Free Online Courses in 3D Multimedia: Where Can I Find Them?
Why tell a story using only words when you can do it with several communication mediums simultaneously? You can blend video, graphics, images, sound and text to make presentations, create art and entertain people. Strengthen your knowledge of 3D multimedia with the following free online courses.
Where Can I Find Free Online Courses in 3D Multimedia?
1. Interactive Multimedia Production at Utah State University
Once a for-credit course offered to students at Utah State University, Interactive Multimedia Production is a free, non-credit OpenCourseWare (OCW) course that you can study at your convenience. You will need Adobe Flash 9 (CS3) for this course.
What Will I Learn?
The course teaches you to use Flash software to create and integrate animation, graphics and video into Web pages. Topics cover Flash's basic programming ideas, including commenting code, variable types and code re-use.
What Assignments Are Included?
A multi-part assignment involves designing an animation of a growing mushroom that uses lighting, motion, video and other features. There's also a multimedia project based on your own ideas or a task you're completing for work.
What Materials Are Provided?
The course includes handouts, PowerPoint files and streaming video of lecture notes along with examples illustrating uses for Flash. There are guidelines for completing the multimedia project and a link to a website featuring student projects.
2. Advanced Online Design from New Jersey Institute of Technology
Advanced Online Design offers materials used in a for-credit course originally taught to graduate students on campus. You need some visual design skills prior to studying this course.
What Topics Are Covered?
You learn to use multimedia software to design several projects and build online communities. Topics include making screencaps, PDF documents and podcasts in addition to various photo editing techniques.
What Assignments Are Included?
Assignments include a portfolio website that showcases examples of various multimedia formats, such as podcasts, PDF documents, audiovisual tutorials and images. The coursework also asks you to describe the characteristics of two good websites and one bad website.
What Materials Are Provided?
The course provides video lectures and PDF tutorials on topics such as multimedia, Web 2.0 technologies, podcasting and image editing. You can access a link to lecture podcasts on iTunes as well as links to free software you can use to complete assignments.
3. Computational Camera and Photography at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
You must understand algorithms and photo technology to use Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computational Camera and Photography OCW course. You will need to acquire the cameras and equipment used in this course.
What Will I Learn?
You learn the basics of computational cameras, which you can use to photograph images for multimedia projects. The course also covers different types of cameras - including 3D range-sensing cameras - as well as optics, sensors and light sources.
What Assignments Are Included?
The course assigns a project that uses computational photo technology along with a multimedia presentation that can include images, text, animation and video. Four homework assignments cover optics, relighting, multispectral imaging and multi-flash cameras.
What Materials Are Provided?
Lecture notes are presented as audio recordings and slides presented in PDF format. Resources include links to introductory material on computational cameras, PDF documents and videos on computational photography.
