Process of making a 3D animation film

June 21st, 2008 by admin

Now that I’ve written about the steps involved in making a 2D animation film lets look at what processes are involved in making a 3D animation film.

Well the initial steps are same as that of a 2D film namely – Story/Concept, Scripting, Character and Environment Design, Storyboarding, Voice Recording and Animatics.

You can refer about it by visiting this link

Well the animatics could itself be done in 3D using dummies (read: low polygon models). So lets take it from there.

7) Digital Storyboard or 3D Animatics – using a 3D software like 3D Studio Max, Maya, Houdini, SoftImage etc. a low polygon model of each character and the set/environment is made. Now with the digital sets erected the low polygon characters are placed in the shot and the digital camera is added asper the camera angle in the storyboard. Once this procedure is done for all the shots a rough render is made and the entire film is seen through this Animatics just to check if there are any timing issues and other glitches.

8 ) Modeling – Once the Animatics are approved the 3D modelers take the character, prop and environment designs from the Design department and begin digitally modeling them.

CG Model with Texture

9) Texturing – When the modeling is completed its time for the texture artists to paint the relevant textures on to the models.

10) Rigging – Simultaneously the models are given to the Riggers who add the bones and various controls on to the models and it is these controls that enable the animators to animate the models accordingly. Most of the times its the riggers job to help simplify life for an animator.

11) Layout – The Characters are now placed within the environments along with the cameras. This laid out scene is given to Animators and also Lighting artists.

12) Animation – It can be further subdivided into Character Animation and Technical Animation. The Character animators get the Rigs to animate and they animate the gestures and also lip-sync the prerecorded dialogues. Now the job of technical animators is to animate through programing or use existing scripts and tools to modify attributes of objects to get the desired motion. Technical animation includes the secondary motion of the character hair, the motion of clothes on the character, just in case the clothes are not bodyfit; it also includes Particle effects – like dust, fireworks etc., Fluid effects like water simulation and explosions etc. etc.

Water simulation and underwater lighting used in Finding Nemo

13) Lighting and Shading – The lighting artists get the scene setup with the character and the background. They play with the various lights and settings so that each scene is lit according to the specified mood. Lighting artists at times also make Shaders for various objects and how each object behaves with respect to light, so that metal looks like metal, plastic looks like plastic and so on.

14) Rendering – Once the shots are lit they are sent to be rendered. Rendering is basically converting the 3D data to 2D flat images which is what will be visible to the audience on the screen. The rendering is done in passes (similar to the idea of having different characters on different Cels during Traditional Animation), and later all the ‘layers’ thus obtained are digitally composited together, and color corrected if necessary to give the final output.

15) Background Score – The film is now sent for background score.

Now, there you have a 3D animation film !!! Have Fun !!!

Types of animation mediums

June 21st, 2008 by admin

Animation can be basically 2D or 3D but when we use different mediums we get different types of animations. Lets have a look at them.

1. Traditional 2D Animation on Cells– As I’ve told before it is a type of animation where each frame is hand-drawn, right from the character to the props, the environment and also the backdrop everything is meticulously hand painted.
2. Stop-motion – In this technique the object to be animated is shot with a still camera, now the camera is kept steady and the object is moved slightly and another still frame is captured, again the object is moved and its image is shot and so on. Now, when the still frames are played, since the camera was motionless the object now appears to be in motion. Hence the name Stop-Motion. This basic idea of Stop-motion has been extended to various mediums such as clay, puppets, cutouts, sand etc.
3. Computer Generated – As the name suggests all animations generated with the help of a computer fall under this category be it 2D or 3D. Softwares such as ToonBoom and Macromedia Flash are used for making 2D animations. Where as softwares like 3Dstudio Max, Maya, Lightwave3D, Houdini, SoftImage etc. are used to create animations ranging from home experiments to high-end computer generated imagery. An example of a very high end CG film is Final Fantasy made in Maya 1.0. Also have a look at Beowulf released in 2007. The stunning CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) will make you wonder how thin the line between real and CG has become.

a female model from Final Fantasy

Forms of Animation

June 21st, 2008 by admin

Hi… Now that you know what Animation is and how it began lets look at the types of animations. It can be broadly classified into two categories 2-Dimensional or 2D and 3-Dimensional or 3D. People generally confuse the type of animation with the medium used for example clay, cut-outs etc. but we shall come to those a little later.

Tom and Jerry (2D animation)

Shrek (3D animation)

2D animation is also at times referred to as Traditional Animation or Cel Animation, since animation clips were produced traditionally by drawing on paper and later transfering them on cels (a thin clear plastic sheet made of cellulose nitrate). Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse popularized 2D animation with films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio etc.

Here’s the basic difference between 2D and 3D; its that additional ‘D’ or dimension. 2D animations consist of only the height and width. In other words they are flat and what they lack is the third dimension called ‘depth’. The sense of depth in 2D is got through the use of color shades and painted shadows. Where as in 3D we have height, width and depth.

In the early days when computers didn’t exist or were limited to the military and research teams, all the animations were hand-drawn, colored and later photographed and transferred to film. With the advent of computers and the development of the Computer Graphics technology different avenues began to openup and the concept of 3D came into existence. Computers began assisting animators thus taking the world of Animation to a whole new level. Softwares like 3dstudio Max and Maya came into being. Computer Generated Graphics started a revolution, but the love for Traditional hand-drawn animation still remains…