Advanced Computer-Aided
Rendering and Animation
Arch 138/139x
This course is for advanced students who have a research agenda or specific
project involved with computer representation, visualization, or rendering. The
course is run as a lab/seminar where individuals are responsible for their own
research agenda and its fulfillment.
The course provides a forum for serious discussion and exploration of emerging
fields in computer rendering, painting, modeling, animation, multimedia and
design as well as issues related to those fields. Emphasized are specific
interests in human user interfaces and how designers, artists and other graphic
thinkers use and develop necessary tools. Students will discuss the uses
computers have been put to in support of design as well as the drawbacks of
these uses and will explore the potential of the future
Needed is a familiarity and experience with principles of CAAD, the theory and
methods on which it is founded, and its principle applications in practice
(generating, evaluating, modeling, drafting and rendering design solutions).
Students must have previous computer and software experience and to be able to
compose and sustain a research plan.
The agenda for the class meetings consists of seminar discussions, project
demos, guest speakers, viewing of historical and current animations,
presentations by outside and student researchers, and field trips to notable
firms.
Idea development beyond the original project will result from the interaction of
the idea with a synthesis of the individuals experience and the class
experience. Students will be responsible for a completed storyboard and
animation. There will be three midterms and a final. The final will be conducted
with guest reviewers from the field. Results may be either 2D or 3D, still or
animated. Groups of two or more students may work on a project.