Class Notes: 4/6/06 Animation Projects: In class today, we resolved to pursue three animation steps to finish the course. START on #2, the major project NOW! See note at the bottom upon use of Flash &/or similar tools. 1. short web-hosted circle animation, due 12:01am, THURSDAY, 4/13/06 a. create a circle or disc b. animate it so that it rolls across the screen, spinning about its center c. host this as a .gif or some other standard animation format on a web site d. send e-mail to tpeters@cse.uconn.edu by 12:01am, THURSDAY, 4/13/06 with the url of your site in the message, so that I can just click on it, get to your site and then execute the animation e. We will NOT meet for class on Tues, 4/11/06 to give you time to complete this phase of the project, but I will be available in my office during class time to advise on this aspect. f. We WILL meet for class on Thurs, 4/11/06, STARTING at 8:30am, so that I can prepare additional feedback on your initial animations. I will discuss any common problems during that class. 2. project web animation due Thurs, 4/27/06, present in class (2 minutes each) a. You should start this NOW, in parallel with your circle animation! b. You develop and host an animation of your choice on your web site, as above. c. You will have 2 minutes to present your animation on the last day of classes, THURSDAY, April 27th and this will be the basis for the major part of your grade on this project. It should be presented by accessing your web site on the class PC and displayed over the room's projector system to the class. (Be careful to have sharp color contrasts for best display!!). d. Your e-mail to me by 12:01am, THURSDAY, 4/13/06 should include a very brief (a few sentences) statement of your major animation project. These will NOT be graded, but I will read them and advise you in class on 4/13. If you wish to do a team project (See E, below.) the names of team members should be included in this email. Each team member, though, needs to submit this e-mail for the circle animation. 3. See Meltdown, with particular focus on the evil sea creatures. (background for final) 4. Final Exam Content: The final is still in preparation, but likely will center on a design question about what you have learned from your animation project and from focusing upon the evil sea creatures in Ice Age -- Meltdown. As noted in class, a former UConn CSE student wrote to me "If you go see the meltdown, try to watch closely the large evil sea creatures. They are animated with an animation system that I was solely responsible for - although my nondisclsosure agreement doesn't allow me to say too much about it." (Justin Bisceglio, M.S., UConn, 2003, presently employed at BlueSky Studios). Since this project is a significant change from the originally posted plan for the semester, the grade allocation between this and the final will likely be adjusted, with an intial estimate that the circle animation will be 10% of the course grade, the larger animation project will be 20% of the course grade and the final exam will be 10%. The test, 3 short homeworks and the report now total 60% of the course grade. Class management details: A. Class will NOT meet on Tues, 4/11/06 to allow you to work on #1. I will be available during class time for consultation. B. Class WILL meet on Thurs, 4/13/03, starting at 8:30am, to provide feedback on #1. C. We will decide on 4/13/06 about future class meetings, most likely NOT meeting again until 4/27/06, but, again, I will be available for individual consultations. D. Each student must do his own circle animation. E. Teams are allowed for the major project, with the usual rules, each person gets the same grade, teams must be approved by me (just via e-mail) in advance and the contribution of each person should be clearly indicated in your final presentation. If there are N members on a team, then your class time for presentation on 4/27/06 is N * 2 minutes. D. Final schedule is available at http://adastraweb.uconn.edu:8080/astraweb/Exam/Finals.html, CSE 275 001 05/01/2006 Monday 03:30 PM - 05:30 PM ITE 127 E. Your reports are graded. Sorry I forgot to return them (I had them with me.) You can get today between 2 & 3:15am or Tues during class time. USE of Flash &/or similar products: I'm only vaguely familiar with Flash & AS, but it sounds like it helps to eliminate some of the tedious detiils, such as the steps to figure out each transformation increment for each object's change in each frame change. If so, that's fine. However, you should cite Flash & AS where you host your animation and there should be a short statemnt of how you used Flash & AS. For the 'smoke test' of the rolling circle, there should be little impact upon the final video versus any other creative process. However, for the final project, it you do rely upon Flash, I would expect that you might develop and deliver a more impressive final product than those who don't use it. Furthermore, I would expect that your in-class presentation would discuss your use of Flash & how that helped. Further clarification regarding Flash: Hi Karim, cc: rest of class Thanks, I'll clarify this. I don't think that you should use flash for the circle animation project. The circle project is easy enough (and designed to be so, so that you can do it 'with your bare hands' and there is much to be learned from that). (If, based on previous instructions, you have already completed the circle animation relying on flash, then please send me e-mail no later than noon, Monday, 4/10/06 and we'll adjust.) What you will find, I expect is that flash very well at this key frame interpolation with simply-defined objects. Again, if you wish to use this for your final project, it may enhance your ability to generate some scenes, but at the expense the richness of the underlying geometric modeling (Those are essentially the same issues that arose in writing recent software for Meltdown and this is still a current problem.) You'll need to understand these issues to develop the next-generation animation software, which is a goal for which this course should educate you. Dr. Peters -----Original Message----- From: Karim HadjSalem [mailto:karim113@yahoo.com] Sent: Sun 4/9/2006 2:06 PM To: Peters, Tom Subject: RE: animation In regard to the projects (both of them really): have you ever used flash before? I don't really know what you want us to get out of these projects or how much you want people to work but flash pretty much does animations for you. All you have to do is create key-frames and then you can generate animation sequences between the keyframes. The animations are generated by the program. That means for every 50 frames you only have to do 1. A bit of an exaggeration on the number of frames, but I really think you should check out flash because it might not be what you expect. Just wanted to bring it to your attention because it seemed during class that you have no experience with it. If you want a copy to learn with I think they have a free trial (they used to) or I can let you borrow a copy. -Karim Additional Comments from Jason Daly: ActionScript isn't meant as simply a complement to animating vector images. It's a fully functioning object oriented language, with close ties to Java in terms of sytax. I'd love to explain further if necessary, but I firmly believe Flash gives no benefit over C or Java if taking an ActionScript coding route to the animation other than saving time dealing with many details seemingly unnecessary to understanding the concepts of animation in this course. For the circle project, the geometric modeling is trivial, and as you stated, it'd be okay to import a bitmap render of the circle we want to manipulate, removing all geometric modeling from the project. For the second project, the same geometric modeling principles can be implemented using ActionScript just as in other programming languages...creating shapes, lines, points, etc..._strictly_ through coding. I just don't want your views on Flash's ability to generate animation strictly through code to be supported by a lack of information. It's the animation standard of the internet for a reason, after all. ******************************************************************************************** Chapters covered to date: (updated 2/21/06 versus previous typos!!) Chapters for CSE 275, S06, 2/7/06 Book by Shirley Chapter 1: all (intro) Chapter 2: through p. 29 (basic math) Chapter 3: all (line drawing) Chapter 5: through 5.2.5 (linear alg) Chapter 6: all (2D & 3D transforms) Chapter 7: all (viewing) Chapter 12: some (clipping) Line HW for float errors 2/7/06 Assignment #2, due Tues, 2/14/06 at START of class Implement a generalized line intersection algorithm, that takes two lines in paramtric form and outputs the intersection points. Specialize the algorithm when one input line is horizontal or vertical. By tests that you devise, report on 1. Overall design explanations of each algorithm (1 page max) (3 pts) 2. Errors seen in the generalized algorithm (1/2 page max, with some supporting data). (4 pts) 3. Any improvments in the specialized algorithm (error or speed) (1/2 page max, inclusive of supporting data). (4pts) All submissions should be word-processed, with your name, and stapled together. 1/24/06: Assignment #1, due Tues, 1/31/06 at START of class Implement both naive and Bresneham's line drawing algorithms. Perform specialized and randomized timing tests, as discussed in class. Hand in the following (NO CODE!!): 1. An overall design explanation (1 page max) 2. Screen dumps of images of some of your test cases, with labels and discussions in #1, above. (2 pages max) 3. Summary and explanation of your timing tests (1 page max). All submissions should be word-processed, with your name, and stapled together. 1/17/06: Book; Fundamentals of Computer Graphics, 2nd Ed, P. Shirley Related web site: www.cs.utah.edu/classes/cs5600/ Proposed Grading Distribution: 50% Homework, 20% tests, 30% final Homework: Read Chapters 1, 2, & 3 through line drawing Review line drawing slides, above. Resolve grading.