3D Graphics, Animation Design, and Production - Essay Example

3D Graphics, Animation design and production. Introduction : Watching an Animation movie is a thrill and excitement not only for kids but for everyone. The characterization of unseen objects and unimaginable events becomes eye catching in an animation movie which is supported by good audio visual effects. The revolution in computer technology has immensely changed the face of animation industry. In the original 2D frame by frame technique, the effect of motion was created by filming a series of human paintings and playing them at high speeds . According to NTSC video broadcasting standards refered by Alkenmrs (2001) the typical speed may be 14 to 30 frames per second. In this method the creation of main and intermediate frames consumed a lot of time. Now, due to computer graphic technology, these intermediate frames are constructed by the software rather than by artists. This gives the animators to spend more time on creative thinking. Also the rapid evolution of many softwares in this field and their amazing audio visual effects enables the animators to go for 3D animation production. Advantages of 3D animation : Computers can draw any characters that an artist can hardly draw by hand. The 3D effects offered by the computer can surpass all the other animators. The realization and rendering and the expression of characters are extremely good. Using 3D animation any image or event can be expressed easily. For example the image of the structure of an atom, space probe situations, events like collision and bomb explosion can be simulated with perfection without any hard work and risk. The painting, shading and lighting effects can be simulated and experienced to get a perfect output. The computer does all the complex calculations about movement of the images. The various tools involved in modeling, editing, simulation, lighting and sound can be synchronized in one software which enables cost effective production compared to any action movie production. Concept realization in 3D animation : Man is the creator of any animation, he uses the computer as a tool to realize his imaginary concept. For an animation movie the beginning is an original story, so as in any action movie. After finalizing the story, the story supervisor hands over the concept to an art director who concentrates on choosing the proper characters and their way of expression. The concept is first realized on a primitive storyboard. The storyboard preparation is a very important task as it decides the flow of the sequence of scenes in the final animated movie. The preparation of story board is manual in the begining. Then the art director takes the help of a sculptor to plan the character in a 3D space, this enables the animator to visualize the character in a 3D environment. With the aid of the software the characters are rendered in a 3D space in terms of width, length and depth. Using digitalizers the animator commands the software to assign details like the color, shading, movement and the perspective of the image in the virtual stage so that is becomes a visual character. Design and Production : Digital Storyboard : The animation production starts with the design of storyboard. The storyboard transforms the story written by the writer or co-writer into a sequence of shots called frames. In 3D animation only the main (key) frames are drawn and they are put up in a storyboard. It is the role of the story supervisor to fix the problems in the sequencing and to check the sequence flow in a digital storyboard with the help of repeated primitive editorial sessions. The process of finalizing the storyboard needs repeated preparation of the storyboard, which is a time consuming and messy process. Modeling : The 3D animation starts with the modeling of the characters. The CG artist draws the models in the computer’s virtual space by giving numerical values for the width, length and depth of the object. First the three dimensional skeleton of the object is drawn. Yucel Gursac, (1993) states that after deciding the structure, features like texture, material features and color are defined. Each character has it’s own structure, texture and color definition. As the characters move their surface qualities may change. These changes must also be modeled . Modeling applies not only to the characters but also to the environment or the scenario in which the characters are to be played. Modeling the scenario involves much research about the various existing real world situations. The director of photography actually takes a number of shots of the real world situations to decide on the type of scenario or background that must be used for a particular scene. For example, in an underwater environment, the scenario modeling must involve the movement of water, underwater plantations, the creatures in that environment, passing of light through water, reflection of sunlight by water and so on. The exact mimic of the real world scenario can be obtained by adjusting the colors, shading and lighting effects on these objects . Thus modeling is an important part in production which transfers the storyboard characters into visually realizable characters. Modeling must be done by defining surface materials like transparency to light, brightness, light absorption and reflection rate . Simulation : After modeling, the scene were the characters will act must be built. The models and the environment must be simulated frame by frame. The characters, background objects and accessories are placed in their planned positions. The movements of these things are performed in the planned time as defined by the storyboard sequence. Virtual light sources and virtual cameras are also placed which have the same action as their real life counterparts. The keyframes of the storyboard are moved in a time line and simulated consecutively. With the aid of the simulation software, the supervising technical director controls the angles of camera, their position, color and density of the lighting sources. Rendering : The important step in the 3D CG animation production process is rendering. It is defined as the conversion of the 3D mathematical representations of the CG software to projectable 2D images which can be displayed on projection screens, televisions, etc. Anthony Chong and Co (2006) say that rendering the animation frames is really time consuming, messy job. The general solution for this problem is using parallel computing on the render frames. There are many rendering and directing tools like Renderman, Diorama, etc. According to Pixar Animations , Renderman Studio is of high speed with improved camera effects. And Vanguard Animations ( SGI, 2006), says that these tools transfer the scene informations (model data, light, shaders, options, etc) between frames through specific formatted files like .rib (for renderman) or .mi (mentalimages) files. These data are used to control the image being rendered. According to Mikami and Tokuhara (Computer Graphics International Proceedings, 2003), Diorama is a 3D directing tool which enables easy control of camera , scene creation and shot editing. The time effective way of production is to go for an efficient render farm run on high speed and efficient hardware. The more the number of iterations on a shot, the better will be the output. Production of the animated movie ends by playing all the frames in sequence. Special effects : Special effects are done in the post– production stage. The perception level of audience is more when the animation is accompanied by perfect audio visual effects. The addition of sound and music supports the scene presentation. For example, when an object falls down on the floor, the structure of the object and the nature of the floor can be imagined well by proper sound effects. The role of foley artists and sound engineers who mimic the various real world sounds play an important role in sound recording. According to Wikipedia, the boom operator, re –recording mixers, ADR mixers, foley mixers all contribute to a professional soundtrack in the production process. In the earlier days the color script for the video was chosen by mix and match approach. In the production process there must be consistency in the color script between the various stages like animation, compositing and rendering. The existing techniques of color description is by using 3D Look Up Tables ( 3D – LUTs). Here each pixel is defined by a combination of Red, Green, Blue color. Different film profiles may differ in their saturation, contrast, Hue. To have color consistency many software plug –ins like colorsymmetry as quoted by Siggraph, (2007) are emerging. The final post –production process is editing after which the animated movie is transferred onto any film, CD, DVD, etc. Action movie Vs Animated movie : Any action movie may require costume designer, set decorator, make up artists, camera operator and lighting technician which are not required for an animation movie. The cost of production is less in animation movie compared to action movie. Hut . A. C. (2007) says that the main costly session in animation production is in the specialized labor involved in the animation process. He adds that new inventions in Graphics Processing hardware and rendering software eases the CG artist and allows saving in processing time. This potentially lowers the labor cost. There is no need for any outdoor shooting in the production of animated movies as compared to an action movie. Conclusion : In the above discussion we saw the various production stages and methods for the design and production of an animation movie. The advantages of 3D computer graphics over the traditional 2D technique was highlighted. The technological improvements are enormous in the field of computer graphics, simulation techniques, rendering methods, etc. This enables the production of high quality animations at a lower cost. The advantages of the animation movies compared to any action movie invites more and more production of animated movies. In the near future the prospects of the animation industry is bright. Reference : 1. Anthony Chong. Alexie Sourin, Konstantin Levinski , Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques in Australasia and Southeast Asia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia , Pages: 39 - 47  , 2006 . 2. Color Symmetry Debuts at SIGGRAPH, 2007 — Page 2. 3. Hut.A.C. , ‘Using Interactive Rendering Software to Improve the 3D CG Animation Production Pipeline’, University of Groningen, 2007. 4. Mikami. K., Tokuhara.T, Diorama engine - a 3D directing tool for 3D computer animation production, Computer Graphics International, 2003. Proceedings Volume , Issue 9-11 July 2003 Page(s): 318 – 323 5. NTSC video broadcasting standards, (visited in May 2001). 6. Pixar Animations, www.renderman.pixar.com. 7. Vanguard Animations, ‘SGI, Altix, the SGI cube’, Sept. 2006. 8. Wikipedia Foundations Inc., 9. Yucel Gursac, ‘3-D Computer Animation Production Process on Distance Education Programs Through Television’ Anadolu University OEF model, 1993. Read More