Instructor:
Course Administrator:
Agnieszka Meyro
ameyro@media.mit.edu
Course Units: 0-12-0
Meeting time:
Tuesdays 1:00 - 3:00pm
Room E15-468H
Prerequisites:
Permission of the instructor required. Limited to 10 students.
Syllabus and Reading List
Questions to Think About
Course Description:
This course will review the leading research into building interactive 3D
animated characters. Each week we will explore a specific topic, drawing on
current research as published in research publications such as the Siggraph
Proceedings. Topics will include: lessons from classical character
animation, modeling techniques for expressive movement including forward
and inverse kinematics and physically based modeling, use of motion capture
data to derive models of motion, motor learning using genetic algorithms,
behavioral models of control, synthetic perception, and special problems
such as grasping and facial animation.
Equally important, we intend to use the class to "tune up our eyes" and better understand traditional techniques for conveying emotional state in animated characters. That is, what are the set of emotions we want our characters to express and for each emotion how best to convey it? More generally, what are the "tricks of the trade" that traditional animators use to convey the intentionality and motivational state of their characters?
What is expected:
The course will be run as a seminar in which each student will be
responsible for presenting one or more papers from the reading list, as
well as leading the class discussion on the paper. The student will also be
responsible for doing a final project which will be presented on the final
day of class. Students will be encouraged to use the project as an
opportunity to build a complete, albeit simple, interactive character.
In addition to the readings, each week we will pick an emotion, or
expressive movement to analyze the following week. Each student will then
be responsible for finding and analyzing an example of that emotion being
conveyed by an animated character. We will spend the first part of each
class discussing the examples presented by the students. Each student
should bring the example (i.e. the video clip) to class and be prepared to
present their analysis.
Students will be encouraged to collaborate on all projects and presentations. The grade will be based on class participation and presentation of papers (30%), presentation and analysis of examples (20%) and the final project (50%).
Please note that students are pretty much on their own in terms of computing and modeling resources.