Cmpt 466 - Computer Animation

Cmpt 466 - Project Notes

(See also the group page.)

General Outline of Project

Project Groups: The main activity is a semester-long group project. The size of groups for animation projects can vary. Anything from 4 to 6 person groups would be good. The ideal size that I'm looking for would consist of five students with varying interests and capabilities.
The objective is to produce a short animation. By short, I mean something on the order of thirty seconds. Something longer is fine. Something shorter is fine, too, as long as the content is there.
The animation should incorporate some algorithmically controlled animation and/or some motion produced by software tools made for the class. Possible techniques for the animation project include flocking, particle systems, autonomous behaviour, rigid body collision detection and response, flexible body animation and plant growth.
I'm not necessarily looking for a complete story or a complete piece of animation. I'm looking for more for a vignette or a scene that might be in an animation.
The group will be responsible for keeping a web page up-to-date on the progress, including a written discription, and making several presentations during the semester explaining the progress they are making, presenting the design of the animation as it progresses, and showing partial results.

Choosing the Project

Be careful in how you choose your project. How well you design your project will have a major impact on its success.

Don't be overly ambitious. This is only a 10-week project.
Think about what computation needs to be done in order to pull off the project.
Good projects are ones that can be done at various levels of sophistication (see 'Complexity' below). A project whose success is dependent on one complex technique may fail miserably if that technique doesn't work how you expected it to.
One of the main things you learn in this course is how difficult it is to do good looking animation. It's relatively easy to get something moving; it's another thing to present it to the viewer so that the viewer can tell what's going on.

Some examples of previously picked projects:

OSU 2004-1: A Cool Staple
SFU 2003-1
SFU 2004-2

Project Components

The animation will have four components:

the storyboard - the description of what the animation will look like.
the models used in the animation
the renderings of individual frames showing scene composition and lighting
animation - a sequence of frames showing motion

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, and lighting.

There will be five presentations, roughly every two weeks, by the group concerning the status of the animation throughout the semester:

sketch storyboard
developed storyboard, sketch models, sketch frames
final storyboard, developed models, developed frames, sketch animation
final models, final frames, developed animation
final animation, presented during the final exam week

Each student is responsible for being involved in the presentations. Part of your grade will be based on this. See the process at work by the masters at Pixar.

Software

You should determine a software package for your work during your first homework. I will group you such that all your group members have chosen the same software.

Final Editing

For the animation, you should do about 30 seconds of animation with sound and titles.

You can easily add titles using Cinelarra (see also the Guide to CSIL software).

You can easily add a simple soundtrack to the animation using Cinelarra. You won't need to do any precise synching of sound unless you want to.

Complexity

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,

Use simple rendering to test motion
Use simple objects and shading to test motion and camera positioning.
Use simple motion (or no motion) to test rendering

Web Site

Each group is to maintain a web site containing the following information:

members of the group,
a written description of the animation, tasks, progress, problems, solutions, etc.
storyboard for the animation,
outline of tasks, which member is responsible for the task, and status during the semester,
milestones for the project and status during the semester,
estimated time required for rendering
sample images from the animation as they become available,
sample motion sequence from the animation as they become available,

Presentations

Part of your grade is based on your participation of group presentations. I expect everyone to participate at least a little in each presentation and I expect everyone to particpate equally in the presentations for the entire semester.

Presentation 1: Preliminary Proposal

This presentation should take about 5 minutes, plus time at the end for any discussion or questions..

Each group will present, for critique by the rest of the class, the following:

a storyboard consisting of half a dozen to a dozen (hand-drawn) key frames and a verbal explanation of the action, including timing estimations for the shots
a list itemizing the tasks to be done and a tentative timeline,
assignment of tasks among group members,
milestones needed to complete the project and a timetable for getting them done,

All of this should be put on the project web page.

At this point, the storyboard should be considered a proposal that is subject to change. Remember, this is a tentative plan. This is not cast in concrete. You can modify as you see fit in the next couple 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.

Presentation 2: Final Proposal

Each group will present, for critique by the rest of the class, the following:

a (tentative) final storyboard with annotations concerning action between key frames and specific timings.
finalized projects, assignments and milestones,
basic models of objects used in the animation,
sample scenes showing camera positions and model placement in several frames of the animation. The rendering of these can be crude: line drawing or simple polygonal models.

The storyboard, models and scenes should be made available on the web. 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.

Presentation 3: Initial Progress Report

Each group will present, for critique by the rest of the class, the following:

final storyboard - the timing of the scenes should be completely nailed down so you know the length of the piece down to the number of frames.
reasonable models of objects used in the animation
sample scenes 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.

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.

Presentation 4: Intermediate Progress Report

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 crudely rendered, every-nth-frame animation

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.

Presentation 5: Final presentation of animation

The final animation will be shown during 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.

Grading

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

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,

You will also be required to hand in an evaluation of the members of your group.

Last modified: January 2005

Torsten Möller / torsten AT cs DOT sfu DOT ca