15-465 and 60-414 Administrative Information for Spring 2012

Place and Time: Monday and Wednesday from 1:30 to 4:20
303 CFA for the inital meetings.

Instructors:

James Duesing

Jessica Hodgins

Teaching Assistants:

Laura Trutoiu Paul Miller
  • Email: ppm@andrew.cmu.edu
  • Office Hours: Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday 4:30-6:30 in the CFA cluster

Online Resources

The class web page is at
http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/courses/AAT/aat_s12
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 for the groups to use as well as materials for some of the assignments.

There will be /afs space for your assignments and projects: /afs/cs.cmu.edu/academic/class/15465-s12-users
/afs/cs.cmu.edu/academic/class/15465-s12-users/

Prerequisites

Software

Optional Texts (available from amazon and elsewhere)

Other Texts and Sources

Maya Video Tutorials

Basic Polygon Modeling:
Build a Character with Clean Geometry:
Blend shapes:
Deformers:
Basic Rigging:
Reverse Foot Rig:
Eye Rig
Paint Skin Weights:

Mapping

Basic mapping:
UV mapping in maya for beginners
Maya UV unwrap (unfold) mini tutorial
Maya 2011Unfolding Uv Mapps Parts 1, 2 and 3
Lighting:
Camera:
Rendering Animation:

Mental Ray Rendering
Advanced Modeling

Grading Information

Grading for the class will be split up as follows:

Attendance will be graded as follows: Class attendance is mandatory. You are required to sign the attendance sheet at each class. Each missed class will cause you to lose 1/3rd of the class attendance score (4% of the final grade). Three absences will result in a final grade that is one letter grade lower.

Assignments and Projects

There will be two kinds of assignments: individual assignments at the start of the semester and a final project. The individual assignments will be completed by each student, the final project will be completed in teams of about eight students.

All assignments will be turned in as movies. The final project will begin as a storyboard, morph into an animatic and gradually become a complete animation with fully rendered frames and audio.

Grading on programming assignments is based the ambitiousness of what you attempted and the quality of the result. We will spend class time critiquing the animations and assignments. 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 midnight. We will look at the time stamp on your files to verify that they were turned in on time.

Late days: A total of three 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 time where all your classes just happen to have assignments due on the same day. If you absolutely need an extension beyond those three days, contact the instructors.
Jessica Hodgins