CSS 105 – Project #1

 

Using Animation Tools and

The Computer System

 

Assigning Date: March 27, 2007

 

Project Due Time: 11:00AM April 10, 2007

1. Project e-submission

2. Hardcopy Report (1 page)

                             

 

Purpose:

In this project we will experience with most of the basic aspects of the entire Maya Animation System: from creating simple polygonal and NURBS primitives; to basic shader assignments; to simple object keyframe animations. In addition, we will also make sure we understand how to save and recall a project in the Windows XP operating system environment.

 

Tutorials: Before you begin working on this project, you should go through the followings:

1.      Start Maya, and under the Help manual:

a.       Maya-> Help -> Learning Movies: there are 7 short movies demonstrating how to use Maya. Make very sure you look at all of them.

b.      Maya-> Help -> Tutorials->Maya Basics. There are 4 lessons here. You may wish to go through them.

2.      LMF: Lessons 1 to 3. We will go through some of these in class.

Approach:

In order to demonstrate we understand the Maya project file system, we will create one Maya project containing two scene files.

 

Project: create a Maya project name: Project1_YourName (please replace YourName with your name J).

 

SceneOne.mb: This scene must contain:

  1. 1 of NURBS primitive (sphere and cube are not acceptable)
  2. 1 polygonal object (sphere and cube are not acceptable)
  3. 1 subdiv object (sphere and cube are not acceptable)
  4. each object must display different colors (type “5” to see shaded mode). Try working with these materials types: Blinn, Lambert, Phong, PhongE. Unless you know what you are doing, for now, we want to avoid the other shaders.
  5. The 3 objects cannot intersect each other
  6. The objects’ size, location, and rotation must be changed from their initial default settings.
  7. All 3 objects must be visible from the default persp camera.

 

SceneTwo.mb: This scene must be built based on SceneOne:

  1. TimeLine must show frames between 1 to 256.
  2. Define keyframe animation (type “s”) for each of the three objects, changing each objects’ position, size, and rotation.
  3. The defined keyframe animation for each object must span the entire 256 frames (something on each object must be changing during the entire 256 frames of animations).
  4. At the end of the animation (at frame 256) all three objects must still be visible.

 

Project Submission:

 

E-submission:

 

Create a zip file of your entire project. Notice your zip file should include your entire project (including many subfolders), and not just your Maya scene files. Name the zip file: YourNameProject1.zip and copy the zip file to \\Hermes\Classes\CSS105\Project1. By default your root project folder will be created in MyDocuments\maya\projects\Project1_YourName.

 

Notice, I have change the zip-file submission requirement. We do not need to create a zip file anymore. Now, just copy your entire project folder structure over to  \\Hermes\Classes\CSS105\Project1. By default your root project folder will be created in MyDocuments\maya\projects\Project1_YourName. Under this root project folder, you can find many sub-folders (e.g. clip, data, fur, etc.). Your two scene files should be located in the scenes folder.

 

Please do “try things out” to verify that your submission is correct before submitting your project. Here is what you can do:

  1. Copy your YourName_Project1 folder structure to a temporary folder (e.g. C:\Temp).
  2. Start Maya.
  3. While in Maya: File->Project->Set …
    1. Browse to C:\Temp\YourName_Project1
    2. Select the folder and click on ok.
  4. While in Maya: File->Open Scene
    1. Notice the title bar of the dialog, it should show C:\Temp\YourName_Project1
    2. You should see your Maya scene files (ma or mb)
  5. Now that you know your zip file is correct, you can drag it over to \\Hermes\Classes\CSS105\Project1.

If you have problem with the above instruction, please let me know.

 

Hardcopy report: Submit a report including screen shots of your SceneOne and frame 256 of your SceneTwo. Make sure you label all the objects on your SceneOne image, telling me which object is of what type. Here is an example report showing you what I am looking for. The purpose of this report is for us to practice how to create/edit screen shots in a document. Later on, we will be creating more interesting reports.

Credit Distribution:

 

Proper Submission

               Proper project name with recognizable names of group members

               Maya project folder structure is correct (with _all_ sub-folders)

 

 

 

 

 

10%

One Maya project containing two scenes

 

 

 

5%

SceneOne.ma

               NURBS Primitive (not sphere/cube)

               Polygonal Primitive (not sphere/cube)

               Sub-Div Primitive (not sphere/cube)

               Each object with different colors

               Objects do are all visible and do not intersect

 

 

5%

5%

5%

10%

10%

35%

 

SceneTwo.mb

               TimeLine showing 1 to 256

               Keyframe animation on all three objects

               All objects’ position/size/rotation changes during all 256 frames

               All objects visible at the end of the animation

 

 

5%

20%

10%

5%

40%

Hardcopy Report

 

 

10%

 

This project contributes 5% towards your final grade for this course.