Art Department - Fall 2026 - Digital Art - Ronaldo Kiel

ARTD 2822 - 3D Character Design - The Illusion of Life

Code: 24975 Section: TQ2L - T 02:15-05:55PM - 5102 BH - Jan 27 to May19, 2025

Course Description Class Projects Schedule Important Dates Contact Index

Class 1

Introduction:

• Character Development and Animation - Overview
• Technical Aspects 3D characters
• Overview: Modeling,Texture Mapping, Rigging, Animation, Rendering

Demonstration: Project set up, MAYA Interface

• Starting a project - Concept Sheet (please look at some examples)
  Please do a "concept sheet character" Google search, click IMAGES.
  The concert sheet should include front, back, side, and maybe a few action poses of the character, also facial tweaks, colors and gear are part of aconcept sheet.
• Image Planes.
• Polygon modeling workflow versus sculpting and retopologizing.

Assignment: Take pictures of our face or someone else for reference. You can also use sketches. We need a frontal image of the had that you plan to model and the profile.

Sample: CCNY door sculpture
This is a simplified sketch of one of the sculpture on City College's Shepard Hall.

Look at the Autodesk site. The on-line tutorials will help you to update your knowledge of the software functionality.

Class 2

Discussion: The modeling process

Demonstration: Maya Modeling Techniques

• Polygon extrusion
• Edge Loops
• Quads (avoid n-gones and triangles)
• Poles (how, where and when)
• Other time saving techniques

Assignment: Work on Project #1 (portrait).

Class 3

Discussion: Face Details and basic lights

Demonstration: Other parts of the face

• Eyes
• Ears
• Hair (xgen or geometry)
• Teeth and tongue
• Put it all together
• UV your model

Assignment: Create single frame renderings of Project #1 (portrait). At least 5 shots.

Class 4

Discussion: Painting Layers - Mud Box

Demonstration: Mud Box interface

• Paint and Sculpt
• Layers
• Projecting your reference images
• Exporting textures

Assignment: Finish Project #1 (portrait) Modeling.

Class 5

Discussion: The shaders that your character needs.

• The skin and its specific characteristics.
• Specular and sub-surface properties.
• Normals and Bump maps.

Demonstration: Back in Maya

• Creating shader networks for Arnold

Assignment: Work on your textures and shaders.

Class 6

Discussion:  Physically Based Rendering

Demonstration:

• Realistic subsurface shading 
• Displacement and Bump & Normal maps 
• Thickness map

Individual presentation of project #1 (Draft)

Assignment: Create at least 5 single frame renderings of your character in Arnold. Now you have to adjust the properties of your shaders. Define the look of the hair (if you have hair in your character), eyes and skin.

Class 7

Discussion: Additional details    

Demonstration:   Eyebrows, Eyelashes, Hair

• XGen
• nHair
• Paint Effects
• Polygonal solution   

Assignment: Finish Project 1 - Turn Table Animation

Class 8

Before you start rigging the head

1.Check for scale: According to Wikipedia: One study in the United States shows the average adult head circumference to be 55cm (21 3 ⁄ 4 ) in females and 57cm (22 1 ⁄ 2 in) in males. R ≈ 9 cm

2. Delete all history

3. Freeze transformations in all groups and Polygon Meshes.

4. Make sure all naming is clean: It is good practice to use suffixes like “GRP” for groups. “GEO” can be used for for meshes and “JNT” for joints.

Discussion: Joints and Skeleton - User Interface GUI

Demonstration: Face rig - Joint and Bones

• Placement of Joints
  - create joints
  - name joints:

  Neck_1_JNT
  Neck_2_JNT
  Head_JNT
  Jaw_JNT
  Chin_JNT

• How hierarchies work - Geometry Hierarchy (MMB drag in the outliner to parent)
• Skinning: transfer weights method

Individual discussion with students about project #2.

Assignment: Work on the rig.

Class 9

Discussion: Digital Puppet

Demonstration:

• Create joints (Name all elements in the Outliner)
• Creating Controllers - Use of "off set groups"
• Connecting Controllers
• Hierarchy of the Controls (to create Hierarchy in the Outliner MMB drag the child to the parent)

• Eye controls
• Simple puppet mouth

Individual presentation of Project #2 in progress.

Assignment: Create the skeleton and assign the weights.

Class 10

Discussion:  Blend Shapes Face expressions

Suggested Attributes to be added to the Controllers
and corresponding Blend Shapes:

Many of the mouth shapes can be placed on the Chin Controller.

The following attributes connected to Blend Shapes for the sounds of specific letters can help lip sync

• M_P_B
• F_V
• L
• E
  

Jason Osipa Face Blend Shapes - Simple

Jaw_Open
Smile
Narrow
Frown
Sneer
UprLip_Up
LwrLip_Dn
BrowsOut_Up
Brows_Dn
BrowsMid_Up
BrowsMid_Dn
Brows_Squeeze
Squint
FatChin

Demonstration:

• Mouth shapes employed to lip-sync
• Preston Blair "Dialogue"

Assignment: Create all the Blend Shapes needed and connect to atributes.

Class 11

Discussion: Facial Animation

Facial Recognition : Interesting video about 2018 face recognition.

Demonstration:

• Key Frames (controls) 
• Previewing - Play Blast

Assignment: Animate and save the Play Blast QT for in class discussion next week.

Class 12

Discussion: Sound and Lip Sync Animation

Demonstration:

• Working with the Timeline & Graph Editor
• Book Marks

Assignment: Choose an audio clip or create one.

PacDV (free sound effects) - https://www.pacdv.com/sounds/voices-4.html

Voice Bunny (Browse samples) - https://voicebunny.com

Class 13

Discussion: Animation and Rendering

Demonstration:

• Graph Editor
• Animation adjustments
• Using clips
• Using loops
• Rendering

Individual presentation of project #2 (Draft)

Assignment: Jalil Sadool Show Reel 2014 - https://vimeo.com/140981491

Class 14

Final rendering of all your projects. All Final renderings need to be uploaded to Yuja.

05/19 Uploads until 11:59PM