes of your animation along with as much stylistic animation and camera moves as possible,
- a timeline with milestones needed to complete the project
- a list itemizing the tasks to be done assignment of tasks among group members, including current thoughts on the procedures that will be used to implement the project.
- a list of any complex or non-trivial models that will be needed with images of similar real objects or rough models already generated
All of this should be on the project web page whether or not you use it for the presentation.
In addition, individual blogs explaining each member's work on the project should be on (or linked to by) the web site.
At this point, the storyboard should be considered a proposal that is subject to change.
Remember, this is a tentative plan.
Nothing is cast in concrete.
You can modify as you see fit in the next few of weeks.
But I want you to start seriously considering what you're going to do for your project.
The group should be looking for constructive feedback from the rest of the class on the storyboard and should be prepared to modify the storyboard based on the feedback it gets.
Similarly, with respect to the tasks and their assignment, expect constructive critisism.
You will also be critiqued on your "in-front of class" presentation mechanics.
By this presentation you should have pretty much everything decided, know that it is doable, know how to do it, and know how long it will take to do it.
There is still a little wiggle room for last minute changes to the project, but anything changed after this point should be minor or as a result of something unanticipated.
From here on out, it should be an issue of just getting things done.
I need to review and evaluate the projected procedural content of your project.
Each group will present, for critique by the rest of the class, the following:
- a final animatic with annotations concerning action between key frames and specific timings.
- finalized tasks, assignments and milestones for the rest of the quarter
- basic models of objects used in the animation,
- sample high quality stills showing camera positions and model placement in several frames of the animation.
- sample motion tests showing keyframe and procedural animation to be used in the aniamtion.
These don't have to in the final scene or with final rendering applied.
- final list of procedural animations to be used in the animation
In addition, take note of the following:
- The storyboard, models and scenes should be made available on the web as well as the other information.
- Don't only put a link to the PowerPoint slides; the information should be integrated into the web site so it can be easily browsed - although linking to powerpoint slides, if that's what you use for your presentation, is a good idea.
- The general story should be pretty firm by this time and there should be no question about the feasibility of the project.
However, there is still room to make some adjustments to the storyboard when problems are encountered along the way.
- Specifics about procedural techniques to be used (e.g. exactly what computations you're going to use and values used to drive the procedural model) should be developed and included on the web site as they become available.
- You should also be gathering statistics on how much time per frame rendering will take.
Each group will present, for critique by the rest of the class, any updates from the last presentation, a report on the procedural elements, and an updated plan for getting the project done including rendering time.
This should not be a full presentation of the project.
It should be an update to the previous presentation.
For example, you might some of the following:
- updated (and hopefully final) animatic - the timing of the scenes should be completely nailed down so you know the length of the piece down to the number of frames.
- final models of objects used in the animation
- final layouts of scenes used in the animation
- sample final shots showing camera positions and model placement in several frames of the animation. The rendering of these should be moderately complex. The renderings don't have to be of the highest quality, but basic shading and illumination should be demonstrated.
- computation times for sample scenes in the animation. This together with the number of frames of the piece should give you a very good idea of how much computation time you'll need to complete the project.
- Some test animations should be developed by this time. These should be a sanity check on whether the approaches you've selected are actually going to work and how much effort they will take. These don't necessarily have to incorporated into the project - they can just be stand-alone tests of the algorithms to be used.
- Sample audio
The storyboard, models and scenes should be made available on the web.
Everything should be pretty well decided at this point and initial progress on the objects, lighting and shading, scene composition, and camera positions should be underway.
Each group will present, for critique by the rest of the class, the following:
- final models of objects used in the animation
- sample fully rendered scenes showing camera positions and model placement in several frames of the animation.
- simple motion studies showing low-quality renderings of every-nth-frame
- progress on programming assignments
The models and scenes should be made available on the web.
A demonstration of the motion desired should be made at this point.
Refinement of the other aspects should be well underway.
NOTE:
A detailed report on programming assignments that each person in the group did for the project should be posted on the web page.
This should include programming efforts that were abandonded for one reason or another, and descriptions of collaborations on programming projects including percent contribution for each collaborator.
Part of your grade will be based on this description.
This is to be posted by the in-class final exam.
If you do it sooner than that, then I will have time to give you feedback on whether what you have is sufficient or not.
The final animation will be shown during final exam time of finals week.
Note that it is not unusual for other graphics students, and sometimes staff and faculty, to come to the final presentations.
Sometimes nobody comes; sometimes we get quite a few outside people attending.
The presentation should start with an explaination of the techniques used to produce the animation, who did what, what software was used, what problems were encountered and how they were resolved.
For the animation, you end up with about five to ten minutes of animation with sound and titles.
CSE editing system:
We have 5 copies of Premier in CL112D.
Soundtrack:
You can easily add a simple soundtrack to the animation using Premier.
Grading of the project is based on:
- Difficulty of the techniques considering the background and number of students involved in the project,
- the overall quality of the presentations to the class,
- the sufficiency of the information in the group web site,
- the quality of the results presented during the final presentation (late animations will be accepted, but the group grade will be reduced)
If the project is not completed by the time of the final presentations, the animation may be completed by taking an incomplete.
However, the grade for the project will be reduced.
The group must still make a presentation at the time for final presentations showing whatever results they currently have.
Grading of the individuals in the group is based on:
- complexity of assigned tasks and quality of work (considering background of student),
- the participation of the student in the class presentations,
syllabus
Last updated 4/16/10
