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Behind a 3D animated film of the Best 3D animation companies released to the market is a powerful team with much different expertise, the process of making 3D animation can take up to several years with investment costs of millions of dollars.
Whether making a Hollywood-sized 3D animation that is more than 90 minutes long or a 3D animation that takes only 30 seconds to advertise a brand or sell, the process is similar. So from having an idea to releasing a 3D animation, what are the steps to go through?
Step 1: Script
The story is an important element throughout the film, the script is the story in the form of a plan written with the direction for everyone involved in the production. A script needs to be detailed and easy to understand so that production teams can visualize the overall story and gather the information needed to do their part quickly and accurately.
Step 2: Storyboard
The script is just words, the storyboard is the first visual presentation from the script, it looks like a comic book. For decades, artists have been drawing storyboards on paper, but today software allows not only static drawings but also animations.
Step 3: Animatic
Animatic is a way of stitching storyboards together in sequence to create the fastest and simplest motion video with sound, providing a clearer, more vivid vision in 3D. On the other hand, the animatic also accurately represents the length of each scene by referencing the time of the storyboard. The more time spent on animatic in the early stages, the lower the risk in the later stages.
Step 4: Art design
The script will have descriptions of the characters and associated backgrounds that need to be designed, but turning them into real-world visual elements is up to the designers, along with the director. Characters, costumes, environments, moods, and design ideas must be fully conveyed at this stage.
Step 5: Modeling
Use 3D software to build 3D characters and related backgrounds at a basic level with low detail and monochrome and then gradually increase the level of detail. In fact, 3D characters have to be optimized for a wide range of motion distortions, so 3D models have to be optimized or they will look odd.
Step 6: Rigging
Rigging is a technique to define a 3D character’s range of action, bone structure, controllers are included so that animators can move different parts of the character quickly and efficiently.
Step 7: Surfacing, Texture, Material
Artists create and apply colors and surface details to characters. They plan for necessary changes later, such as color, dust, weather, or damage such as fire or rust. 3D Texturing is basically a 2D image that wraps around a 3D object and defines how light will affect it.
Step 8: 3D layout and Final Layout
The 3D layout is the 3D version of the previous 2D animatic. Artists often follow what’s indicated in the storyboard, but sometimes they also get away with it altogether and come up with their own rhythm and ideas.
The 3D layout seems very basic at first but becomes very useful throughout the rest of the process. It’s also worth mentioning that 2D animation can often be skewed in character scaling, perspective, or distance. But these properties in the 3D layout will be fixed. That’s why the 3D layout is such an important component in 3D animation making.
After the 3D layout is the final finishing stage (final layout), now the movement is refined and detailed more smoothly.
Step 9: Animation
Animation is often the most important and time-consuming part of making 3D animation, animators have to create movements (walking, running, jumping, fighting, climbing, acrobatics …) emotions (happy, sad, etc.) for the character and interact with other characters. The job of an animator must be able to carry out the script & vision of the director, they have experienced knowledge of anatomy, weight, movement to make the film interesting.
Step 10: Crowd
Crowds Artists collaborates with Animators, applying creative and technical skills to create crowds, a large number of characters, animals, and vehicles that deliver compelling performances.
Step 11: Character FX
Advanced physics-based computer simulations recreate and control the movements of fabric, hair, fur, and muscles as they react to the character’s movements, allowing other creative teams to control the performance of the character with a high level of artistic detail.
Step 12: Effects Animation
The Effects Animators are likened to magical wizards when they always create interesting special effects for movies from earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, storms, … to elements such as fire, water, wind, and earth can all become interesting characters on their own.
Step 13: Matte painting
Matte painting enhances storytelling by creating complex digital backgrounds, landscapes, and environments using a range of digital tools associated with rendering and drawing programs.
Step 14: Lighting
Lighting helps to attract the audience and enhance the story, emphasizing the change of tone, mood, atmosphere … The artist in charge of the lighting is knowledgeable about color, contrast. and lighting design to bring together the elements of the scene into a complete synthesis that aligns with the vision of the director, production designer, director of photography (DOP), and Lighting Supervisors.
Step 15: Stereo
Stereoscopic is a technique to create 2 separate offset images for the viewer’s left and right eye. These two-dimensional images are then combined in the brain to create a 3D sense of depth.
The goal of the Stereo team is to enhance the immersive, immersive experience even further. They started by placing stereo cameras early in the production process, setting depth and volume parameters to capture the audience but still making viewing comfortable.
Stereo cameras are placed directly into the 3D scene for accurate analysis & better customization.
Step 16: Rendering and Compositing
Making 3D animation movies like Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks… needs memory to store huge data and a powerful computer system (render farm) to handle the calculation of all movie shots with detail and quality. The next step to complete a movie shot after rendering is compositing. The artists use a variety of techniques to make the transitions seamless so that the audience feels completely immersed in the story.
Step 17: Post Production
Post-production is the final step. The post-production team will be responsible for editing the music, sound, digital images, and color. After the completion of the film, a global release time will be fixed.
Related post: An animation studio creates animation with low production budget
Conclusion
Behind a 3D animated film of the Best 3d animation companies from the idea was on paper to be released to the market, bringing laughter, exciting adventures, meaningful lessons, profit… is a whole creative process of the filmmakers’ team. If you have any questions about the 3D animation-making steps, leave a comment!
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Animost – Vietnam 3D Animation Studio
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