09.09 3D Animation Project Assignment

Assignment Deliverables

1. Exported .mp4 video file with .h264 or .h264 compression of a 10 - 15 second 3D animation with sound (mp4)
   • Label file YYYYMMDD Lastname Firstname 3D Animation.mp4
2. Blender file with all external resources packed (.blend) or Maya project archive file with all scenes and assets (.zip)
   • Label file YYYYMMDD Lastname Firstname 3D Animation Project File

Assignment Requirements

Create a ~10-15 second long video composed in Adobe Premiere using images created and rendered in Blender or Maya

• Include multiple animated sequences from Blender or Maya
• Use a minimum of 2 different camera angles and distances from subject
• Have UV mapped objects with textures created by you
• Show basic animation principles such as squash and stretch, movement in arcs, acceleration / deceleration, easing in / easing out
• Include sounds created by you
• Include music from public domain or created by you.
• Have text as credits or intro

Objectives

You are tasked with creating a captivating 10-15 second video using Adobe Premiere, Blender, or Maya, with self-created sound and public domain music or your own original music. The narrative will navigate through an inventive 3D environment crafted by you, using modeling, texturing, and animating various elements within the setting. Through the creation of a story spine and storyboards, students will plan and execute their animation, leverage basic animation principles such as squash and stretch, and employing a minimum of two camera angles to add depth and interest. By designing and applying textures to the 3D objects using UV mapping and texturing tools, will add visual interest to you project. The incorporation of custom lighting and the strategic use of sound effects will be crucial in enhancing the overall impact of their animations. The assignment culminates in the submission of both the final video in .mp4 format and the project files.

Process

Draft a Story Spine that follows a basic narrative arc. This will give you guidelines and a plan to make your animation. Use the story spine to draw storyboards of the scenes and different camera angles that you want to use.

Draw a page of storyboards to use a a guide for production.

Create a 3D environment or “animation set” of 3D modeled objects. This environment should be real world scale and be interesting enough to use as a setting for your animation. You can model different items for your scene and combine the meshes and group them together. You can save the items all in one scene or save each item as a different scene and import them into your main scene.

Use the UV mapping editor in Maya to map the UVs of your objects and export UV snapshots for importing into Photoshop. Paint textures onto the UV snapshots and export the new textures to your “sourceimages” folder in your Maya project. Apply the Textures and edit as needed. You can also use Adobe’s Substance Painter to add detailed textures. Smooth your object and then save it as an .obj file to import into Substance Painter. Then you can use all of the materials in Substance Painter.

Add lights to the scene. Make sure to only add “Arnold Lights.” Do not use any of the older Maya lights or you will not be able to use the some render farms. Remember that you will have to increase the exposure of the lights to make your render show up in the Arnold Renderer.

Add multiple cameras to the scene. Animate a bouncing ball that travels through the scene in an interesting way. Use the animation principles of squash, stretch, exaggeration, anticipation and follow through. Use a minimum of 3 different camera angles and shot types. to apply textures to your objects. Export the different camera angles as separate sequence renders.

Grading Rubric