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POV Break F. Your movie

This page contains links to all resources mentioned in POV Break F of the textbook.

Bézier curves in POV

Also, you can download bezier.inc to add Bézier curve capabilities to your POV files.  Instructions for using it appear in the comments in a demo file; download bezier-demo.pov to see.

Movie Editing Software and Tutorials

As of early 2018, Microsoft no longer has a page for downloading Windows Movie Maker. This represents a change from the textbook, which was published in 2016, before this change was made.

Consequently, I recommend that Windows users download the cross-platform, free, open-source tool OpenShot that the text recommends for Linux users. Since the publication of the textbook, that produce has matured significantly and become available for both Windows and Mac systems as well.

Macs come with iMovie already installed, but if you want a newer version than the one you have, you can update through the Mac App Store. Tutorials for iMovie are available on Apple's website here and here. Mac users are also free to try OpenShot, as mentioned above.

Linux users can get OpenShot from its webpage. Tutorials for OpenShot appear on Linux.com and on MediaCollege.com (an OpenShot sponsor).

Information for Instructors

Instead of a final exam, my students do a final project, and we show them to one another during the regularly scheduled final exam period. So although we all show up on the day of the "final exam," there is no traditional exam, but instead there are informal presentations of final projects (and voting for a People's Choice award).

The final project is 15% of our course grade, and the breakdown for grading the final project is given below.

On the day that we show our movies, during the ordinarily-scheduled final exam period, after all the movies have been seen, we take a vote for the People's Choice award. Each student lists their top 3 favorite movies (and they are free to list their own) in decreasing order of preference. I later compile the votes, giving #1 votes more credit than #2 votes, and #2 more than #3, and rank movies based on their votes. This popularity vote is 10% of the project grade, as you can see below, which encourages creativity, polish, extra effort, etc.

My students may work on the final project individually or in pairs. Each project receives one grade, which everyone who worked on the project earns. I encourage students to talk with classmates and me about their work on this project, and consult any other kind of resource they see fit. But of course, no team should present anyone else's work as their own, in keeping with the usual academic integrity standards.

Tip

I set aside a few class periods near the end of the semester for discussing these projects in class. I let the class choose what we should discuss during those periods, and usually they end up being workshops, in the sense that they are times when teams of two meet and work together in class, while I move among them and answer individual questions about difficulties with a specific detail of a scene, an object, an animation, etc.

I also place the following restrictions on my students' work.

  • Each movie must use at least one of the POV features listed in the suggested project at the end of POV Break C.
  • If a student/team chooses to include code written by others in their movie, they must follow these important guidelines.
    • Give credit where credit is due. (Cite whatever you use.)
    • Ensure that at least one significant foreground object and some of the background were created by the student/team, so that the project involves more than just animating other people's stuff.
    • No imported code can count towards any of the other project requirements. For example, if the student/team imports someone else's really cool model of a human hand made with POV's blob feature, that doesn't count as satisfying the POV Break C requirement, because the use of the blob feature was not done by the student/team.
  • The movie must have a title screen that includes the name(s) of the student/team at the opening of the movie. This makes it easy for me to compile a YouTube playlist of all the final projects, and each project automatically introduces itself.

Each student/team must give a presentation on the day we share our movies with one another, during the regularly-scheduled final exam period. I ask that the outline of each presentation be as follows. Students submit their presentation file electronically as described further below.

  • Describe how you planned your project. Feel free to show sketches, early still scenes, or a story outline.
  • Describe how you divided the work (chronologically, and across team members, if applicable) and which parts were the most time consuming or difficult.
  • Mention which POV feature(s) you used from the suggested project in POV Break C. Show a frame from your movie illustrating the feature in question.
  • Mention where you used Bézier curves in your scene. Illustrate it with a frame from your movie, or a sketch, or whatever you think is most helpful.
  • Conclude by showing your movie, and let it speak for itself.

Each movie must be submitted as follows.

  • Upload the video to YouTube and email me the link to the video. If you do not want it to be publicly visible, you make make it unlisted, but it cannot be private, or I will not be able to view it.
  • Attach to that email a copy of the presentation you will give to introduce your movie. The reason for this is given below.
  • Your presentation's last slide should be a link to your YouTube video, so that you can just click the link to jump right there. When presenting, try to show it full-screen, for the best audience experience.

Warning

I require that this email arrive one hour (or more) before the final exam period, so that I am able to put all presentation files onto the classroom podium PC before the final exam period begins. (It wastes too much time if every single team inserts a pen drive and drags a presentation onto the podium PC before presenting. If I ensure that all presentations are in one folder on the desktop ready to go, everything goes more smoothly and is less boring for the audience.)

I also construct a YouTube playlist containing all final projects and email it to the class after the presentations, so that everyone can rewatch them at their leisure.

The final project grading sheet you can view by clicking here (PDF) shows in detail the grading breakdown that I use for this project. The 10% marked "People's Choice" will be awarded based on votes given by each student on presentation day, as described above. It is essential to attend that day of class, so that each student/team can give their presentation, receive votes, and vote for others.