Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 22:09:45 GMT Server: NCSA/1.5 Content-type: text/html Last-modified: Mon, 01 Apr 1996 18:25:40 GMT Content-length: 4049 CS418 Lab 9

CS 418: Laboratory 9

Design Project

Introduction.

In this exercise you will use all of the techniques you have learned this semester to produce an animated scene. The scene may include heirarchically modeled objects, lights, texture-maps, bump-maps, and camera control.


Assignment

Produce a scene which has several objects which move. There should be at least one example of rotory or periodic motion and at least one example of linear motion. You may want to mix physically-based animation with kinematic animation. Some of the objects should have a hierarchical structure and you should demonstrate use of polyhedra and parametric surfaces. Lighting should be appropriate to your scene. Surface properties should be controlled to simulate appropriate materials. CA or reaction based texture maps may be appropriate for some objects.

The animation must start with a title frame which includes title, author, and copyright notice. The following program is one example of a title page generator.

The the system-supplied DX fonts look too thin in MPEG compressed animations (or on videotape). We have defined some better fonts. The fonts which are available (once you modify the .cshrc file) in DX are named FutMath, DutBld, FutHvy, FutLED2d, FutLED3d, LatNov, SwiBld, and SwiBlk. FutMath looks good in MPEG compressed files.

The following are possible ideas, but you are not limited to these.

Be prepared to demo your animation in section. You must hand in a one page written description of your animation including both author's names, the title, and a brief summary of the plot and the techniques you used. This document must be printed from a Web page (with no links) that you design. To demonstrate your animation you must mpeg compress it. Directions for compression are here. The mpeg file may not be longer than 5Mbytes. You may need to trade off frame size, animation length, and mpeg compression quality to achieve a maximum file size of 5Mbytes.

Grading will be based on several factors:

  1. Amount of time spent on the project. This is a three week project implying approximately 50 hours of lab work, split between two people.
  2. Variety of techniques used. Did you exploit the information from the earlier exercises?
  3. Clarity of the program. You should be able to explain your program. You should use transmitters/receivers, macros, and comments in the "Notation" field of each module so that you and the grader can understand the program. Control panels, if any, should be well organized, labeled, and with the appropriate numeric ranges.

Be sure to see past year's Lab 9 animation results

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Last modified, 1/18/96, B. Land.
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