How to make 3D animation easier and with full control
Every wondered how the magicians of Hollywood produce their stunning 3D animations? Many beginner and semi-pro 3D artists will jump right into the action, resulting in massive frustration and low quality results. The reason being is that 3D animation requires certain steps to be followed in order to make the process more manageable.
Now, 3D artists are different in the way they approach their work. Some like more structure while others will want to feel more freedom. Regardless of who you are, you will want to have SOME structure in place or else it will all collapse into a frustrating cancelling of your render.
Here’s how to make 3D animation easier while keeping full control :
1. Have a clear goal with the story behind your animation. Only focus on the elements that you need to tell the story. Let go of all the other elements to free up design and rendering time.
2. Create a storyboard and draw your action and camera angles. Draw arrows to mark directions and make it as clear as possible. You can do this on a piece of paper or using software.
3. Populate your scene with all the required props. Don’t worry about getting it perfect at this stage. Just do a draft.
4. Add your characters or whatever items you’re animating and start playing with all the motion and camera angles. Work with each camera angle as a separate scene, since then you can go back to them more easily.
5. Make a quick draft render without lights (usually called Open GL render / Quick Shade or similar). This is also called a Pre-vis.. Use image sequences rather than video format since then you can load individual images into Photoshop and edit them if needed. It’s also great in case your computer crashes.
6. Edit your animation using an editing software such as Sony Vegas Pro
7. At this stage, head back to step 4 and repeat until you get the entire animation working as intended.
8. Now, complete the scene building with any missing props, add lighting and perform the final rendering, saving over the pre-vis animation sequence images (Make a back-up first).
9. Load the animation in your editing software and it will auto-populate your scene with the new images (very handy!).
10. Add any post-work effects such as glow, bloom and re-coloring or other effects.
11. Add sound and music.
12. Export the animation to video format.
That’s it!
That’s how to make 3D animation in the fastest possible time with full control and great results.
Keep tweaking!
Waldemar Belwon – Dreamlight
Founder of Dreamlight 3D Club, creator of Light Master – leading authority in 3D graphics / Lighting training for new and semi-pro artists since 2007.
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