The requirements for this lab is to render a short scene of an object tumbling down some stairs. You will model, shade, and animate it in Blender, then use Blender to create a standalone AVI file.

You will be graded on the quality of the rendered animation as well as the completeness of the scene. It should be interesting (i.e. the impact with the stairs should be apparent) and have realistic motion.

Using Blender, construct a stairway with at least three steps. You may have as many more as you want. You may choose whatever dimensions for the steps you want.

Create an object to fall down the steps. The goal is to show realistic animation, not to display your modeling chops. I recommend that you use a simple sphere, cube, cone, torus, or cylinder.

The scene begins with the object at the tops of the steps. It then falls down the steps, impacting several or all of them on the way down. It must hit and bounce at least three times.

NOTE - There are physics simulators built into Blender. Do not use them for this lab. The goal is to learn about animating by hand. You are welcome to calculate parabolic trajectories by hand, but you may not use a simulator to animate you scene.

The object and the stairs must have materials assigned to them. They should be different materials to increase their contrast in the scene.

The scene must be rendered at 640x480 pixels with a framerate of 24 fps. It must be at least 3 seconds long (72 frames). It may be as long as you wish to make it, but you must keep it interesting for the entire length of the scene. (i.e. no 30-second lingering camera shots of a squashed cube at the bottom of the stairs.) Remember that your audience will turn it off if it gets too long and boring.

Extra Credit: There is a legend among animators that Walt Disney would ask artists to "draw me a bag of flour and make me care about its problems." I have never found a reference proving this true, but the principle is solid - you can make people laugh or cry with good animation on a simple object. Extra credit will be awarded for any entry whose animation makes an instructor laugh or feel emotion for your object.

Thoughts:

• Simplify your life by having the object fall mostly along one plane. Focus on making it bounce along the x and z-axes and remain constant along the y-axis.
• Consider deforming your object as it falls. Once you have a basic fall animation in place, you could add squash-and-stretch as the object impacts, it could tumble, or the stairs could actually flex as the object hits it.
• There is a decent tutorial here that shows a way to make a bouncing ball, with emphasis on using squash and stretch to add character: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRh-D44_6LI
• Cameras can be animated, too. Consider using a camera-move to change the viewer's perspective as the scene progesses.

Class members will vote on their favorite submission in the first class after the due date.

An expert animator could spend dozens of hours perfecting a single shot like this. To meet the learning goals of this lab, expect to spend 2-3 hours on your animation after you have mastered the basic interface.

Grading Criteria

Collaboration Restrictions:

• CP-6 (See course policy for specifics)
• The entire class can be treated as your "assigned group members". You may ask any student for help or advice on this Lab, but you may not work on the same animation. Each student must hand in their own, unique animation.
• Only the student submitting the Lab may directly affect the scene in any way. (e.g. Another student can recommend that you make a change, and can even tell you how to do it, but cannot do it for you.)
• The use of existing digital animation is strictly forbidden, as is the use of physics simulators. You may not copy animation, in whole or in part, from the Internet or any other source.
• You are allowed to use video as reference.
• You are allowed to use any other real-world object as reference.

Submitting your Lab:

Email both your .blend and .avi files to your instructor as described above.