by Mike Gleicher on February 2, 2013
In case you need a refresher, there are a few concepts we’ll be using for our discussion of basic animation stuff. These are topics that are well covered in the 559 text (Fundamentals of Computer Graphics). The Parent book is also a good resource for this (there is a copy on reserve at the library – look at Chapter 2 and the Appendices).
When I was teaching 559, I made my notes available (as I am now). They are highly variable, often just brief comments to myself. The 2009 notes are generally better than the 2010 notes.
We’ll do some brief review, but here are some resources:
by Mike Gleicher on February 1, 2013
This week will be a mix – some more “general” stuff, but also looking at some more specific techniques. And hopefully you’ll be getting rolling on the picture/animation assignment. Note: there is a bunch of reading so you might want to get a head start.
- Monday, February 4th – Before class, please do Reading Assignment 4 to get a sense of what kinds of things are going on with current graphics papers. We probably won’t talk about this too much in class, as we’ll begin to talk about foundational techniques (although, with some connection to modern research and practice). We’ll “review” curves and interpolation a bit.
- Wednesday, February 6th – More discussion of basic techniques. The reading (before class) will be two textbook chapters (Reading 5). We’ll discuss different ways of dealing with shapes for animation.
- Friday, February 8th – Your “first phase” of assignment 3 is due (you need to tell me who your partner is – hopefully you’ve actually started the assignment). Also, Assignment 2 is due (to keep the symmetry of assignments being due on Fridays), but there is some leniency in terms of when you really need to have it done by. In class, we’ll probably start talking about rotations in depth (an experiment of having the lecture before you read the details).
The following week, you’ll be making pictures for Assignment 3, and we’ll get into the details of rotations. I may re-order topics to talk about subdivision surfaces, or I might dive into talking about human motion.
by Mike Gleicher on January 29, 2013
OK, the Moodle folks have given me some tricks that may make Moodle a little more tolerable. Maybe you know these, but…
In your “profile” there are a bunch of useful settings. A few that I cannot bleieve are not the defaults:
- You can have Moodle “highlight new posts for me” (under Forum tracking). This way, on the main page you can see which forums have new posts, without opening each one.
- You can have Moodle send you email updates daily as a digest, rather than every time there’s a post, or …
- Unfortunately, it is looking like Moodle’s Forums aren’t as easy for grading as I had hoped. So, we might change how we do reading assignments in the future.
Thanks for bearing with me as I figure this out.
by Mike Gleicher on January 28, 2013
OK, the reason you were confused about the reading today was my fault!
The links (both in the “week at a glance” and “syllabus”) for Reading 1 pointed to reading 2. So, rather than reading about the principles of animation, some of you read about seminal systems (and maybe thought that there was no reading for today since that reading says Jan 30). (these links have been fixed)
The principles of animation reading (which was supposed to be due Monday, Jan 28) is Reading 1, here.
Sorry about that. If you see other places where I have links wrong, please let me know (thanks Alper!). I don’t always get to check everything.
It is possible that wordpress switched things behind my back (since I have multiple posts with similar links), but I think I probably just made a mistake with copy and paste.
The reading for Wednesday, is Reading 2 (seminal systems)
The reading for Friday is Reading 3 (overview).
by Mike Gleicher on January 27, 2013
This week, we’ll continue our non-technical start to the semester, but slowly transition into things that more resemble
- Monday, January 28th – We’ll discuss animation principles. You should have read about them before class. Yes, we’ll watch Mickey Mouse in class, but this works a lot better if you’ve done the reading.
- Wednesday, January 30th – We’ll talk about some historical papers, mainly describing systems. Make sure you have read the papers (and made your posting) before class. Probably, what we’ll really talk more about is more modern systems.
- Friday, February 1st – We’ll have kindof a survey of the whole field. Please make sure you have done the reading. Also, the “watching” assignment is due.
Next week, we’ll take a survey of what’s going on in animation research, and start to get into some actually technical content. You should also be started on Assignments 3 and 4.
by Mike Gleicher on January 24, 2013
Note: normally, I wouldn’t post a “non-reading” to the News feed, but since this is the first one, and since its very directly relevant to class, I am doing so. A “non-reading” is some thing that you don’t have to read. You are welcome to read it if you are interested.
Yesterday (lecture 1) – I briefly talked about Linear Combinations of Transformations. If you want to see more about them, or get them in a less hand-wavy way, I’ve put the references (including my own papers that use them) here.