Course Description and Policies
IDS 252: 3D Animation, Spring 2015

1. Students will acquire experience in the artistic medium of 3D graphics and animation, including modeling, lighting, texturing, transformations, keyframing, and the production pipeline.
2. Students will demonstrate an understanding and appreciation for process in creative expression in the context of visual story telling.
3. Students will negotiate between conceptual ideas and spontaneous opportunity/discovery in the process of creating original work.
4. Students will demonstrate the ability to communicate effectively through class participation, critiques, and collaborative teams.

Students are expected to be comfortable using a computer and learning new software. No experience with programming or computer graphics is required. However, please anticipate a very heavy workload, particularly in the second half of the semester, so budget your time accordingly.

Class and lab are critical for discussion of material, class critiques, and collaboration. Your absence will will pose significant problems for your individual success and the success of your collaborators. For these reasons:
Each unexcused absence (class/lab) beyond 5 will lower your final grade by one grade (A becomes A-, A- becomes B+, B+ becomes B, etc)
These 5 allowed absences are intended to be used for such things as mild illness; use them carefully.

An excused absence includes such things as being away for a sports event (the coach must send an email), a required school trip for another class (the instructor must send email), or an extended illness (generally requires a doctor's note).

Headphones: If you do not already own a set of headphones, then you will need to purchase a set. They do not need to be high quality; any set will do.

Backup Storage: If you do not already have some kind of external storage, you will need to purchase something (e.g. a thumb drive, minimum 1G). This is discussed more below under the Backup section.

Reading: There will be assigned readings. Books and book excerpts will be made available either through the library or WISE or on cs-render.

Lecture time will be used as follows:

• Discussion of story telling, cinematography, principles of animation.
• Discussion of the process of animation production.
• Discussion of principles and techniques of graphics and animation.
• Assignment critiques.
• Demonstrations of Maya
• Working on assignments.
• Coordination of animation projects including 
• Story development
  
• Review and critiques of student work.
• project progress reports
  

Assignment instructions and deadlines are identified on the course schedule. It is important that students complete work on time because all assignments build on the previous assignments. Assignments will be also be reviewed and critiqued by the class on the day the assignment is due. See late policy below.

First half of the semester: You will work intensively with Maya to learn the basic techniques of modeling, shading, lighting, and animation. Labs will be assigned approximately weekly and instructions will be available on the class web site. There will be several assignments working with students in music.

Second half of the semester: You will work entirely on the team animation project. During this time, lecture time will be largely, but not entirely, devoted to review of student work and progress. Lab time will be used for group meetings and coordination - it is very important that you are present for these.

Disk Space: Your H drive will not be sufficient for storing your work. Instead, a separate network server (\\home\cs-render) will be provided. It has the additional advantage that it can be accessed by others in the class (important for team projects) and it is accessible to the renderfarm (important for speeding up your rendering). At the end of the semester, you will be asked to submit all of your Lab 8 work on a DVD (or other format), so don't lose or delete your work!

Back-ups: You should be neurotic about backing up your work! Work lost due to your failure to back up files will have to be redone if credit is to be received. If you do not own a flash drive or other similar backup device then you are expected to purchase one. Ideally, it should be several Gigabytes in size. Flash drives are available in the Willamette Bookstore or can be bought online - the cost is about $10 for 16G.

Make it a habit to backup your work after every work session. Keep multiple copies in multiple places such as your H drive, your home computer, on a thumb drive, and/or on a CD/DVD. When copying to a backup device, make sure your copied Maya files are still readable. If you have not organized your files well it is possible that misc files will be stored in distant locations.

Each animation group will also need several blank DVDs (or a flash drive) at the end of class in order to turn in the final work.

Late policy: Unexcused late assignments will be penalized: 1 day (10%), more than 1 day (50%).

If you are ill and cannot attend class, then the work you were able to complete should still be available for review on the network server. If you are unable to complete the assignment, then turn in whatever you have been able to do. Something is always better than nothing.

If you must miss class due to anticipated events such as sports, job interviews, family demands, etc, you are still expected to have your completed work on the network by the due date of the assignment. In such cases, you will not be penalized if these absences are infrequent. Exceptions due to last minute unexpected circumstances can be made but they must be discussed with the instructor before the assignment is due.

There are no written exams in this course.

Lab Grading Criteria: Each lab will have its own evaluation sheet available at the time the lab is assigned. The evaluation criteria will include a subset of the following:

• Technical quality of the work.
• Esthetic quality of the work.
• Organization of the Maya Project.
• Completion of work on time: Unexcused late assignments will be penalized: 1 day (10%), more than 1 day (50%).
• Submission directions were followed. Directions are given on Lab web page.
• Participation in review process. Hard to satisfy if absent!
• Collaborative Projects: Student was able to work effectively with team members.
• Collaborative Projects: Student completed their share of the work.

Each lab will receive a letter grade:

Grade Percent Rough Criteria A+  100 Student went beyond the goals of the lab and the quality of the work was exceptional. A  95 Student met all the goals of the lab and the quality of the work was exceptional. A- 90 Student met all the goals of the lab and the quality of the work was good. B  85 Either the student met the goals of the lab with minor issues in quality, or the quality was good but the student missed some of the minor goals. B- 80 Student missed some of the minor goals of the lab and there were issues in quality. C  75 Lab was somewhat incomplete but what was done was acceptable. D  60 Lab was very incomplete and/or what was done was done poorly. F 0 Minimal or no work was turned in. Overall Course Credit Distribution 50% Labs 1-7 (first half of semester) are all weighted equally except for Lab 6 (25% more) 35% individual work on the Lab 8 (final project) including status reports and completing work on time. 15% group work on the Lab 8, i.e. overall organization, collaboration, resulting animation. At the end of the semester, the percentage of points a student has earned relative to the maximum amount possible will be computed. The grade will then be based on the percentages below. The grading percentage will be reduced if there are more than 5 unexcused absences (see attendance policy above). Final Course Grade Percentages 100-93 A  92-90 A- 89-87 B+ 86-83 B  82-80 B- 79-77 C+ 76-73 C  72-70 C- 69-67 D+ 66-63 D  62-60 D- 59-0 F Accommodations In accordance with University policy, if you have a documented disability and require accommodations to obtain equal access to this class, please contact me at the beginning of the semester or when given an assignment for which an accommodation is required. Students must verify their eligibility though the University in order to receive accommodations. The university policies on disability accommodation may be found here. Plagiarism and Cheating If you do a search on the web, you will find a significant amount of material on Maya, including already created models and scenes. You are not to use this material without authorization from the instructor. The purpose of this class is to create your own work. In the context of this class, plagiarism is defined as representing someone else's work as your own. Cheating is defined as violating stated rules for an assignment. Plagiarized work will receive a grade of 0 as will any assignment in which cheating occurred. See the webpage Willamette Plagiarism and Cheating Policy for more specific details. At times, you will be encouraged to cooperate on lab assignments for this class. The rules and limitations of this cooperation will be defined in class. If you are not clear on the rules, it is your responsibility to ask the instructor.