Animation Faqs is a blog dedicated to the field of Animation. We have tried our level best to answer most of the Animation FAQ's on this blog. Hope you'll like it.
What is Animation?
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of 2-D or 3-D images such that one gets an illusion of a movement of an object
moreWho is father of Animation?
No one really knows who is the father of animation. Some say its Georges Melies who experimented a lot to add special effects to films
moreAnimation Bible has broadly classified Animation into seven basic categories. They are
Animation is widely used in each of these fields. Each is used for different purpose and cater to a different audience.
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 !!!
The concept of Persistence of Vision was taken to a new level when people decided to experiment more and more with it; thus many instruments were developed on similar lines for eg. the Phenakistoscope, the Zoetrope, the Praxinoscope; and then came in the Flipbooks which I’m pretty sure most of you must have seen.
Flipbook
The idea of flipping images was tried with increasing the number of images per second, imposed on the retina. Thus developed the concept of frames per second. It was seen that when images were projected at a lower frames per second, the motion appeared jerky and at higher fps the motion got blurred, so after much experimentation it was found that a rate of 24fps (frames per second) was comfortable for viewing. The still camera was already existing then and this development led to the invention of the motion camera, well thats a totally different domain altogether.
Ok… so where was I, yes Frames per second; films are projected at 24 Fps in the theaters, where as the PAL system of broadcasting uses 25 Fps for the television medium and in some countries the NTSC system is used which broadcasts at approx 30 Fps. Cool, so thats it for all the factual and technical aspects of what animation is and how it began.
Hi I’m Zeee and we would not go into the details of me; cuz we are here to talk animation (as the blog name suggests). Hmmm… So.. after watching all the Tom n Jerry episodes, the Shrek sequels, the Dragonball Z series etc. etc. I’m sure most of you are aware of what animation is or at least what all that you see can be termed as animation;but not all of us know about it. So this specific article goes out to those who are unaware of what animation is and also to those who are completely aware of it but they simply love animation so much that they would sit down to read anything and everything about it inspite of knowing all of it.
Well, it all began in around 130 A.D. when a Greek astronomer Ptolemy discovered this principle called Persistence of Vision. It states that the retina in the eye retains the image in the form of light entering the aperture of the eye for one-tenth of a second; and if consecutive images are projected on the retina within one-tenth of a second then this causes the images to superimpose, thus giving us a sense of motion of the object in the image.
Okay I’ll simplify this, do you remember playing with this toy in your childhood, the bird drawn on one side and cage drawn on the other and when you twirl the string faster you see the bird in the cage. Walk down memory lane and see if u can picture it in your hand; well what you played with is called a thaumatrope and that was your first interaction with animation.