15-365 and 60-422 Administrative Information for Spring 2017

Place and Time: Monday and Wednesday from 8:30 to 11:20
303 CFA for the inital meetings.

Instructors:

James Duesing

Email: jduesing@andrew.cmu.edu
Office: CFA 404
Phone: x8-7807
Office Hours: following class or by appointment

Jessica Hodgins

Email: jkh@cs.cmu.edu
Office: Smith Hall 231
Phone: x8-6795
Office Hours: following class or by appointment

Assistants:

Spencer Diaz

Email: srd305@gmail.com
Office Hours: Monday and Friday from 3-5pm in the PC lab (CFA 317)

Brittany De Nigris

Email: b.a.denigris@gmail.com
Office Hours: Wednesday 4:30-6:30 and Saturdays from 3-5 in the Mac Lab (CFA 318).

Online Resources

The class web page is at

http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/courses/15-365

This is the primary online source for information about the course, including assignments, lecture notes, and administrative details. The blackboard site is available here. It will have email lists as well as materials for some of the assignments.

Prerequisites

60-422 -- 60-110: Electronic Media Introduction to the Moving Image or permission of the instructors
15-365 -- 15-213: Intro to Computer Systems or permission of the instructors

Software

The students will use a variety of software for this course. The cluster software is listed here For all software, we recommend the tutorials on Lynda . The software will include:

After Effects
Flash
Maya 2016. In the clusters in CFA (PC and Mac) and Gates (Linux). Students and educators can download a free three-year license from here .

Hardware

SLRs, camcorders, mics and tripods are available for check-out from the CFA lab (formerly cluster). Here is the equipment list. The IDEATE space in Hunt Library also has equipment and laptops for check out.

Optional Texts (available from amazon and elsewhere)

Lynda Tutorials: (free access from a CMU IP address)
The Animation Book: A Complete Guide to Animated Filmmaking--From Flip-Books to Sound Cartoons to 3- D Animation by Kit Laybourne
Introducing Maya 2015
Mastering Maya 2015
Practical Maya Programming with Python
Inspired 3D Short Film Production

Other Texts and Sources

The process of effective critiques. Jana Whittington, Educator's Forum, SIGGRAPH 2003.
Art Criticism
Tips for working in teams from Randy Pausch (bottom of the page)
SIGGRAPH proceedings are available in the ACM Digital Library if you are on a cmu.edu machine)
SIGGRAPH Video Review: some of these as well as large collection of other 3D animation videos and dvds are available for viewing in the video library at Hunt Library.

Grading Information

Grading for the class will be split up as follows:

Class Participation (participation in discussion of animations and crits) 10%
Three Assignments 15% each
Final project 45% total
- mid-way crit 15%
- making of video 6%
- final presentation 6%
- content of final project 18%

Class attendance is mandatory.

You are required to sign the attendance sheet at each class. Three missed classes will cause you to receive a grade that is one grade lower for the class than indicated by the numerical score.

Assignments and Projects

There will be two kinds of assignments: three (relatively) structured assignments at the start of the semester and a final project. The structured assignments will be completed by students in assigned pairs. The final project will be completed in teams of 1-3 students.

All assignments will be turned in as movies and uploaded to vimeo in the class "channel".

Grading on the assignments is based the ambitiousness of what you attempted and the quality of the result. Each assignment is expected to require about 20 hours of work/student. We will spend class time critiquing the assignments and project. The notion of a critique may be unfamilar to some in the class. See the supplemental readings above for an introduction to the concept.

Late policy

Assignments should be turned in on the day they are due by classtime. We will look at the time stamp on your files to verify that they were turned in on time.

Late days: A total of two late days may be taken during the semester on the individual assignments. The flexibility provided by those late days is intended to get you through the times where all your classes just happen to have assignments due on the same day. If you absolutely need an extension beyond those two days, contact the instructors.