The goals of this course are to provide a broad introduction to research questions in computer animation, familiarity with previous animation results, and experience in programming animation algorithms using standard software environments.
The formal text for the class:
Computer Animation - Algorithms and Techniques by Rick Parent
(recommended).
The textbook will be supplemented by handouts in class.
| Week of | Tue | Thur |
| April 2 | Introduction Course material Brief history of animation |
Overview of animation production and research |
| April 9 | Animation Production I Storyboarding Scene composition Modeling/Lighting/Rendering Editing |
Animation Production II Animation in Maya Software in Production Project proposals due |
| April 16 | Keyframing and Kinematics Basic keyframing Particle systems Kinematics/Inverse Kinematics (IK) |
Motion Capture I Hardware Technologies Using motion capture data |
| April 23 | Motion Capture II Editing Motion Data |
Dynamics and simulation |
| April 30 | Evolving motion/automatic motion generation |
Human simulation control Progress Reports (write-up) |
| May 7 | Paper Presentations James' paper Warren's paper Casey's paper |
Paper Presentations Ben's paper Shintaro's paper Adriano's paper |
| May 14 | Paper Presentations - Reminder in OLM 1132 Ryan's paper Colin's paper Tyler's paper |
Paper Presentations Charle's paper Chong's paper Adam's paper |
| May 21 | High Level Behaviors |
Natural Phenomena I |
| May 28 | Natural Phenomena II |
Facial Animation |
| Jun 4 | Animation & real images Match moving/compositing Image morphing Video textures and sprites |
Applications Feature films Electronic Games Eng/Vis/Med |
Grades will be determined based on the following breakdown:
Programming project
Presentation
Class Participation (15%)**
Collaboration and team projects are encouraged but must be coordinated through the instructor.
Students will complete a project of their own design. Written project proposals (2-3 pages) are due at the end of the second week of classes. A progress report (also 2-3 pages) is due mid-term. Exact dates are marked on the syllabus.
A final presentation of the projects will be made during the exam period. A wrap-up report (4-6 pages) for the project will be due at the time of the final presentation as well as an electronic submission of the corresponding program source code (clearly documented). Grading will be based on the project (55%), class participation (15%), and paper/final presentations (30%).
*Mid-quarter, the students will present a paper from the literature (usually related to the project) and a project update to the class. The slides for the paper presentation (in ppt, unless otherwise arranged) will be due one week before the presentation.
**Class participation is determined based on class attendance, attention and participation in group discussion, and proper preparedness for the literature paper presentations lead by other class members. At the instructor's discretion, short in-class 'pop' quizzes may be administered to assess the preparedness of students for their peer's paper presentations. However, this is unlikely if the overall class participation remains at a satisfactory level.
All projects may also include turned in animations, as movie (mpg) files and/or video.
Siggraph paper http://www.cs.brown.edu/~tor/
Search for many online papers here: http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cs