General provisions

The course is part of the minor field of study Expression in Convergent Media.

Entry requirements

At least 3.5 credits from Digital Sculpting for Games 1

Learning outcomes

Upon successful completion of the course, a student will be able to:

• Demonstrate a thorough understanding of digital sculpting principals.
• Plan, execute and evaluate a digital sculpting project with a focus on character design.
• Critically reflect on the range of digital sculpting techniques and methods as it relates to their projects.

Content

Building upon Digital Sculpting 1, Digital Sculpting 2 will explore the development of 3D characters through sculpting and texture painting.

From the initial scoping, then refinement of their concepts to the presentations of finished creative projects, students will be involved in both the technical and artistic aspects of bring their digital characters to life.

Sculpting is an iterative process and one of exploration. Students will work throughout the course on the improvement of form, resolution, mesh integrity and readability. Anatomy for the design of humanoid and non-humanoid characters will be covered to an extent. Mesh planning will be part of the workflow. During the class we will consider the technical refinements of form; attention will be given to mesh topology as it relates to the posing of sculptures, the building of useable UV-sets and poly-painting.

Context is a necessary component in creating convincing characters. Characters require things to act upon and roles to play. The sculpting design projects undertaken du ring the course will include props of various sorts: clothing, fur and hair for example.

In the final stages of their sculpting, students will learn to support their characters with high frequency, photo-realistic surface treatments like pares, wrinkles, scars etc.

Different techniques will include how to apply texturing, light, and shadow to create atmosphere and context.

Instruction

The teaching consists of lectures and workshops with supervised project assignments.

Instruction will be given through online discussions and practical exercises with support from course literature in addition to supervision for the individual project work.

Assessment

The assessment is in the form of both practical assignments and oral presentations describing the connection between theory, method and design results.

If there are special reasons for doing so, an examiner may make an exception from the method of assessment indicated and allow a student to be assessed by another method. An example of special reasons might be a certificate regarding special pedagogical support from the University's disability coordinator.

Uppsala University does not accept cheating or plagiarism. Suspected incidents of cheating or plagiarism are reported to the Vice-Chancellor, which may issue a formal warning to the student or suspend the student from studies for a certain period.

Other directives

The course overlaps the course 3D Modelling and Visualization with Zbrush, 5SD000 and 5SD501, and must not be included in a degree together.