Thomas Jefferson’s 3D Animation class

The Center for Communication Technology  Magnet has many classes to offer, giving students the chance to excel at something other than their basic core classes. 3d Animation being one of these classes, has stood out for a lot of the creative students. It’s given them a challenge, and an opportunity, to display their talent and provide a showcase that will be posted on this website.

Mr. Esparza’s 3d Class consists of:

Story-writing

Behind every 3d animation is a story. The elements of story writing are a fine thread that runs through every animation project. The stages of the Hero’s Journey is used as a writing format for students to write their story. As they learn the steps to good story writing, students are encouraged to blog their story for others to read and critique. From the story, a storyboard is then scripted to help students plan out how they will animate and render their scenes to create their animation project.

Tutorials

Students learn to create their own models based on the skill sets that they have learned from the tutorials. Some tutorials create mini projects that students create and in process learn the skills set needed for the project and similar 3d models that they will need to make.  Most of the tutorials are resources that are gathered from experts who use the software. Other tutorials are created by the teacher.

Project-based assignments

After students learn the necessary skill set of the software, they are then challenge to design and create their own models and animation. Most projects are presented as RFP (Request For Proposal) simulations. Students are given specific criteria requested by their “client” to create a model or animation that will possible be used by the company or non-profit organization. Other criteria is given by the teacher to assess the student content skills. These skills are demonstrated within the project that the student is assigned. All projects are graded on a rubric that is given to all students at the beginning of the project.

Demonstrations

Very little skill sets instruction is given to the class as a whole. Occasionally, the teacher will demonstrate a skills set that is common among many students. Most skills sets are taught using the video tutorial or by using procedural steps that have been written down. In most cases, students are shown what the final project will look like when they complete the assignment.

Working with Maxon Cinema 4D Studio

CINEMA 4D Studio is the very best that MAXON has to offer for professional 3D artists. If you want to create advanced 3D graphics but need a helping hand to ensure you create jaw-dropping graphics quickly and easily, then this is the choice for you.

As well as containing all of the features found in CINEMA 4D Prime, Visualize and Broadcast, CINEMA 4D Studio adds advanced character tools, hair, a physics engine and an unlimited client network for rendering. The result is that CINEMA 4D Studio can tackle any project you throw at it with ease.

CINEMA 4D Studio’s character tools make it easy to create character rigs and advanced character animations. Adding hair or fur to characters is fast and simple with a powerful suite of hair tools that let you grow, comb, style and animate. The physics engine makes it simple to perform complex collisions and interaction between objects, be it just a few or thousands. Network rendering allows you to take advantage of all computers on your network to help render your animations faster.

Despite being designed for advanced 3D, the extra tools found in CINEMA 4D Studio are still designed to be user-friendly and intuitive. Generating advanced 3D effects such as hair is surprisingly easy and fast, with CINEMA 4D doing much of the work for you. For example, hair will automatically swoosh and sway as you move your character around; and making thousands of objects collide with each other only takes a few mouse clicks to set up.

CINEMA 4D Studio lets you unleash your creativity and enjoy 3D without limits.