Project requirements

1. Project requirements summer 2013, intro to 3D animation

2. Remember, to contact me… buzzking@rocketship.com 303 437 7419

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. The Video • Make a one to three minute video rendered as avi, wmv, mov. Your video must be playable on • Quicktime • VLC http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.htmlon 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. An assignment By Thursday, a written description of a scene that will be the basis of your environment – sent to me at buzzking@rocketship.com 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.