CS 418: Laboratory 9

Design Project

In this exercise you will use all of the techniques you have learned this semester to produce an animated scene. The scene may include heirarchically modeled objects, lights, texture-maps, bump-maps, and camera control.

Produce a scene which has several objects which move. There should be at least one example of rotory or periodic motion and at least one example of linear motion. You may want to mix physically-based animation with kinematic animation. Some of the objects should have a hierarchical structure and you should demonstrate use of polyhedra and parametric surfaces. Lighting should be appropriate to your scene. Surface properties should be controlled to simulate appropriate materials. CA or reaction based texture maps may be appropriate for some objects.

The following are possible ideas, but you are not limited to these.

• A tree growing.
• A robot spacecraft battle.
• A city street.
• A castle with waving flags and a gate over a moat.
• A sailboat on Cayuga Lake at sunset.
• A human or animal.

The animation must start with a title frame which includes title, author(s), and copyright notice. The following program is one example of a title page generator.

• titles.net
• titles.cfg

• To use them on the NT systems execute the following command at a DOS prompt.
  net use e: \\goose\courses
Then do
  e:
cd courses\cs418\fonts
You can then see the extra fonts available. To use one, put its full path name in the "font" parameter of a Caption or Text module. The fonts which are available on the NT systems are named FutMath, FutLED2d, and SwiBlk.

• To use them on the SP2 add the line below to your .cshrc file
  setenv DXFONTS /usr/lpp/dx/fonts:/u/tc/devine/public/fonts
  Then source your .cshrc file. You can now use just the font name in a Caption or Text module. The fonts which are available (once you modify the .cshrc file) in DX are named FutMath, DutBld, FutHvy, FutLED2d, FutLED3d, LatNov, SwiBld, and SwiBlk.

FutMath (shown below) looks good in MPEG compressed files.

Be prepared to demo your animation in section. You must hand in a one page written description of your animation including both author's names, the title, and a brief summary of the plot and the techniques you used. This document must be printed from a Web page (with no links) that you design. To demonstrate your animation you must mpeg compress it. Directions for compression are here. The mpeg file may not be longer than 5Mbytes. You may need to trade off frame size, animation length, and mpeg compression quality to achieve a maximum file size of 5Mbytes.

Grading will be based on several factors:

1. Amount of time spent on the project. This is a three week project implying approximately 50 hours of lab work, split between two people.
2. Variety of techniques used. Did you exploit the information from the earlier exercises?
3. Clarity and completeness of your web page description. Did you explain the techniques you used. For instance, if you use a cool CA, give its rule.
4. Clarity of the program. You should be able to explain your program. You should use transmitters/receivers, macros, and comments in the "Notation" field of each module so that you and the grader can understand the program. Control panels, if any, should be well organized, labeled, and with the appropriate numeric ranges.
5. Adherence to the mpeg file size limits.

Be sure to see past year's Lab 9 animation results