IDS 252: Topics for January 20 & 22, Spring 2015

• Discuss course structure and expectations

• In place of purchasing a textbook, you are required to purchase a basic membership in Digital Tutors for ~3 months at a cost of $29 per month.

• This course counts towards:

  • The Creating in the Arts (CA) general education requirement.
  • An elective in the Arts, Technology and Multimedia minor.
  • An elective in Film Studies.
  • An elective in Studio Art.

• Overview of Animation Production Process. Roles

• Lab 1: Introduction to Maya

• A Few Maya Basics (This is all covered in Lab 1)

  • Navigating the Maya interface.
  • Orthographic vs Perspective Cameras Projections
  • Navigating the 3D world and transformations
  • Modeling Basics:
    • Polygons, NURBS, Subdivision Surfaces: .
    • General discussion and comparison: Polygons, NURBS, Subdivision Surfaces.
    • Maya: Working with Polygons - Use Quads as much as possible.
  • Terminology: Maya Projects, Scene Files, Rendering an image.

• During the semester we will be looking at a number of animation examples

  • Past animations from IDS-252
  • Animation Shorts
    • SIGGRAPH Electronic and Animation Theaters (DVD)
    • Pixar Shorts Also, look at "Behind the scenes".
    • Pixar on YouTube
    • Gerald McBoing-Boing
    • Pipe Dreams
    • Others: Bunny

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