DESN205

ANIMATED TOOL

DUE: Thursday 4th SEPT
ASSESSMENT WEIGHTING: 30%

PROJECT OUTLINE

TIMETABLE: 4 Aug – 4 Sept (5 Weeks incl. mid-term break)
DIGITAL DESIGN ISSUES: Tooling | Materiality | Surface Condition
DIGITAL DESIGN CHALLENGE: Sculpting through character
PRECEDENTS: Tapio Wirkkala | Marcos Novak | DECOi | Umberto Boccioni | Lebbeus Woods | Alexander Calder
SOFTWARE: Photoshop | 3dsmax | EditStudio | Audacity
TECHNIQUES: Parametric Modeling | Reactor Interaction
OUTPUTS:minimum of 750 frame animation/ maximum of 1500 frames in DV Pal and Quicktime, 25 frame/sec, 720 by 576px formats as covered in class.
RESTRICTIONS: You must not exceed a polygon count of 75000. No use of bitmap imported images.
PREMISE: The next wave of computer real-time simulations points an emphasis towards physical dynamics and form/space interaction with materiality. The designer is now able to twist and manipulate these physical dynamics in order to create form, dictating how one body might collide or blend with another, and how physical characteristics might manifest themselves in fluctuating ways or take on a personality through materiality.

PROCEDURE

PowerPoint

1. Develop a “character profile” and write it down in a PowerPoint. This character will be your “tool”. Based on the characters personality the tool will have an unique way of sculpting the “digital clay” you will have as your 2nd object.
2. Research the precident “sculptors” given above (or choose your own) and choose one to develop in conjunction with your character, i.e. it would be best to choose a style that suits your character. Write down how this sculptor works, and how it relates to your character.
3. Document any example images within your PowerPoint, e.g. precident images of your sculptors work, character images or related.
3.A) Week Two… Storyboard your proposed animation and present it in PowerPoint

3DSMax/ Audacity

4. Complete the “Reactor” tutorials. Experiment using a “soft/cloth body” for your “putty” and a rigid, manually animated, unyeilding “rigid body” for your tool.
5. Create 2 primitive objects within max and define both as outlined in step 4. Start to animate the “rigid, unyeilding” tool to sculpt the other “digital clay” primitive. Define your character through animation and interaction.
6. Use Volume selection methods and Push/FFD boxes to manipulate your tool through animation according to your design intentions
6. Develop material and lighting interaction between the forms in conjunction with your intentions.
7. Develop soundscape though recording, importing and editing in audacity (STRICTLY NO CD copying)

Photoshop | EditStudio

8. Render out of Max as a tga sequence and fine-tune aesthetics through batch processes in Photoshop.
9. After rendering out 750/1500 frames of 720 by 576 resolution tga files; use Quicktime Pro to complile into uncompressed sequence for editstudio.
10. Output to formats as outlined in class (H264 best& medium). DONE!

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

• Creativity and clarity in the articulation of appropriate design intentions
• Formal and poetic quality of your design vocabulary
• Extent of effective transformation from concept to final design
• Convincing portrayal of character personality in final animation
• Creativity in articulation of interaction between forms
• Ability to utilize computing technology to create and manipulate 3D form and space
• Quality of craft in the composed animation and 3D modeling

CLUES TO START

Creation of your Tool :

- Create a basic 3D object, i.e. sphere or box and change it’s dimensions?
- Now how do you select certain parts on that object, Volume Select perhaps? Can you use push modifier with those areas?
- Use an FFD box to then manipulate those same areas.
- Animate that transformation over time, and use the timeline?

- What happens when you use a bitmap (say ‘noise’) dragged from the material editor in the texture box in volume select?
- Can you change the object to multiple and radically different states over time using “keyframes�?? And can you change it by changing the ‘noise bitmap’ properties?
- Now try layering several volume selects and then modifiers on top of one another in the modifier list. What happens when you re-order them… similiar to Photoshop?

- Can you now animate the object moving on a path? Could you use the line tool with a path constraint under the tools motion for this?

Reactor:

- Have you looked up reactor, rigid body, soft body, cloth body, and unyielding animations under the user reference as a start?
- Have you completed the Reactor video tutorial on the R;Drive
- Have you completed the relevant sections in the Max Reactor user reference ( press F1)…?

Combination:

- See if you can now animate your tool scraping over the surface of the “digital clay”. Use reactor to define the clay as a soft or cloth body and the tool as a rigid, unyielding body. SCULPT AWAY!

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