Project requirements summer 2013, intro to 3D animation

Remember, to contact me…  

Primary goal: build an entire environment  The core of your environment must be your own work.  Please do not mimic any proprietary content, such as a character or model from a movie or a video game.  Canned material from Maya can be used only to flesh out a scene and should not be the focus of our intention when viewing your video.  Your modeling must be clean and elegant, and must contain a realistic level of detail.  For example, a living room with noting on tables or shelves looks unrealistic.  Use materials and textures only on reasonably flat, homogeneous areas like a stone wall or paved street.  Use geometry for larger grained surface features.

Primary goal: build an entire environment, continued…  You may import media to use for textures and soundtracks, but nothing else can come from outside Maya.  All your modeling must be done in Maya.  Carefully balance materials, lights, shadows, and reflective and transparent materials - to give your scene a deliberate, unique look.

Additional required components  Some animation – but your modeling should be your central focus  A soundtrack – but again, your modeling should be your central focus; consider a simple voice/special effect track that can be easily timed to your animation, or let a piece of music drive the animation  A “puppet”, a rudimentary biped with a head, torso, two legs, and two arms that has an IK skeleton inside of it and can walk a few steps, or sit down and stand up, or perform some other simple, repetitive motion. You can create a separate scene for your puppet and rendering it as a separate video.

The Video  Make a one to three minute video rendered as avi, wmv, mov. Your video must be playable on  Quicktime  VLC on a Mac,  VLC on a Windows machine.  Make your video tell a story. Something begins, continues for a while, and then has an ending. There needs to be a point to why we are watching your video, something (however simple) must unfold.  Use at least 1240 by 960 pixels; anything smaller will not look good.  Use a high level of anti-aliasing.

Hand in  A data (not a playable) DVD containing…  Your entire project folder, minus only the individual images you rendered for your video. These images should be the only think that makes your project folder big.  Your video – no larger than a gigabyte.  During the first 10 seconds of your video, display: Intro to Animation, Summer 2013, Joe Cool (except plug in your own name…)  Test your DVD to make sure it is readable!  Put your DVD in a case, please.

Advice  Make sure all the parts of your environment fit together stylistically. This can be a problem if you use canned stuff from the Visor.  Don’t take on a project that is too large for you to finish completely.  Leave lots of time for rendering, and do test renderings along the way, to judge your render time needs.

An assignment  By Thursday, a written description of a scene that will be the basis of your environment – sent to me at  By the following Tue, a week from today, June 18, come in with your machine, having started or ready to start.  Come to class!  Move through the videos to see what it is you can do with Maya.