Independent Study for Week 7

• Find a song that you would like to use as the basis of your video clip. Here is a site that has Royalty free musiv that you can use: http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/

• If you are going to use a song that is not royalty free, you will have to make a silent version, as well as version with sound that you can only submit to emustore.

• Gather 15 architectural images that you will use an influence for your architectural content, and post them to your blog with references.

• Find a short clip from the net (eg: from Youtube, etc.), that displays a technique or atmosphere that you would like to convey in your own music video. Post the video to your blog.
  

• Bring headphones to class next week so you can hear your music.
  

Week 6 Tutorial Task

• Peer Review: Peer Review the next student down, underneath your name on the Course Blog Student list.

• Use the Peer Review document for Assignment 1 from the Courses on the Web site.
  

• Then post an image of your Peer review to your blog, as well as submit it to emustore in the "Peer Review Assignment 1" folder. Call the file YourName_1234567_Peer Review.doc.

• If you haven't already done so, submit all of your Assignment 1 files to emustore submit folder. This is required for you to be assessed correctly.
  

• Play around with After Effects using the content you created form Assignment 1.

• Start watching the After Effects tutorials at http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/
to get an idea of how you can use After Effects.

Independent Study for Week 6

Tasks to come. Check back later!

Week 5 Tutorial Task

Attend 'Animation Reels from SIGGRAPH 09 and Annual General Meeting' at COFA.

Date: Wednesday 19th August 2009
Time: 7:00pm to approx 8:00pm
Venue: EGO2 Auditorium, College of Fine Arts (CoFA), Selwyn St, Paddington
Cost: Free for SIGGRAPH members, guests and non-members.
(Attendees can sign up as a new member on the night. Annual Membership fees are $40 for professionals and $20 for students)

here is the link to the COFA information page on the event…
http://sydney.siggraph.org.au/event/2009/animation-reels-from-siggraph-09

…and a video showing a preview of the content you will see…
http://sydney.siggraph.org.au/gallery-content/2009/siggraph-2009-computer-animation-festival-preview-video

Independent Study for Week 5

Complete Assignment 1!!!

• Post all Assignment outputs, as specified in the Assignment 1 brief and Marking Schedule to your blog, consider blog layout for easy assessment.

• Submit good quality videos, images and Max files to emustore.
  

Week 4 Tutorial Task

To be completed during Lab

• Show your tutor your 7 representative drawings for each of your 7 words.

• Have your tutor provide feedback on your proposed animations.
  

• Work on finalising 3D scenes for each of your 7 words that you can animate throughout the week, looking to develop footage relating to your theoretical standpoint developed in the last couple of weeks of class.

• Your tutors will help you with any tools or techniques you may want to explore in your animations.

• A link to a useful 3Ds Max tutorial site has been added to the Courses on the Web page.
  

• Assignment 1 is due at Midnight on Monday 17th August!
  

Independent Study for Week 4 (3rd week of classes, 05/08/2009)

• For each of the seven words developed around your themes of "Set" during the last tutorial, sketch with a black ink pen and a small piece of blank paper (the size of the paper should be no bigger than a quarter of an A4 piece of paper) a representative picture of the the idea and emotion of each word, and the intended animated clip. This can be viewed as a single image of a Storyboard.
  

• These can either be extremely expressive representations of your words, or an imagined scene of your intended clips. Either way, they should have elements that can be modeled in your final videos for Assignment 1, and should each be a attractive artwork within itself.
  

• Post your 7 sketched images, labeled with your chosen Words to your blogs.
  


• Using your sketched images a s a basis, start to model 7 different 3Ds Max scenes (in 7 different files) that reflect the intent of your sketches, and consider camera viewpoints. Don't worry too much about animation at this stage, just concentrate on developing rich and detailed scenes first, that you can animate at a later stage.

• Bring your 7 3Ds Max files to class for next weeks tutorial, where the tutors can help you to develop and start animating your scenes.
  

Week 3 (2nd week of class) Tutorial Task

To be completed during Lab

• Give your blog address to your tutor.

• Have your tutor read through your 150 word post relating to an idea of set, and the readings you read throughout the week, seeking advice to refine your ideas.

• Extract 7 words, encapsulating ideas and emotions either straight from the text, or that emotively capture themes in your text, that are drawn from your written task.
  

• Continue with tutorials from the links on the BENV2402/7143 Time-Based Visualisation 'Courses on the Web' page.
  

• Experiment with animating camera paths and focus paths to start to increase the sense of motion in your videos.

• Continue to explore the the 'Animation' features of 3Ds Max, including the 'Create', 'Modify', and 'Modifier' tools available to you, as well as extending your understanding of materials by trialing different types of mapping techniques; diffuse maps, bump maps, opacity maps, etc.

Settings for Exporting 2 Videos

Here's a quick guide to the settings you should use to save your 2 x 10 second videos with:

10 seconds long
15 FPS (frames per second)
150 Frames
640x360 pixels (16:9)
AVI file type
Cinepak Codec

Once you have created your videos, upload to Youtube and embed the videos to your blog for the weekly task, along with the other requirements outlined in the weekly tasks post on this blog.

Settings Guide
Start by setting the frame-rate and animation length by clicking the "Time Configuration" button as shown in the image below.


You will get the "Time Configuration" a dialogue box pop up. Change the frame-rate to 15 FPS (frames per second), and the animation length to 150 frames. This will make your video 10 seconds long. (15 FPS x 10 seconds = 150 frames)


Go to the "Render Setup..." dialogue under the Rendering drop-down menu.


In the "Render Setup" dialogue, scroll all the way to the bottom and expand the "Assign Renderer" roll-out.


Click the little square "..." button next to the Production setting to "Choose Renderer".


Choose the "Default Scanline Renderer". This is a lower quality renderer than Mental Ray or V-Ray, though it has a quick render time.


Back in the "Render Setup" dialogue find the "Render Output" settings, and click the "Files" button, as shown in the below image.


In the "Render Output File" dialogue, you can name your file whatever you want, so give your file a name, and in the "Save as type:" drop-down, choose "AVI file (*.avi)".


After you have selected the AVI file type, click the "Setup" button to alter the AVI settings. This is where you can alter the codec.


Choose "Cinepak Codec by Radius" in the "Compressor" drop-down, and use the default settings (should be set to 15 FPS).


Back in the "Render Setup" dialogue again, for the "Time Output" option, choose "Active Time Segment", and set the "Output Size" to 640x360 (16:9 aspect ratio), this will effect the pixel size of your video, and obviously the larger the size the longer each frame will take to render.


Finally in the "Render Setup" dialogue, be sure that hte correct viewport is selected (in this case the "Perspective" viewport, and click the "Render" button to start rendering. Now sit back and wait.