Animation and CGI Motion

How do you create realistic animations? It’s key to the success of animated films to insure audiences believe in characters.

This course will show you how to create lifelike animations focusing on the technical aspects of CGI animation and also give you a glimpse into how studios approach the art of physically-based animation.

You will learn the fundamental concepts of physical simulation, including:

1. integration of ordinary differential equations such as those needed to predict the motion of a dress in the wind.
2. formulation of models for physical phenomena such as crumpling sheet metal and flowing water.
3. treatment of discontinuities such as fractures and collisions.
4. simulation of liquids and solids in both Lagrangian and Eulerian coordinates.
5. artistic control of physically-based animations.

These concepts will be put into practice in the programming assignments spanning:

• Discretizing and integrating Newton’s equations of motion
• Constrained Lagrangian Mechanics
• Collisions, contact, and friction: detection and response
• Continuum mechanics
• Finite elements
• Rigid body simulation
• Thin shell and cloth simulation
• Elastic rod and hair simulation
• Fluid simulation
• Control of physical simulations