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my name is Francis Schmidt, I am a professor of computer animation
uh... and i want to
create a series of videos for you
to learn how to
animate
in three dimensions using Softimage
this program right here
first i want to talk to you about the layout of the screen
you should be seeing this at nineteen twenty by ten eighty about thirty frame per
second
h_d_ video
what we have here on the left over here
this is Softimage
as you should open it
should be the same resolution that you have at home
uh... on the right we have me
and then we have
tools that will show you everything i'm doing first off
we have our mouse
there's a picture of mouse there and i have an actual mouse here and you'll see
my mouse has three mouse buttons
it has a left button
it has a middle button which is also the wheel
and has a right button
I also can roll the wheel up and down and you will see that the wheel lights up
when I do that.
i want to make sure that you can see all that and that
before you do anything
in Softimage
get yourself a three button mouse
very easy to get
another thing we have to the right of that down there is
my keyboard
this is just a standard old keyboard
in a three-d program a keyboard becomes a very important
control panel tool and you'll see that every button I click
you can see as I click it
over there on the bottom of the screen
by watching these videos
you should be able to see everything i'm doing as i'm doing it
and I should be able to explain it to you as well
not should be actually well
let's talk a little bit about the 3d environment
when we open Softimage we get this and this looks sort of like
one of those old things that they teach you in art school when you're drawing
vanishing point perspective
because it actually is that
this thing we're looking at here is going to be the end result of all the
stuff we do
to create three-d_ animation
but unfortunately
it's uh... at this point
not
that interesting to us
we need to see this stuff underneath it
and the stuff underneath it
starts here
when i click
this button up here
this is
the far more familiar layout for doing anything in three dimensions
uh... i have
these four screens
one of them is that first screen we were talking about that the other three are
also very very important
um... you can see threes coming up a lot
three dimensions three mouse buttons
that's not coincidental
that is all tied together
as an example
what we're going to do here is look at
how we get to three dimensions
uh... from this application and then making things work
would you like movies and tv isn't so on and so forth
uh... used minor change there
uh... you noticed when i click that button in the upper right-hand corner
there that screen blew up
by default softimage gives you that screen now
but really that sort of uh...
a not particularly
useful attempts to make things seem friendlier than they are
this is the screen
i'm gonna put up first and the screen
the screen is grey
we know that
you have seen it before
if you've taken geometry in high school you've seen this before
this screen over here
this screenis a piece of graph paper
which is the piece of graph paper you had in geometry in high school we're used to
have to
draw
a point
and interestingly a point
is the most
primitive element in any three-d_ animation
that you'll ever do
the first thing i would do is i'm going to draw a point out here as if
this was a white piece of paper with blue lines on it
like graph paper and i had a pencil
uh... but idon't have to do any of that stuff anymore
I get the computer to do all that for me, which is a great plus to this
right now it doesn't matter so much if you follow along with what I am doing in the program
I want you to understand what we're doing
how we're making this stuff and then
in the video right after this we cover going into the program itself
i'm going to make that point
and put it right here
and that point i just put on there which is that little red dot there
that point is at
zero zero which is called the origin
on the
x dimension
and the y dimension
just like on that piece of graph paper, If you will note in the lower left hand corner
down here it actually says y and x
this is that piece of graph paper
when i
put another point anywhere else except on that point
i'm negated
along
basic geometry i'll put it out
end
when i put a point
anywhere else except on that line
amigos shape
uh... that shape is a triangle
entities these simple list
all shapes
all commercial ships for critical polygons
so when we're working in three d
we start with points which are literally just x and y locations
we have two points we got a line between and we have three points
we get this thing called a polygon
sort of not points winds and polygons now
in high school
when we're learning all the stuff
in my high school lease they stopped at sea
they stop that why i should say we never got to see
and x and y was plenty hard
and that's one of the reasons i stopped at sea
my ex dimension being left and right my white imagine being up and down busy
that they never talk was about
even out
uh... box
this piece a graph paper we got
we got no way to prison
just can't happen
it's impossible basically matter what i do
i think it is the americans around all i want
so the first thing i needed equipment to witness mathematics lays another piece a
graph paper
uh... click this back up here
now you'll note
we have a piece of crap paper appear
and the peace wearing down here this is cold front
this is the front
our object i would say that object was this malice like here okay
what i'm saying is
if this is the front of my object
will do it like that
that would be the front down their van x and y data from one of the dizziness
i need to see
the top of my ob gyn and be able to look down on it
we have another piece of graphic
right over here at the says top
and if i click somewhere
and i should be a perfect example actually
mcdaniel
by mr
colonel independent
i'm moving the point
into the
previously you know if it's a crappy permit pickles is even mention
notes just another pretty crappy for basically
you can imagine
adjustment of two pieces of graph paper if you want
this one looks me do the front of the object
up down left right
this one lets me do
the top of an object
which would be left to right and back and forth
and that's great you see that when i move some things here
i don't see it move it all in that piece of paper down there
now let's say one to get something on
the side of the object
and in the kitchen bracket
i need this piece right here which is called my right side
as soon as we added that seem to mention
we got
two extra pieces a graph paper we have to have
there's no way we can get around were doing without having to work to be
suppressed paper so
imagine again if we had a mouse is an example
if this was the front of it
this is the top of it
and this is what will say that this is the right of it
that is what is being drawn
this window here the front
this window here the top in this window here in the right
now than watch this
this is the payoff
this is the window where reaction we see the things
the way we see them
out here
what this program is trying to do
what every three d program is trying to do was it's trying to
create anything
ever cedar promoted c
to do that
it has to
stake in the way we see stars
here's the thing and it's kinda everything
we see things wrong
this is the way this stuff really is the front the top
and there's a number of reasons why we know this
not the least of which is that we have these here parallel lines
that graph paper from high school
we look at those parallel lines parallel lines
will stay parallel forever
we will go for here which is much more like what we see
those parallel lines no longer stay
in the distance they're getting closer together
this is how we see everything if you look around you right now you should be
able to see
to want to know what parallel
and that you know when the distance they come to a point
is being as you point perspective
that is that is this this survival mechanism that we've developed over
billions of years instruments and says things that are further away from us or
not as important
as things that are right close up to us
and that's why does things go further away from us
from our eyes perspective
they look smaller further away
with that said
how are we going to get something usable out of this program for him
i am going to do something and when i recommend you do all the time
when you're learning three-d_
you should
restart
whenever you're lost and you'll be lost a lot there's nothing wrong with that
whenever you feel a bit lost just do a new same let's run the due to start
right now
new scene
support all four screens
when the people who first made this stuff going back
twenty thirty forty years ago
start making it
the realtor quickly that
there were certain shapes they used over and over again
we talked about pointed agent calling on all that and
originally
there were programmers writing dub location of
each point
x_y_z_ in them
riding on the line for connected and then
writing out a polygons were connected than writing how they'll work together
and then
putting computer code to generate an image and take a picture of it and
processing in the land and then looking at it and she was wrong then going back
and it was a lot of work
so very rapidly they realize there's certain things that
we're using all the time
rose using pubes
whereas using spears
or was using combs
and those formulas are known to us
rather then reading the code for that every time went by just wrote the cold
ones
and then said i want to cuba airline cuba rwanda q bear on cuba rwanda
spherical and gold forth like that
this is one of the earliest forms of modeling
modeling being
making the shapes of objects that we're going to all
we're going to intimate as we get deeper into this
uh... mister d'amato instal primitive model
looking at the softer much green
the seaweed over here in the west we have this bar
uh... it should say model by default and has
create and modify
these are different things that we can
throw into our inner face to do things with we're going to get
and primitive
remove modeling
debt primitive polling on match
when i go to get primitive polygon national see that
i have a bunch of
shapes
just a description of the i'm a pick one
nearly randomly
and when i do
a bunch of things will happen
i get covered up over there pull myself back down there
we got the shape which is called the ports
otherwise does adopt
and we got this box this popsicle property panel
well that's bad what way but just and permanent parts for one moment folks
uh... and we will we will be right back