UC Berkeley Main Campus
Department of Art Practice, Center for New Media, Fall 2004
We learn the differences between polygonal, Nurbs, and Subdivisional modeling, and build a simple creature of our choice.
Build a hierarchical character from discreet objects created by polygon extrusion, curve extrusion or revolution, and by creating primitives. Build the character with motion in mind, and make sure that your character's limbs are long and nimble enough to guarantee a meaningful range of motion. Next create a rolling obstacle which would impact your character if the character would not jump in time. To animate the rolling object, you can use a combination of keyframe animation and expressions (object_translation_distance/object_circumference * 360). Finally allow your character to jump in time to overcome the rolling obstacle.
Deliverable: Post a 30 second playblast movie of your hierarchical animation on the server in a folder with your name. Be sure to use compression for your movie, maximum file size should not exceed 10 MB. The due date is the next Wednesday.
Review: All timely creations will be reviewed and discussed in class on Wednesday
Sample File: A basic sample file is downloadable here.
Notes: When creating your hierarchical model, be sure to freeze transforms on each object before grouping it under another object. Also note that grouping objects in new groups rather than inside each other is the best practice: it provides more overview, makes adding objects to your hierarchy easier, and allows you to control the pivot point of a group of objects independently of the pivot points of the contained objects.
For an extra bonus point, add a correctly timed sound effect (not music) to your playblast movie in post-production using a video editing tool such as Quicktime Pro, Vegas, Premiere or Final Cut.
Main Course Website
More Expressions
Biped Motion
Last Year's Finals