|
|
| |
|
|
| |
What is 3D animation? How is it different from 2D animation? |
|
Author - Saju Asokan |
| Last Updated: Aug 12 2008 |
|
|
|
Note:
Please dont
save this page for offline
viewing. These pages will
be available online 24x7
free of cost. Your visit to each page
on this site gives a small revenue through
advertisements, that helps to keep this
site online and meet the associated
expenses. |
|
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
In this article I will explain in simple terms, what goes behind the 3D animation that you watch in movies and what makes it different from the conventional two dimensional animation.
|
What is that extra 3rd dimension: |
Take a piece of paper and sketch a simple figure on it (a cat, a dog or anything that comes to your head). Let’s say it is a cat and it is facing you from that sheet of paper. So you have the front view of the cat in front of you. Suppose if you feel that you want to see the cat from a side, will it help if you rotate the paper or flip it? No. Why? It is simply because the sketch you have drawn has the 3rd dimension missing.
Every real world object that you see around has a 3rd dimension and that is the reason why you can take it and rotate it to watch it from different angles. The sketch you have drawn had a length and a width, since the paper you used to draw also had a length and a width. But it lacks a thickness (3rd dimension) and hence your sketch also didn’t have that extra dimension.
Suppose instead of sketching your imagination down on the piece of paper, you had decided to sculpt it on a handful of clay. Since the medium you used (clay) had volume, you had to define the cat’s shape from all angles during the sculpting. Hence you unknowingly added that 3rd dimension to it and that is the reason you have the freedom to rotate it any way you want.
|
|
| |
How conventional 2D animation works:
|
Before computers started playing their indispensible roles in the animation industry, everything was done manually by animators, who were essentially artists. They would create a series of slides having images on it, where each slide’s image is the continuation of the previous one in the sequence. For example, if an animator wanted to simulate a ball falling down, he would create a sequence of slides where first slide would portray the ball at the top. The next slide will show the ball, may be 1 cm lower than that in the first slide. In the next one, again lower and so on, till the last slide shows the ball hitting the ground. When the whole sequence of slides is shown in front of the viewer at a fast rate, it creates the feeling of the ball falling down. (Due to persistence of vision – a property of the human eye)
The whole process was tedious and time consuming. When computers came into play, the frame redrawing works had been minimized since, copying and pasting duplicate elements between successive frames was very easy with the computer’s aid. The artist has to make only the necessary changes that should exist between successive frames. As technology advanced, software evolved that again minimized the work of a 2d animator, in such a way that several things started getting automated. Using motion tweening and other techniques, an animator can set the initial position or shape of an object and then, it’s final position and shape, and the computer would generate the intermediate frames automatically. The artist even has the freedom to make corrections to that.
|
|
|
What was missing in 2D animation: |
The 2D animation always lacked the essence, since all the real-world sceneries and objects are 3D and once they get portrayed in 2D, they lose their reality. Later age cartoons started to simulate the 3D effect by using gradients, and varying highlights, but it required huge effort from the part of the artist. |
How 3D Graphics works: |
The stages in 3D animation are more in number compared to that in 2D animation. The first part of 3D animation starts with character sketching and 3D modeling. In the next stage the characters are rigged for animation. In the next stage they are animated. This is in fact a too compact form of what happens in the background. Let’s see each of them in a little detail. |
|
 |
Character sketching: |
This is the stage where an artist sketches how the character should look from various angles. Usually the sketch will be done on paper or canvas. As many variations in poses are created so that it would help the 3D Modeler to sculpt a 3D Model out of it. |
|
|
Character Modeling: |
A 3D artist, who has expertise in a 3D modeling and animating tool, will examine the sketches and starts sculpting the figure using his imagination and skill. I used the word sculpting because the process is much similar to the real sculpting we do with raw materials like clay. The software tool that the artist uses provides various approaches to perform the process of modeling. Usually organic modeling techniques like Polygonal Modeling (a polygon is subdivided to get the desired shape), NURBS modeling (curves are arranged to create a surface flowing through them), Subdivisional Modeling (A hybrid blend between polygonal modeling and NURBS modeling) are used. In these modeling techniques, the 3D artist will sculpt out the character’s shape in 3D using a set of tools provided by the 3D modeling software, by following any of the above mentioned approaches.
The 3D Model obtained finally will be in an editable form and the model will be dependent on the approach used. For example a NURBS technique will yield a 3D Model in the NURBS representation (curves and surfaces). Once the modeling is complete, the artist converts it into the basic polygonal mesh (vertices alone). The polygonal mesh is nothing but a huge number of polygons that are arranged so as it forms the whole character. This conversion to polygonal mesh offers many advantages like faster rendering speed, and cross-software compatibility. |
|
|
Character Rigging: |
The character model in this stage is nothing but a polygonal mesh. During the process of rigging, the character is optimized for animation. Different tools have different methods for character rigging. The first part is the skeletal setup. A skeleton similar to the real anatomy is created using the tools provided by the 3D animation software. The skeleton is aligned with the corresponding joints of the mesh that has been created. The next step in rigging is skinning. Using a tool provided by the 3D animation software, the polygonal mesh is bound to the skeletal joints. This process of skinning makes sure that when the skeleton get’s animated, automatically the whole polygonal mesh gets animated, due to the binding between them. |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
What is 3D animation? How is it different from 2D animation?
|
|
|
|
|
|
