Aims

The aims of the course are to:

• Introduce students to the core components of 3D character animation, including rigging, skinning, animation, and rendering
• Provide hands-on experience with modern 3D graphics and animation tools
• Give students practical exposure to building, animating, and rendering a 3D character model
• As part of the project, students will capture an animatable 3D model of themselves and create a short animation

Objectives

As specific objectives, by the end of the course students should be able to:

• Understand the concepts of skeleton-based rigging and skinning
• Construct a simple rig for a 3D character and bind mesh geometry to the skeleton
• Understand simple animation techniques such as keyframe interpolation
• Capture a 3D human model and integrate it into an animation pipeline
• Produce a short animated 3D scene with animated 3D characters

Content

Week 1

Week 2

• Create a simple animation sequence using keyframe interpolation
• Render the animation into a 2D video
• Individual interim report

Week 3

• Load and animate a skinned 3D human model (SMPL)
• Explore human motion sequences using the human model
• Work in groups to capture 3D models of your team members
• Drive your character models using existing motion sequences and produce animated motion clips

Week 4

• Refine character animations and integrate them into a coherent 3D scene
• Produce a 30-second long animation video featuring the virtual characters
• Final group report