Managing Multimedia Projects

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Managing Multimedia Projects

• Carleton School of
• Information Technology
• IMD-4901
• Senior Project

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Topics

• Introduction to Project Management
• Project Scheduling
• Risk Analysis
• Animation Process
• Game Development Process

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Project

• Dictionary Definition
• A task or scheme that requires a large amount of
  time, effort, and planning to complete, Encarta
• A planned undertaking, Merriam-Webster
• A specific plan or design, Merriam-Webster
• Focus on Activity, Plan, and Objective

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Distinguishing Characteristics

• Non-routine tasks
• Limited time
• Different specialties
• Examples?

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Management Tasks

• Planning deciding what is to be done
• Organizing making arrangements
• Staffing selecting the right people for the
  job, etc.
• Directing giving instructions
• Monitoring checking on progress
• Controlling taking action to remedy hold-ups
• Innovating coming up with new solutions
• Representing liaising with users, etc.

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Management Problems

• Poor estimates and plans
• Lack of quality standards and measures
• Lack of guidance about making organizational
  decisions
• Lack of techniques to make progress visible
• Poor role definition who does what?
• Incorrect success criteria.

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Planning

• Effectively schedule, allocate, use, and replace
  resources to achieve goals
• Master schedule is the basic tool and main output
  of planning
• Project control is based on comparing the
  progress with schedule
• Planning and scheduling are dynamic

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Reluctance to Planning

• Takes too much time and cost
• Preventive action
• Long-term payoff is greater than short-term cost
• Too tedious (mental activity)
• Thinker and doer
• Ego (shoot from the hip)
• Not realistic

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Effective Schedule

• Understandable
• Sufficiently detailed
• Highlighting critical tasks
• Flexible
• Based on reliable estimates
• Conform to available resources
• Compatible with other related projects

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Developing the Schedule

• Defining objectives
• Attainable, definitive, quantifiable, with
  specific duration
• Breaking down the work
• Sequencing the activities
• Estimating costs and durations
• Reconciling with time constraints
• Reconciling with resource constraints
• Reviewing

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Work Breakdown Structure

• WBS is a hierarchical representation of a process
  or product or both (hybrid).
• WBS can be shown in a tree graph or as an
  indented list
• A decimal numbering to label the elements
• e.g. 4.1.2 is the 2nd element of the 1st element
  of the 4th

4th 1st 2nd
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Tree Graph WBS for ATC
Air Traffic Control System
Project Management
SW Eng.
Product Assur.
Operations
Req. Eng.
Design
Coding
Test
VV
QA
Detailed
Preliminary
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Indented List WBS for ATC

• 0.0 Air Traffic Control (ATC) System
• 1.0 Project Management
• 2.0 Software Engineering
• 2.1 Requirement Engineering
• 2.2 Design
• 2.3 Coding
• 2.4 Test
• 3.0 Operations
• 4.0 Product Assurance
• 4.1 Quality Assurance
• 4.2 Verification and Validation

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Notes on WBS

• Rolling wave approach
• First top levels
• Gradual completion
• Keep partitioning into 7?2 elements
• Make sure about numbering scheme
• Top-level zero or one,
• Work package specification for lowest level
  entries (info, completion, )

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Sequencing Scheduled Activities

• Interrelationship among activities
• Milestones and Gantt charts are most common
• Gantt chart also shows the relationship between
  work load and time
• Full-wall method gives a global view
• Precedence networks are used for larger projects
• Critical Path Method (CPM)
• Program Evaluation and Review Technique

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Milestone Chart

• Deliverable scheduled time
• Simplest scheduling method
• Small projects or summary of larger ones
• Ease and minimal cost
• No interrelationships exhibited
• Only completion dates
• Not enough feedback

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Gantt Chart

• Gantt or Bar chart used more frequently
• Suitable for less than 25 activities
• Graphical display of start/end times
• Shows overlapping activities easily
• CPM or PERT may translate to Gantt
• Estimation of resource and budget vs. time

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Gantt Example - 1
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Gantt Example - 2
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Project Plan - 1

• Title page with
• Signature box
• Change history
• Table of contents
• List of figures
• List of tables

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Project Plan - 2

• Description (general idea)
• Objectives (artistic and technical)
• Deliverables (documents and non-docs)
• Resources and team structure
• Scheduling info (tasks, WBS, milestones, etc)
• Risk analysis
• Change control policy
• Quality control policy

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Effective Project Control

• Detailed planning
• Deliverables and measurable milestones
• Communication
• Tracking (money, time, resources, tasks)
• Reviews
• Signing-on
• Reasons for poor control?

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Milestone Analysis

• Actual vs. estimated effort and schedule
• Re-schedule
• Scheduling training
• Review tasks
• Quality monitoring
• Review test procedure
• More tests
• Risk-related monitoring

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Risks

• Anything worth doing has risks. The challenge is
  not to avoid them but to manage them.
• Risk Management an attempt to minimize the
  chances of failure caused by unplanned events.
• Risks are events or conditions that may occur,
  and whose occurrence, if it does take place, has
  a harmful or negative effect.
• Defects are not risk. They are almost certain.
• Risks are probabilistic events.

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Example

• Computer show
• Power failure
• UPS
• Generator
• Power company guaranty
• Risk management entails additional cost.
• If risky event does not happen, the cost is not
  wasted !
• People tend to ignore risks.

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Basic Concepts

• Risk exposure (impact/factor)
• RE P(UO) ? L(UO)
• RE risk exposure
• UO unsatisfactory outcome
• P(UO) probability of UO
• L(UO) loss due to UO
• UO varies for customers, users, developers, and
  managers.

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RE-based Decision Tree

• Consider different possibilities and calculate RE
  for each.
• Example software critical error (CE)
• P(UO) 0.4
• L(UO) 20 M
• Two options
• Hire an independent verification and validation
  (IVV ) team (500K)
• Use development team
• For each
• Find CE (probability 0.36 and 0.3)
• Do not find CE (probability 0.04 and 0.1)
• No CE (probability 0.6)

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Risk Management

• Risk Assessment
• Identification
• Analysis
• Prioritization
• Risk Control
• Planning
• Resolution
• Monitoring
• Correction (usually considered part of monitoring)

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Risk Identification

• Use checklists, comparison, decomposition,
• Top software risk items
• Personnel shortfalls
• Unrealistic schedules and budgets
• Developing the wrong functions and properties
• Developing the wrong user interface
• Continuing stream of requirements changes
• Shortfalls in externally furnished components
• Shortfalls in externally performed tasks
• Real-time performance shortfalls

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Risk-Management Techniques

• Personnel shortfalls
• Top talents, job matching, team building,
  training
• Unrealistic schedule and budget
• Detailed estimation, incremental dev., reuse
• Developing wrong functionality
• Prototyping, analysis, user participation
• Requirements changes
• High change threshold, information hiding,
  incremental development
• External jobs
• Benchmarking, inspection, compatibility analysis

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Risk Mitigation

• A risk becomes a problem when risk factors
  cross a threshold, as defined in plan. Two types
  of planning!
• Action planning
• Prevention, Immediate response
• e.g. training
• Contingency planning
• Correction, When needed
• e.g. use of extra resources

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Typical Multimedia Projects

• Animation production
• Feature film
• Animated short
• TV commercial
• Game development
• 3D vs 2D
• Choice of platform (console, pc, web, )
• Web design

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Animated Images
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Persistence of Vision

• Peter Mark Roget (1825)
• image, after-image, next image
• 5 sec sampling interval
• 20 frames per second
• Visual mistakes
• Wrong direction for wheel
• Continuous motion

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Animation?

• From Latin verb, animare, to give life
• Frame-by-frame, illusion of movement
• Norman McLaren
• Animation is not the art of drawings that move,
  but rather the art of movements that are drawn.
• Flipbooks and moving pictures
• As early as 70 BC

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Pioneers

• Charles-Emile Reynaud (1844-1918)
• Pauvre Pierrot (1892) by Theatre Optique
• George Melies (1861-1933)
• Le Livre Magique (1900), visual effects
• J. Stuart Blackton (1875-1941)
• Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906)
• Winsor McCay (1867-1934)
• Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)

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Disney

• Walt Disney Productions (1923)
• Experimental abstract animation in Europe
• Hyper-realism
• Move and live like real figures
• Same physical laws
• Exceptions (staying float!)
• Relationships and behavioural tendencies
• Conservative content ?

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3D Computer Animation

• 1950s and 1960s
• Early computer technology
• 1970s
• 2D and 3D computer graphics in movies
• 1980s
• Luxo Jr, first 3D animation (1986)
• 1990s
• Babylon 5 and Toy Story, 1st TV series and movie
• 2000s
• Elephants Dream,1st open movie (2006)

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Sample Project Types

• 90-min Feature Movie
• 15-min episode in weekly TV series
• 10-min visual effect in live-action movie
• 5-min short
• 2-min online animation
• 30-sec segment for TV show
• 15-sec TV commercial

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Team (TV Commercial)

• Creative
• Producer
• Creative director
• Art and animation directors
• Copywriter
• Production
• Production manager, animation supervisor, tech
  directors, tech assistant, artists

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Team (Feature Film)

• Creative
• Director
• Producer
• Art and visual effect directors
• Scriptwriter and storyboard artist
• Administrative
• Executive producer
• Production manager and assistant, directors of
  finance and post-production, accountant

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Team (Feature Film)

• Production
• Visual effects group
• Producer, supervisor, editor, etc
• Animation group
• Modeling and lighting group
• Tech support group
• Digital compositing and post-production group

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Team Size (A Bugs Life)

• Animation 61, Lighting 40
• IT 33, Modeling 31
• Crowd and effects 27, Art 26
• Post-production 26, Editorial 22
• Executive/supervising 23
• Production 21, Layout - 19
• Rendering software dev 19
• Shading 19, story 19
• Camera 12, rendering - 12

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Traditional Process

• Development
• Pre-production
• Production
• Post-production

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Development

• Visual development
• Characters, props, locations, style
• Writing
• Script
• Series bible
• Pilot script
• Production script
• Drafts and final

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Production Plan

• Delivery date and schedule
• Format, length, and technique
• Complexity analysis
• Crew plan and roles
• Budget and payments
• Contingency

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Pre-Production

• Design and art direction
• Visual style guide
• Voice track
• Casting
• Songs and sounds
• Storyboarding
• Timing
• Story (Leica) reel and animatics

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Storyboard Functions

• Conceptualization
• Visual thinking
• Key moments
• Flow and transition
• Detail, composition, and aesthetics
• At least one detailed image for each scene
• Logistics

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Storyboard Example
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Storyboard Example
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Animatics

• Animatics refers to a video representing
  storyboard images.
• The key point is duration.
• Camera moves from one key frame to another.
• In digital version, the software displays images
  using a defined timing
• Adobe After Effects

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Leica Reels

• From early character animation
• Pencil tests filmed by a cheaper camera (German
  Leica)
• Two additional elements are added
• Sound track
• Test footage
• Wireframe 3D, for example

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Digital Production - 1

• Design
• Modeling
• Rigging or kinematics
• Skinning
• Surfaces
• Environment

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Digital Production - 2

• Staging/workbook
• Refined reel with cinematography, staging, and
  timing details
• Animation
• Camera movement
• Lighting
• Effects
• Rendering

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Camera

• Types of camera
• Orthographic
• Perspective (projecting every point toward camera
  until intersecting the image plane
• Pyramid (cone) of vision
• Point of view (POV, camera)
• Point on interest (POI, object)
• Line of view

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Pyramid of Vision
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Clipping Planes

• Perpendicular to line of sight
• Far clipping plane
• Yon plane
• Most distant
• Near clipping Plane
• Hither plane
• Closest

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Camera Shots
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Camera Lenses
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Camera Moves
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Lighting

• Types
• White light
• Coloured light
• Tinted light (low saturation, high brightness)
• Sources
• Point (omni-directional, omni) in all directions
• Spot cone and fall-off factor
• Infinite so far the rays seem parallel
• Area/Linear e.g. fluorescent tube
• Ambient even distribution through scene

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Basic Components of Colour

• Position and orientation
• Colour and intensity
• Decay and fall-off
• Beam angle
• Glow and cone of light
• Global vs. local
• Shadows

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Basic Light Positions
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Post-Production

• Image retouching
• Tonal range and filtering
• Image compositing and blending
• Image sequencing
• Colour grading
• Music and sound mixing

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Output

• Pixel, colour, and time resolution
• Image format and compression
• Aspect ratio
• Video format
• File
• Signal

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Whats a Game?

• Creative expression
• Art
• Beauty?
• Entertainment
• Non-interactive
• Games (or playing environments)
• Goal (excludes toys)
• Competition (excludes puzzles)
• Attack?
• Fun?

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Some Milestone Games

• Space invaders 1st videogame hit
• Pac-man fine tuning existing ideas
• Star raiders 1st 3D space combat
• Wing Commander cut scenes
• 7th Guest, FF, MGS video cut scenes
• Half-life integrated cut scenes
• SimCity/Sims
• Doom/Quake immersive 3D engine
• Civilization

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Students Picks!

• Good
• Blades of Steel, Civilization, Deus Ex, Diablo2,
  Fable, Far Cry, Grim Fandango, Halo, K.O.T.O.R,
  Master of Orion, MGS, MYST, Penguins, Prey, Super
  Mario (64 and Kart), Tetris, Tomb Raider, Unreal
  Tournament 2004
• Bad
• DaVinci Code, SimTower, CSI, Heart, L.O.T.R,
  Quake, Space Invaders, MGS,

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Game Development Team
Design Game Designer Level Designer Writer
Art Art Lead Concept, Character, Background,
Animation, Texture, Sound, etc
Producer(s) External Internal Assistants
Programming Tech Lead AI and Logic, Physics,
Effects, Sound, Tools, DB, Networking MU, etc
Test Test Lead Testers
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Game Producers

• External
• From publisher
• Internal
• From development company
• aka project manager or director
• Assistant
• Assets, daily tasks (builds, backup, etc),
  screenshots, PR, checking milestones, paperwork,
  etc

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Design Team

• Game designer
• Play a lot of games!
• Use demos and reviews, look around, chat, etc
• Level designer
• Very new field of work (job def.?)
• Writer
• Not a linear medium!
• Not dialog-based

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Programming Team

• Tech lead
• Programmers
• AI and Logic
• Physics
• Tools, DB, network and multi-player
• Graphics effects, sound effects, weapons
• Scripting languages

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Art Team

• Art director
• Artists
• Concept
• Character modeling
• Background modeling
• Animation
• Texture
• Sound, etc

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Externals

• Music
• Voice
• Sound effects
• Video
• Motion capture
• Language localization
• Legal, manual, etc

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Development Lifecycle

• Concept development
• Pre-production (proof of concept)
• Development (production)
• Test (alpha and beta)
• Release (after code freeze)
• Maintenance
• Upgrade

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Concept Development

• Summary (aka high concept)
• Pitch (aka proposal or concept doc)
• High concept
• Genre
• Gameplay
• Features
• Setting
• Story
• Target audience
• Platform
• Estimated budget and schedule
• Competition
• Team
• Risk Analysis

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Pre-Production

• Project plan
• Design documents
• Game design
• Technical design
• Art bible (style guide)
• Art production plan
• Prototype

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Production

• Similar to design and implementation phases in
  software development.
• Design doc is Requirement doc!
• Lifecycle models
• Waterfall
• Modified waterfall
• Iterative
• Rapid iterative prototyping
• XP, Agile, etc

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Testing

• Gameplay functionality
• Unit/character functionality
• Story progression
• User interface
• Sound and music
• Compatibility
• Gold master/final checklist

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Test-related Versions

• Alpha
• Features and assets
• Expected bugs
• Closed Beta
• No severe defects (crash-bug)
• Open Beta
• Public access for test
• Release

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Publishing

• Public relations (PR)
• Marketing
• Sales
• Stores
• Distributors
• Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM)
• Promotion

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Tracking Production

• Transparent process
• Accessible and complete documentation
• Meetings
• People, subject, date/time/location, preparation,
  agenda, discussion, actions, signing, filing
• Reports
• Recording actual vs. estimated

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References

• Producing Animation
• C. Winder and Z. Dowlatabadi
• Focal Press, 2001
• Art of 3D Computer Animation, 3e
• Isaac V. Kerlow
• John Wiley Sons, 2004
• Game Design, 2e
• Bob Bates
• Thomson, 2004
• Game Producers Handbook
• Dan Irish
• Thomson, 2005