Teaching animation in computer science

In the last four years, we have been using Blender software to support the Animation course for computer science students. In particular to support the lab classes and to develop a practical project, i.e. a short 3D animation film. The use of a modelling and animation software helps students to understand how it works in practice the several mathematics and physics concepts. For example, how interpolation methods affect the results of a motion path? Thus in the Blender they can see the results of use different interpolation methods. The choice of Blender is due to three factors: it is a free open source 3D content creation suite; it has similar capabilities to the commercial software and it has a large support in terms of documentation, examples and tutorials available in the Internet.

Our undergraduate students start by using OpenGL in a Computer Graphics course. In this course they have their first introduction to 3D, and the graphics pipeline is introduced. Then, during their Master degree, the students have the Animation course where they learn the main modelling and animation techniques. In parallel, some topics such as lighting, colouring and texturing are introduced to enable the realization of an animation film. Of course, other topics that are useful to film production such as sketching, storytelling and character design are not taught. The artistic component is minor in our case because the focus of a computer scientist is more technical.

However, the films produced by our students reveal the different skills of each one. For example, some reveal more capabilities relating to modelling while others reveal more capabilities relating to animation. Another interesting aspect revealed by projects is the different skills of director, producer and editor.

In summary, Blender is an excellent choice for 3D creation and it is a good tool for support the learning process, in particular for topics such as modelling and animation techniques. Besides, it enables the development of all technical steps of an animation film. In fact, the use of animation software makes easier and interesting the learning process of the course because it enables students to evaluate some theoretical concepts.