15-465 and 60-414 Assignments (original) (raw)

Assignment 1: Animating in Maya
Each student is to build an object by manipulating a primitive shape. Then substitute the object you make for the ball in the bouncing ball exercise in the text pages 27 to 84 (available on the blackboard system). The ball should be replaced with multiple primitive shapes that are grouped and where at least one has had the geometry altered in some way.

For this project you will have to render your files out for playback in fcheck. Below are instructions for rendering so that your images will play back correctly. When you are looking at your files be sure to have the playback set to '24fps realtime', rather than 'play every frame', while working on your animation otherwise your animations will played back too fast in class.

To render frames for viewing in F-Check:

  1. Go to the "Render Global Settings" Window (Window->Rendering Editors->Render Globals)

  2. Go to the "Image File Output" tab (should be open already) and verify/Change the following settings:

File Name Prefix: (not set; using filename)
Frame/Animation Ext: name.ext.# (important)
Image Format: Maya IFF (iff)

Frame Padding should be set as follows:

If you have 1-9 frames in your animation - Frame Padding = 1
If you have 10-99 frames in your animation - Frame Padding = 2
If you have 100-999 frames in your animation - Frame Padding = 3
If you have 1000-9999 frames in your animation - Frame Padding = 4 (etc.)

  1. Go to the "Resolution" tab (should be open already) and goto the "Presets" pulldown and select "320x240".

  2. Set any other settings, such as quality, etc. Then goto the "Rendering" menu set and select Render->Batch Render.