http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/ A search of MERLOT materials Copyright 1997-2013 MERLOT. All rights reserved. Sun, 26 May 2013 02:25:05 PDT Sun, 26 May 2013 02:25:05 PDT http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/images/merlot.gif http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/ 44 34 http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=426932 This is an Open Course published by Tufts University as part of their Open CourseWare Program. This course updates and replaces Three-Dimensional Modeling, Animation and Rendering Using Blender 3D Software (2006), previously on Tufts OCW. In this course we will explore basic mesh modeling, applying textures and materials to 3-D objects, lighting, animation and rendering. This course should provide a good basis for further independent study in architectural, engineering, and theatrical modeling and game design. This course is self-paced, meaning that you can pick and choose the Learning Units, Video Tutorials or PDF tutorials as you see fit. The sequence of Learning Units are a suggested path of learning Blender but you are welcome to use this material in any way that suits your purposes. Course Description The Blender 3D Design course is intended to offer students an introduction to the world of computer generated 3-D modeling and animation. As an introductory course, it provides a basic understanding of the skills and techniques employed by 3-D designers in a wide range of applications. There are 2 progressive levels of study in this course: Beginning Level and Intermediate Level. Learning Units 1 through 12 comprise the Beginning Level Course and Learning Units 13 through 24 comprise the Intermediate Level Course (Note: The Intermediate level Course is currently under development.) All of the course material for this course is located on this web site or on other web sites. To take this course, you must have access to a personal computer on which you can download all of the required software (free) and execute all of the required assignments. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=301545 An online unit from OpenLearn, affiliated with the Open University, UK. This unit will help you to understand how major art collections are brought together over long periods of time and why particular pieces gain notoriety. This unit focuses specifically on the Louvre in Paris, France.This would be a good unit to use before a study abroad trip to Paris. This unit is labeled as "intermediate" level. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=290248 An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. There are courses available for the following countries: Australia, China, Colombia, France, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam, China and other countires as well. For more information on The OCW Consortium please go to: http://www.ocwconsortium.org http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=555717 "Creative activity (isn't) the icing on the cake. Human creativity is the cake." (Jerry Hirschberg) Creativity - "the mastery of information and skills in the service of dreams" (Hirschberg) - is much prized in the arts, science, business and the classroom. What does the creative process look like? Under what conditions does it flourish - what ignites the creative spark? Attempting to answer these questions, this class explores ways creativity has been understood in Western culture: what we prize and fear about creativity and its wellsprings; how writers, artists, scientists and inventors have described their own creative processes; how psychologists and philosophers have theorized it; ways in which creativity has been represented in Western culture, particularly in 20th century films; and creativity in everyday life, including our own lives. Readings include portions of psychologist Rollo May's The Courage To Create, and essays by Joan Didion, John Updike, Alice Walker, Oliver Sacks, and others. In addition, we'll watch video profiles of choreographer Paul Taylor, architect Maya Lin, and jazz musician Dave Brubeck. We'll keep journals in which we note our own observations and reflections on creative process. We will also watch a film together as a class one evening early in the term. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=555778 This is the second undergraduate design studio. It introduces a full range of architectural ideas and issues through drawing exercises, analyses of precedents, and explored design methods. Students will develop design skills by conceptualizing and representing architectural ideas and making aesthetic judgments about building design. Discussions regarding architecture's role in mediating culture, nature and technology will help develop the students' architectural vocabulary. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=555961 This is the second undergraduate design studio. It introduces a full range of architectural ideas and issues through drawing exercises, analyses of precedents, and explored design methods. Students will develop design skills by conceptualizing and representing architectural ideas and making aesthetic judgments about building design. Discussions regarding architecture's role in mediating culture, nature and technology will help develop the students' architectural vocabulary. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=555840 The aim of the Portfolio Seminar is to assist in developing a critical position in relationship to their design work. By engaging multiple forms of representation, written and visual, students will explore methods that facilitate describing and representing their design work. Through a critical assessment of their existing portfolios, students will first be challenged to articulate design theses and interests in their past projects. Different mediums of representation will then be studied in order to hone an understanding of the relationship between form and content, and more specifically, the understanding of particular modes of representation as different filters through which their work can be read. Some of the questions that will be addressed are: How does one go about describing an image? How does one theorize representation? How does one articulate a design thesis in writing verses visual media? How can the two interact to enhance each other? How do different media, printed verses web publishing, affect the representation of work? How is your work best communicated? http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=555859 This studio explores the notion of in-between by engaging several relationships; the relationship between intervention and perception, between representation and notation and between the fixed and the temporal. In the Exactitude in Science, Jorge Luis Borges tells the perverse tale of the one to one scale map, where the desire for precision and power leads to the escalating production of larger and more accurate maps of the territory. For Jean Baudrillard, "The territory no longer precedes the map nor survives it. …it is the map that precedes the territory... and thus, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map.״ The map or the territory, left to ruin-shredding across the 'other', beautifully captures the tension between reality and representation. Mediating between collective desire and territorial surface, maps filter, create, frame, scale, orient, and project. A map has agency. It is not merely representational but operational, the experience and discursive potential of this process lies in the reciprocity between the representation and the real. It is in-between these specific sets of relationships that this studio positions itself. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=556031 4.125 is the third undergraduate design studio. This subject introduces skills needed to build within a landscape establishing continuities between the built and natural world. Students learn to build appropriately through analysis of landscape and climate for a chosen site, and to conceptualize design decisions through drawings and models. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=555762 This subject introduces skills needed to build within a landscape establishing continuities between the built and natural world. Students learn to build appropriately through analysis of landscape and climate for a chosen site, and to conceptualize design decisions through drawings and models. This class was taught concurrently with 4.125B. Some of the assignments are the same, some are different, and the sites for the final project are different. But since they were taught in tandem, it would be useful to look at both together.