Our One-Year 3D Animation Program is a comprehensive training in 3D using Autodesk’s Oscar Winning software, Maya, the industry standard for animation. Students in the Academy’s One-Year 3D Animation Program get the opportunity to learn the technical and artistic tools they need to master 3D animation. After the program, they may choose to become independent animators or to pursue a career in the film, gaming, interactivity or commercial industries.
One Year Animation Program, 2012 Highlight Reel
Preparation
No previous 3D or animation experience is required. However, studio art or computer experience is helpful. Basic familiarity with a computer graphic program such as Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop is recommended. A free student copy of Maya is available for download at
http://students.autodesk.com/. Students are encouraged to familiarize themselves with this software.
Semester One Overview
The first semester in NYFA’s 1 year animation program introduces students to the essential aspects of animation; from storyboard to final movie. Below you will find a detailed description of the exciting journey through the landscape of creating an animated movie.
Screenwriting
This class is designed to help students develop their scripts for their animation. It focuses on the fundamentals of visual storytelling and provides students with constructive analysis and support as they take a story from initial idea, treatment, step outline to a rough draft, storyboard and animatic. The intersection of story structure, theme, character, tension, and conflict is examined through detailed scene analysis.
Storyboard
A storyboard is essentially a comic book version or visual expression of the script, produced before the movie to help the film director visualize the scenes.
Character Design
Designing characters for you movie is what’s next. What sort of a character is she? Is she good or evil, or maybe shades of both. How do you convey those traits in a sketch? We’ll find out in our dynamic character design class.
3D Computer Modeling
This class introduces students to the tools and the concepts of 3D modeling production. As students get familiar with Maya and ancillary softwares, they will begin creating projects as they apply to industries such as broadcast, commercials and film. The course creates a real world production experience, stressing the use of the appropriate tools and professional workflow, whilst encouraging imaginative and artistic excellence. Students focus on high level object and character creation, and its relationship to photorealistic texturing and lighting.
UV mapping
In this series of classes, we look at creating the correct and appropriate UV maps for a model, which results in placing seamless and smooth textures on the model.
Materials and Textures
Students learn how the observation and understanding of an object’s surface qualities can create photo realistic textures. Using Photoshop and procedural textures, realistic and viable textures are created for models.
Specular, reflection and the diffuse aspects of a surface are investigated to produce the correct look of various materials.
Procedural shaders using advanced networks are utilized to create believable and economical renders.
Rigging
Creating joints and controllers is the focus of these rigging classes. Students will learn to create rigs that will behave predictably in Maya. Forward and inverse kinematics are discussed. Other topics include joint placement and orientation, the importance of local rotation axis, and joint rotation order.
Lighting
The various properties of the many lights within Maya are fully explained. 3 point lighting and other lighting concepts including raytracing and depth map shadows are fully examined.
Animation
This series of lectures introduce the students to character animation. Students will learn to apply the basic principles of animation to many different objects to create characters that have both dynamic movement and weight. We use the graph editor and timeline to set keyframes and manipulate them in time and space, while developing an understanding of how to adjust the tangents and other tools in the graph editor to create convincing and exciting animations.
Acting for Animation
In this series of classes, we take full advantage of the wonderful and richly talented skills of the acting staff here at the Academy. Students learn the fundamentals of acting essential to the animator’s skills in, developing the idiosyncrasies of a character and its behavior in movement and speech.
MEL and Python
Through Mel scripting and Python, the two native scripting languages in Maya, students are introduced to the world of scripting and programing. Concepts such as loops, global procedures and variables will be explored.
Semester Two Overview
At the beginning of the second semester, students present proposals for both their final projects and group projects. The student is encouraged to focus on a specific area of the animation pipeline during this project for inclusion in their animation reels.
Students may work individually or collaboratively under the supervision of the animation staff. The goal for each student is to complete a professional quality body of work by the end of the semester.
Goals
• Advanced rendering with mental ray
• Visual effects with particles and dynamics
• Advanced rigging techniques
• Advanced modeling with Maya and ZBrush
• Compositing in Nuke
• Creating a dynamic reel for your portfolio
• Nurbs hard surface modeling
In the second semester, each student for the group project, concentrates on a specific 3-D discipline to attain mastery in one of the crucial elements of 3-D production. Students also have the option to complete a final animated short of their own.
PRE-PRODUCTION
Students present and critique ideas and storyboards for individual and team projects. Various approaches are discussed and chosen. Each project is fully scripted, critiqued, and rewritten before going into production.
PRODUCTION
Students spend most of the second semester working in their chosen discipline.
The following topics will be covered in depth:
HARD SURFACE NURBS MODELING
Creating accurate surfaces for mechanical objects such as cars and household objects, nurbs are an excellent tool. They can be further modified into polygons for ease of manipulation.
• Nurbs curves and surfaces
• Nurbs components
• Parameterization
• Nurbs continuity
• Nurbs tools
• Conversion to polygons
ZBrush
ZBrush is a leading digital 3D sculpting software used for modeling, texturing and painting. It is used as a digital sculpting tool for creating high-resolution models for use in movies, games, and animations.
• Interface
• Preparing Maya Models for ZBrush
• ZBrush interface
• ZSpheres
• ZBrush tools set
• UV Master
• Exporting and importing between ZBrush and Maya
• Normal maps
• Displacement maps
MENTAL RAY
mental ray is a production-quality rendering application for ray tracing image generation. mental ray has been used in many feature films, including The Hulk, The Matrix Reloaded & Revolutions, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, The Day After Tomorrow and Poseidon.
• Linear workflow
• Frame buffers and file types
• Lights
• Materials
• Indirect illumination
• Passes
Compositing with Nuke
NUKE is an Academy Award winning node-based digital compositing software that was originally developed in-house at James Cameron's highly acclaimed Digital Domain visual effects studio in LA. It has been used in movies such as Avatar, Mr. Nobody, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, King Kong, Jumper, I, Robot, Resident Evil: Extinction, Tron: Legacy and Black Swan.
• Color correction
• Roto
• Camera Tracking
ADVANCED RIGGING
Using Motion capture files (mocap), which is the process of recording actions of a human actor, we transfer the movements to our cg characters for realistic movement in our movies.
• Human IK
• Motion Capture
PARTICLE DYNAMICS AND VISUAL EFFECTS
Using the amazing and new Bullet Physics engine in Maya we simulate both soft and rigid bodies, allowing us to create highly realistic simulations of cloth, rope, and other deformable objects.
• Particles
• Emitters
• Fields
• Expressions
• Soft bodies
• Rigid bodies
• Constraints
PUTTING TOGETHER YOUR REEL
• What your potential employer wants to see in your reel
• What your potential employer does not want to see in your reel!
