The 3D Animation Process.

This page is intended to give the reader a brief overview of the 3D animation process and explain what is involved in creating a 3D animation.
If you are reading this, you might be considering creating an animation. Whether it's a TV commercial, web animation or full feature film, I hope this gives you at least a small insight into the process and work involved.

The script.
Most 3D animations start life as a script.

The script is just a written description of the animation and contains information about each scene. Some of the important information written in a script includes the dialogue, set design, character descriptions, character actions, camera positions, etc. The script is basically a blue print for the whole animation. This step is important because it gives an overview of what the entire animation is going to be and allows the storyboard artist to produce a clear and concise storybaord.

Design After the script has been written, any character, prop, or enviroment needs to be designed by a concept artist before it can be created in the computer. The job of the concept artist is to make a rough draft of the character, props, and environments that match the script writers vision. This can take some time but this step helps to ensure that the writers vision is fully realized.

Storyboard The next stage is to visually create the animation in a series of 2D hand drawn images called a storyboard. The storyboard shows rough drawings of every scene in the animation as well as a breif description of each shot and any dialogue spoken.

Modeling Once everything has been designed, the modeling process can begin. Everything in a 3D animation has to be modeled in the computer before it can be used in production. Think of this step as making a very detailed and in depth clay model. 3D models in a computer are made of points in 3D space, called vertices, which are connected by line segments to form a polygonal mesh as shown on the left.

Rigging
Once the models are created, they are solid objects inside the computer and can't bend or animate. Before a character can be animated it must first be rigged so it can bend it's limbs and move around the enviroment. Rigging involves adding an internal skeleton to deform the character and then adding all the controls the animator will need to bring the character to life. The skeleton produced by the rigger is in many ways like a living skeleton.

However, this skeleton is different from a living skeleton because its not a physical object and can't push skin or muscle realistically. It is part of the riggers job to define how the skeleton effects the model and how moving one bone will deform the skin and muscle surrounding it. After the bones are added and the deformation is set up, the rigger will add all the controls that the animator will need to make the object move as realistically as possible. Depending on the quality needed, the complexity of the character, and even the number of limbs required, the animators could need hundreds of controls.

Animation After the characters are rigged, they can finally be animated by an animator. The animators job is to bring the character to life by manipulating the rig controls to pose and move the character. Depending again on the complexity of the character and the quality of the product, the animation process can take a long time. Working full time (8 hours per day), the elf animation required a week simply to animate.

Set Modeling Any enviroment or set needed in the animation must also be modeled. This is created in the same way as the characters and props, but can be created later, after animation. While animating, the enviroment or set is represented by very simplistic shapes for faster feed back in the computer. If the animator had to use the real set fully modeled, it could be too complex for the computer to display fast enough.

Lighting and Rendering In the lighting and rendering step all the coloring and material properties are added. Materials are things like wood grain for walls or furniture, fabrics for furniture and curtains, and more. This step adds the sheen to furniture, the tranclucencies to curtains, and the effects of lighting on everything in the set. This is the step that can make a scene look photo realistic or cartoon-like. Materials contain a lot of information like color, reflectivity, transparency etc.

Compositing Compositing is where all the rendered elements are brought together. The rendering process is not always done in one go, but instead elements like the characters and backgrounds are rendered in seperate passes. It's possible to render seperate images for everything from shadows to highlights to color. Rendering things in this way makes it easier to make changes or add any extra special effects.