3p78_Essay_Project
Due Dates: Essay: December 2021. Animation or programming: early January 2022. (Exact dates TBA.)
Project topic approval: Run your idea by me if you are uncertain. Try to do so by the end of the October reading break.
Groups:
· Essays are done individually.
· Other programming projects (e.g. games) can be done in groups of up to 3, depending on the project. Please ask me first.
· You must understand all coding aspects of the submission. If a group member cannot understand a portion of the code, then they may forfeit their mark.
· Final marks will consider the quality and scope of projects.
Plagiarism and use of open source code or uncited sources: Don’t do it.
Essay
Write an essay on a graphics topic of your choice. This may be about some graphics technology you have discovered in a textbook or other source, a commercial application, or an advanced area of research in graphics. The best place to start is to look through computer graphics texts, conference proceedings, journals, and the web. The textbook has a bibliography you can use to track down additional sources. The library has a large collection of online resources. The web has an innumerable resources.
It is important that you investigate a variety of literature in the area you have chosen.
The requirements for the references are as follows:
· You should include at least 5 relevant references for your paper.
· These 5 references should be from published journals, books, or conferences.
· You can include additional references as required, including web sites.
· It is your responsibility to cite references in an appropriate fashion. You need to cite all your references in the text of your paper. For example, “Perlin noise [3]…” where [3] is the 3rd numbered citation in your bibliography. Otherwise, citations that are not discussed in your text will be ignored.
You should look at the various electronic databases in Brock’s library and the web, for example, Scholars Portal, Citeseer, and Research Gate.
Evaluation: Your paper should clearly discuss your own ideas and criticisms in an organized way in your own words. There is no need to copy text from other sources and use them in your paper. The entire paper should be in your words alone, and not what others have written. It is considered plagiarism if you include copied text which isn’t directly attributed to its source.
Turnitin.com is used on submitted papers.
Do not use automatic paraphrasing systems — academic misconduct otherwise!
A written paper (8 pages minimum not counting the title page and bibliography, 12 pt font, 1.5 line spacing, and reasonable margins) is to be submitted. The paper must be word-processed. It will be marked on grammar and spelling. The paper must have at least the following structure, with numbered section headings clearly given (additional sections are fine):
1. Title and abstract (paragraph)
2. Introduction
3. Discussion (organize further into multiple sections)
4. Conclusion
5. Bibliography
Please see the web site http://www.writing.engr.psu.edu/ for information on writing styles, bibliography formats, etc.
Animation
Use an animation system to produce a computer animation..
Some technical guidelines:
· Use a standard video format: Quicktime, MP4, AVI, WMV, DivX…
· Resolution: perhaps 640 by 480 or higher (depending on render time!), 24 frames/sec or more
· Time length: at least 20 seconds
· Soundtrack: sound effects and/or music
The content of your animation is up to you. You will be graded on the independent work you have done in the production (animation, models, textures). If you borrow 3D models and textures from other sources, please attribute them appropriately. If you make your own 3D models, let me know that in your hand-in, so that I can give you credit for that work in your final grade. However, please do not hand in the end result of a tutorial you have walked through for some animation system. Rather, you should use this project as an opportunity to be creative.
A number of tools are useful to consider:
1. Blender: Highly recommended as the favoured animation system by most students. This is a free, general-purpose animation system. It is very powerful, well-supported and documented, and has been used to create impressive professional-grade animations. Like all animation systems, it has a steep learning curve. A number of tutorial books and online tutorials are available. There is a large user community.
2. Other animation systems: You are welcome to use other animation systems (eg. 3D Studio Max, Maya).
3. Video editors: Video editors (Windows Moviemaker, Adobe Premiere, Apple Final Cut Pro, Sony Vegas, Adobe After Effects) let you do basic video and sound synching, and exporting into video file. For best results, render your animation clips as an uncompressed image files. You can post-process images to improve exposure and colour. Then load these images, as well as a soundtrack and sound FX, into the editor. Export your final movie as a compressed movie in a suitable video file format, at a high quality setting. Beware of uncompressed CD-quality sound, as it can double the size of your animation file.
4. Audio editors: Audio editors such as the free Audacity application let you record and edit sound (sound effects, music). You can also apply special effects to sound recordings.
5. Image editors: Image editors such as Gimp (free) or Photoshop (not free) can be useful for creating textures and content for your animation.
Animation ideas: Look at the 3P98 animation gallery, as well as user galleries on the web, for examples of what can be done with Blender and other systems. There are some amazing examples available, and they may give you some ideas about what is possible with these systems. You are only hindered by your imagination.
Documentation and hand-in: Create a web page describing all the creative and technical aspects of your animation. Be sure to attribute all sources of models, textures, and sound effects and music. Printed, the web site should be about 6 to 8 pages. Hand in the files for the web page, its URL, and COSC cover page.
Some general advice:
1. The best animations are those that have a simple idea that is done well. Try to avoid being too ambitious.
2. Making an animation is the same as producing an entire movie. You are the writer, director, set designer, artist, photographer, sound effects engineer, actor… Each of these aspects of the animation requires attention. Professional animations involve large teams of experts specializing in specific areas.
3. One of the most technically challenging aspects of animation is timing. Make use of draft, thumbnail rendering of animations, so that you can test the timing of your animated objects and camera. Be aware that the speed of the real-time wire frame previews that you see on your monitor may not match that of the final rendered video.
4. Pay attention to lighting. Just as with film and video photography, overly bright lights can create overexposed, washed-out scenes with muted colours. Weak lighting results in underexposed, obscured images. Shadows can occur with raytraced environments, and they are tricky to deal with (you may want to disable shadows).
5. Make sure your models are clearly visible in the animation. If the models are too far away, or obscured by other objects, or enter and leave the scene too quickly, then the viewer will not even notice them. See note 3 above as well, because a fast camera can zoom past a model too quickly.
6. Try not to move your camera around too much. Quickly turning cameras and grequent zooms are difficult to watch. If your models are doing lots of movement, then keep camera movement to a minimum. Separate camera cuts that are spliced together are probably more effective than to move the camera itself. One kind of animation to consider is one in which the camera stays relatively still, and the objects animate in front of it.
7. Be aware of aliasing problems:
a. Temporal: if objects move cyclically, make sure they don’t synchronize with the frame rate of the movie. (“wagon wheel” effect)
b. Texture: if textures have a finer resolution than the rendered image, they can “sparkle” in each frame. You may need to post-process the frames with an anti-aliasing filter.
8. Give yourself plenty of time for rendering the final video. If you have a lot of complex models and textures, lighting effects such as reflection and refraction, and special effects such as particles and explosions, then rendering can take hours, if not days.
9. Have fun