Computer Animation Lesson Plans Page 1 Computer Animation Lesson Plans The text and resources for teaching this class are all located at http://oroville.wednet.edu/~ed/resources/ Text Blender Basics 3 rd Edition (BlenderBasics_3rdEdition2009b.pdf) Introduction to character animation (Introduction_to_Character_Animation_19_Sept_2006.pdf) Wednesday, August 31, 2011 Introduction to Class This lesson will introduce the student to the computer programming class, the syllabus, classroom rules and expectations. Handouts Computer Animation Syllabus (CadLongRange.pdf) Keep your Head in the Game (KeepYourHeadinTheGame.pdf) Distribute Classroom Rules and Expectations handout (Keep your Head in the Game). Go over each item on the handout with the class. Stress the importance of NO FOOD OR DRINK NO HEADPHONES OR MP3 players Introduce the student to the cad login in to the desktop of the workstation. Make sure that they log out of the Windows workstation and log in as cad, with the password badger. If booting up the computer for the first time, choose the cad user from the list of users and log in with the password badger. If the machine is already on, have them log out with the start menu, then back in as cad. The document Blender Basics 3 rd Edition is there on the desktop and on the web as mentioned above, as well as a link to the program Blender. Do not allow them to mess around with the program Blender yet. Thursday, September 1, 2011 Introduction to Blender Have them open the Blender Basics, 3 rd edition. Have the student read through the Introduction and Chapter 1 This will introduce them to the concept of animation, and the basic introduction of the Blender Software
Computer Animation Lesson Plans Page 2 Give them the following questions to do as they read. Answer the following questions on a piece of paper, in pencil, as you read. NAME 1. What do Bones or Armatures do? 2. What is fps? And what fps should YOU use when creating animations? 3. What is a Key? 4. What key press would you use to join two objects together? 5. What is a Rendering? 6. What is in the scene when you first open the program? 7. What is a Camera to Blender? 8. What is the purpose of layers? 9. What is the difference between a Material and a Texture? 10. How would you tell a friend what an Animation is? 11. What window type do you use to see and model your items? 12. What does Append do? 13. What is the advantage of MPEG as an output format?
Computer Animation Lesson Plans Page 3 Friday, September 2, 2011 Viewports Read through chapter 2, with Blender open, and perform the operations in Blender as you read. Have the students do the exercise on Page 16, and have each student demonstrate the exercise items to you. Tuesday, September 6, 2011 Creating and Editing Objects Read through Chapter 3 page 20. Do the exercise on Page 20. Wednesday, September 7, 2011 Basic Editing reading through the end of the chapter. This chapter is very important as it allows us to edit and manipulate objects by editing each vertice or point Do the exercise from page 25 to page 28. Start a new project named Landscape. When complete on page 28, save your landscape as indicated. Thursday, September 8, 2011 Friday, September 9, 2011 Monday, September 12, 2011 Basic Editing Start a new project scene called lighthouse, and perform the exercise from page 29 and 30. Save your project as Lighthouse as indicated on page 30. Tuesday, September 13, 2011 Wednesday, September 14, 2011 Joining. Separating Meshes Read Chapter 3 through page 32, then starting on page 33, perform the exercise modeling the lighthouse windows through page 34. Render the Scene. Press F3 to save the rendered file to your mydocuments folder. Call it lighthouse1.jpg. When typing in the filename always put.jpg at the end when saving a jpg file.
Computer Animation Lesson Plans Page 4 Thursday, September 15, 2011 Friday, September 16, 2011 Monday, September 19, 2011 Materials and Textures Read Chapter 4 through page 36. Do the exercise starting on page 37 through page 39. Render your project with F12, and then save to a jpeg with F3, save it in your mydocuments folder, named landscape1.jpg. Tuesday, September 20, 2011 Wednesday, September 21, 2011 Textures Read through page 43, and then find an image that you would like to use as a texture and practice placing it on a cube and a sphere. Render your scene and save it as texturepractice.jpg with F3. In your mydocuments folder. Thursday, September 22, 2011 Displacement Mapping Read page 44 on Displacement mapping. Open your sphere and cube file, and apply a displacement map to these objects, render and save the jpeg as displacementpractice.jpg. Friday, September 23, 2011 Applying textures to your lighthouse. Do the exercise starting on page 45, and continue until you have your lighthouse textured on page 48. Render your finished project when done, and save the output with F3 in your mydocuments folder as lighthouse2.jpg. Monday, September 26, 2011 Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Computer Animation Lesson Plans Page 5 Texturing your landscape. Starting on page 48, and continuing to page 49, texture your landscape. When your scene looks like as shown on page 49, render with F12, Save as landscape2.jpg in your mydocuments folder Wednesday, September 28, 2011 Thursday, September 29, 2011 Setting up a world and appending your lighthouse. Begin reading and practicing the skills in Chapter 5, through page 52. Do the practice Exercise starting on page 53, appending your lighthouse to your landscape and adding a world to your landscape scene. When your project looks as shown on page 55, render and save your rendered output as lighthouse3.jpg in your mydocuments folder. Friday, September 30, 2011 Monday, October 3, 2011 Adding the Fog the exercise from pages 54 to 55. You will be adding a foggy atmosphere to your scene. Follow the instructions very carefully but at the end you may have to make some adjustments to get it to look right, and you may have to move or adjust your camera as well. Render the output with F12 and save it with F3 as lighthouse4.jpg in your mydocuments folder. Tuesday, October 4, 2011 Lights Adding light to your scene can really add realism. Lights have many different types and settings for different effects. Read through pages 56 through 58, and begin the tutorial on page 59 through 60. You will be adding a light beam and a light source to your lighthouse. When finished, render with and save as lighthouse4. Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Computer Animation Lesson Plans Page 6 Thursday October 6, 2011 Rendering Window Settings and animating the light. Read carefully from page 60 to page 63. Adjust your render settings and in the exercise on page 64 and render the image. Can you see any differences from your previous renders? Friday, October 7, 2011 Raytracing Taking a break from the lighthouse for a bit, this chapter will introduce you to raytracing. Raytracing adds cool effects to objects, with regard to light and reflection. Do the practice exercise on page 67, and render your image (you can adjust your render settings now!) and save the output as raytrace.jpg in your mydocuments folder. Do not turn raytracing on in your lighthouse scene, or your renders may get really slow! Monday, October 10, 2011 Tuesday, October 11, 2011 Animation Basics Animation gives movement to your projects, and allows you to create movies from your creations! Start reading on page 68, read through page 72. Do the exercise on pages 73 through 75. When you are finished, show your instructor your finished animation. Can you use what you have leaned in the render settings section to create a 100 frame movie at 25 fps and save it as a MPEG movie (small size) to your mydocuments folder? Try it! Name it my1stmovie.mpg Wednesday, October 12, 2011 Thursday, October 13, 2011 Monday, October 17, 2011 3d Text Chapter 10 starting on page 76 deals with creating 3d text. 3D text is important in advertising, brochures, web sites, etcetera. Red through, don't worry about the elefont page though, and do the exercise on page 79, it can be any scene you wish, but I want you to include your name. Use the skills that you have learned so far! Can you figure out how to animate the text? Maybe a spinning or rotating logo?
Computer Animation Lesson Plans Page 7 Take your time; render it out as a jpeg as a finished product called mylogo.jpg. Animate it and render it out as myspinninglogo.mpeg. Tuesday, October 18, 2011 Wednesday, October 19, 2011 Thursday, October 20, 2011 Friday, October 21, 2011 Nurbs, Metashapes and Modifiers Beginning on page 80, read through about nurbs and metashapes, practice with them as you wish, as they are very interesting and give you complex modeling capabilities. Do the metashapes practice exercise on page 82 and create an animation of 2 meta objects coming together and joining! Save it as mymeta.jpg Monday, October 24, 2011 Tuesday, October 25, 2011 If required begin the introduction to character animation tutorial, and work until complete.