Introduction to 3D Animation

Wanna be a 3D Animator?

Good 3D animators are the most highly sought-after artist in the world of 3D. There's a reason for this: good animation is hard. Which is not to say that animation is hard to learn, but rather that making animation that is believable and entertaining requires a lot of skill and practice. Most people who become 3D artists rarely venture beyond modeling, and their forays into animation are inexpert at best, and cringe-worthy or unwatchable at worst.

This is because animation requires a completely different skill set than 3D modeling. In fact, these two aspects of 3D art are so different that 3D modelers are rarely animators, and animators can rarely model. Established studios usually hire dedicated animators to do the bulk of the animation. Modelers, if they have any input into the animation process at all, usually stick with rigging.

What you should take away is not that it's impossible to be a good modeler and animator, but that these two subsets of 3D art require different ways of thinking and usually do not share techniques.

History of 3D Animation

3D animation is a process that involves taking fully 3D objects (whether they are physical or digital) and making them animate and move. Most 3D animation today is done using CGI (computer-generated imagery). From something as simple as a short cartoon to something as complex as a feature-length film, a 3D animation is a complicated piece of art that takes lots of practice and skill in order to properly execute. The most famous company that creates CGI animations is Pixar Animation Studios. Founded in 1985, they created the very first all-CGI movie in 1995, Toy Story, and they have made a dozen full movies to date. Pixar created an entire business out of the art of 3D animation.
Although Pixar began CGI animation, they weren’t the first ones to do 3D animation. The first type of 3D animation is actually stop-motion/Clay-mation. This process, done as early as the 60’s, involves taking real-life objects (typically clay models of characters) and making them animate in real-life. This is done by posing the model, taking a picture, change the pose of the character slightly, and then taking another picture. This is done until you have dozens of different pictures. When stringed together, they form a smooth animation that brings the intimate objects to life. Some of the most notable stop-motion animations include Gum by, Shawn the Sheep, and Wallace and Gr-omit, created by Aard man. Aard man continues to have success with their animations. Most recently, they co-developed the film Arthur Christmas with Sony Pictures.
This type of animation is very rewarding to do, but is a very time-consuming process. It takes several hours of poses and photographs just to get a few second’s worth of film. It also requires that the hundreds of shots that are taken have the same lighting, colors, and camera angles, or else the animation will look inconsistent and choppy. Although stop-motion animation isn’t used as much as it was from the 60’s to the 90’s, it is still used to this day, most notably in TV shows such as Robot Chicken. If you have the patience for it, stop-motion animation is a fulfilling and entertaining hobby.

Despite the success of stop-motion animation, many companies and artists have moved on to created 3D animations using computers, referred to as CGI Animation (meaning Computer Generated Imagery). CGI, when used in feature-length movies and short cartoons, usually refers to 3D animation, and not 2D animation. There are countless different programs out there for creating animations on a computer. Some of the most notable ones include Adobe Flash (for 2D animation), Blender (a freeware program for making 3D models), and Render man (a professional 3D program developed by Pixar, creators of the Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. films.). Which program you decide to use all depends on the specs of your computer and on what you are wanting to do with your animations.
Films have been using CGI in their films for over two decades. Although it has been used in films since the 1980s, it wasn’t used in large quantities until 1995, when Pixar Animation Studios released the first all-CGI film ever made, Toy Story. This ground-breaking film is about Andy and the adventures that his various toys have as they spring to life. Many of the toys are ones that exist in real-life, including Mr. Potato Head and Slinky-Dog. The character models and animations were considered to be very complex for its time, with detailed lighting, various textures, and a wide variety of facial animations. After this film was made, several other films were created using only computers. Some of the most notable CGI companies include Pixar (who has made over a dozen films), Dream Works (who created the Shrek and Kung-Fu Panda series) and Blue Sky (who makes the Ice Age films).

In the early 00s, several cartoon shows began to move towards CGI animation. One of the first ones was Jimmy Neutron, a cartoon show on the Nickelodeon channel. It was based on the CGI movie of the same name. These kinds of cartoons can be produced to air on a weekly basis. Similar to 2D animation for TV, short-cuts are taken in order to keep the costs down. Characters have simplified animation (such as stiffer movement and mouth flaps that don’t necessarily match the dialogue). Also, things such as fur are either simplified or nonexistent in TV CGI. One example of this is in The Penguins of Madagascar (a spin-off of the Madagascar movies). The main movies use several characters that have fur, such as lemurs and monkeys. But when those characters appear in the Penguins cartoon, simplified character models are used. These eliminate most of the fur on the animals, and instead give them a much smoother body and shape. Although they aren't as detailed, using these character models reduce many of the costs that it would take to animate fur.
3D animations are becoming more and more popular. Dozens of films each year are made in CGI. Many cartoon shows are completely made in 3D. Advertising, especially TV commercials, are aided by CGI. 3D animations are quickly turning into the most popular form of animation.

The Basics of 3D Animation
Animation in 3D applications usually happens in two primary ways. In major productions, both may be used.

1. Key frame animation - Key frame animation, or key framing, is the most well-known and oldest style of animation. In fact, there are examples of frame-by-frame animation dating all the way back to 1600 B.C. Egypt! Modern key framing techniques date back to the early cartoons created by animation pioneers like Winsor Mc Cay and Walt Disney. What may surprise you is that key framing techniques have not changed much since the early 1900's - most of the basic principles still apply today. What has changed is that 3D software packages have made key framing much easier to accomplish, meaning a broader scope of artists can learn how to animate.

Key framing is essentially changing the shape, position, spacing, or timing of an object in successive frames, with major changes to the object being the key frames. In traditional 2D animation, each frame is usually drawn by hand. When frames are shown in succession, as in a movie, the slight differences in each frame of animation create the illusion of motion. 3D software packages make key frame animation easier by interpolating, or "twining," the in-between frames. When animating a falling ball, for example, one key frame might be of the ball in mid-air, the next key frame may be the ball touching the ground, and the key frame after that would be the ball squishing down as the impact deforms its shape. All of the in-between frames are then calculated by the software automatically, including the squish at the bottom, making actual process of animation a matter of creating a few great key frames.

2. Motion capture - Motion capture, or mo cap, was first used sparingly due to the limitations of the technology, but is seeing increased acceptance in everything from video game animation to CG effects in movies as the technique matures. Whereas key framing is a precise, but slow animation method, motion capture offers an immediacy not found in traditional animation techniques. Mo cap subjects, usually actors, are placed in a special suit containing sensors that record the motion of their limbs as they move. The data is then linked to the rig of a 3D character and translated into animation by the 3D software.

There are a couple downsides to motion capture which make it difficult for beginning 3D animators to learn. Firstly is the cost of mo cap technology, which can run several thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. This means that most new 3D artists must learn to incorporate this animation style by importing mo cap data into a project from a commercially available mo cap library.

The other downside to mo cap is that the end-result is often far from perfect; mo cap animation usually requires clean-up from key frame artists to make it look more realistic, especially if the character being animated does not have an anatomy or proportions similar to those of a human.

Learning 3D Animation
Animators must have a keen understanding of motion, movement, and acting. It may surprise you that the best animators take acting lessons - this helps them understand how their own body moves, and makes it easier to transfer that understanding into believable animation.

Keen observation may be the most important skill to develop as an animator. Observe life around you, and how things move. Make sketches, take notes, and try to give meaning to what you observe. Don't study just animation. Learn from film, theater, and even comic books to understand how poses and movement create moods and non ver bally communicate messages. New animators would do well to learn from the old masters of 20th century animation - Walt Disney, Art Babbitt, Grim Nat wick, and Ken Anderson. The principles used to bring characters like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny to life are still as relevant today as they were back then. Indeed, the first place a new 3D animator should look is to the old animation manuals of 2D artists. Consider picking up "The Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams from your local book dealer. While written as a book about hand-drawn animation, it contains everything you'll need to know about good animation techniques in the 3D world.

The beginning 3D animator will want to focus on basic objects first: how to make a ball move from one place to another, and how to make it bounce. Later, as you explore character animation, you'll need to understand what makes a good walk cycle, and how to cut down on "float," a common problem for new animators where the character moves as if underwater. The software used is not important, at least in the beginning, as animation packages all have the same basic features.

3D animators must also have a good grasp of how models are rigged for animation, especially character animators. The "bones" used in a rig must be placed in a way similar to that of a living creature. Animators must also learn how to use inverse kinematic (IK) setups for their character rigs to reduce the amount of time spent key framing.

Above all else, animators must practice their craft. Like modeling, animation requires time to learn, and even more time to master. Even experienced animators may create dozens, or even hundreds of test movies before getting a good final result. A good animator can make an average model come to life, while even the best model can be made to look amateurish by a poor animator. Persistence will pay off, as a skilled animator can very well be the most important team member to a production.