My wife said this was “cheesy” but I thought it was pretty cool. Anyway, I know a talented design student could do something much more clever and innovative.

Here’s our challenge: Record a phrase that is at least 8 words, and no more than 15. Repeat it twice and animate two variations of the phrase, with a different “take” on the phrase that you create through timing and animation. It should include all of the effects that I have done here – Camera Lens change, Camera Motion, sharp holds on words to match the audio track, global illumination, a seamless background, mograph shader effectors and mograph dynamics.  You can copy this pretty directly or you can create a better version using the phrase of your choice.

The emphasis on this project is frame composition, timing to audio, FCurve control and showing the ability to create different emotions for pretty much the same phrase. Avoid “floaty” animation, check out Zero Angle on the Keys. The only items animated were the Camera and the Shader Effectors. I would suggest sticking with that initially and only add additional animation once you have those mastered.

Certainly there is room to improve on this simple example, better timing (always!), depth of field, careful adjustment of fog (animate the environment fog?). Additional light sources and maybe play around with materials in a suitable way. As this is the third and final Core Exercise, if you can master all of these exercises you should be well on your way to high-quality motion graphics using 3D.

UCD 3D Motion Class: Render the final movie at HDTV 24 – 1920X1080 resolution and then export from Quicktime 7 Pro in H264 format. Turn in the finished movie and your project files on SmartClass by start of class.

Modules required to complete this exercise include:

Animation:
Setting Keyframes
Adjusting Keyframes
F Curves
F Curve Interpolation

Basics:
Navigation
Sound

Camera:
Types of Cameras
Animating
Focal Length

Mograph:
Introduction to Mograph
Effector Overview
Rigidbody (Gravity)
Shader Effector
Text Object

Rendering:
Global Illumination
Backgrounds
Performance Basics