Final Project Assignment

Due by close of business Wednesday, December 15.

As announced all those weeks ago, the nature of the final project is ultimately up to you. There are only three general requirements, plus some guidelines about scope:

1. It must draw on more than one major design technique we have learned this semester: for instance, polygonal modeling plus animation; or animation plus texturing; or texturing plus lighting; etc.



2. It must represent at least three weeks of sustained, independent work; see the guidelines regarding scope, below.



3. You must submit your idea to me for approval. Please turn in your proposal including your e-mail address at next week's class, November 17.

Scope: If your project is an animation, it must contain at least 150 frames and distribute changes over at least three objects or aspects of your scene. If your project is a series of still images (e.g., a lighting study), the series must consist of at least 10 images.

Some Suggestions

Bony fishes and other rigs

In his animation videos, Maestri explains how to rig bones for his fish model, so that the model moves in a plausibly organic fashion. Create a simple character, not necessarily more complex than Maestri's fish, endow it with bones, and give it 150 frames of animation.

Game characters

Choose an existing game (which you clearly identify) and create five characters appropriate to it: humans, monsters, supernatural creatures, robots, etc. You may use rough modeling and low polygon counts. Create an appropriate background (ideally derived from the game, though this is not strictly required) and render two views of each character in the scene.

Draper madness

Buy yourself a copy of Pete Draper's Deconstructing the Elements, the book we've been using for our advanced demos in the last few weeks. You may simply take on one of the projects we didn't cover in class; or you may adapt one of the projects we have done: say, producing a fly-over animation of Draper's mountain (chapter 23), or a complex indoor scene using many instances of his candle (chapter 1).

Gmax

Download Discreet's free Gmax, read the tutorial files, and use the program to customize a group of characters or assets; integrate these items into some Gmax-enabled game, e.g. Unreal Tournament or Doom. The minimum deliverable is 10 screenshots showing your modified assets in action, plus a brief written report indicating how you created or modified the assets using Gmax.

As always, these are just suggestions. You may substitute your own ideas.