First 3D animation lessons with Andy Love yesterday, felt like i had learnt more in those few hours than i had all year last year, enjoyable teaching style and as an artist i felt i understood his tutorials and general tips and conversation better. I feel ive made the right choice of subject here for sure, looking forward for more lectures and has broken down some of my fear for the 3Dmax program enough that I am now experimenting more.
recieved info on:
The animation pipeline
The animation pipeline is the production process. From brain storming and script writing through modeling, texturing, rigging, sound recording, animating and compositing to media production it describes and allows you to plan the whole process. More importantly it allows you to list the tools which you will need to complete the job of producing a piece of animation.
All idea creation and script writing need are some late nights, a note pad and a good supply of black coffee to come up with doable results. But if that fails plagiarizing old 1968 Scooby Doo scripts can sort your missing story structure out. If spelling and grammar is not you strong suite then Microsoft’s Word or Open office can be a big help.
Generally the nitty gritty starts with the sketching of characters often in meetings where we should be paying attention to more “important” things, pens and paper are all you really need here but more coffee can help too.
So modeling is where we really need our software tools for the first time. My modeler of choice is 3d Studio Max but there are many. Most packages use similar techniques and terminology but concepts and work flow can vary massively. The technique that the field seems to have settled on in resent years for characters seems to be subdivision modeling, a technique brought to the fore by Pixar in the early 1990’s. Most 3D animation packages support this modeling method really well and there are several just modelers around also like Modo and Zbrush that do only that. Once you have you characters designed and built they will need texturing and a stand alone image editor is usually used for that. Adobe’s Photoshop or the Gimp are both strong contenders for this job. A good audio package such as Sound forge is essential for acquiring your voices and Foley [sound effects] not to mention a sound studio if you can get one.
Animating comes next; this is the fun stuff and happens in your main 3D package, again 3D Studio Max works best for me, but Maya is a firm favorite of film makers and Cinema 4D is making up ground fast, Lightwave is an old but doable package and XSI that was once part of Softimagé Silicon Graphics used to be where Maya is now. Not to mention Houdini.
Each frame is exported as a still ready for compositing 720x576 is PALDV standard. The still image files you chose differs from project to project but Targa’s remain one of the most useable of formats it is a lossless format and due to the fact that most compositing software will read it’s the alpha channel [premiere for some reason ignores a Tiff’s alpha]. So after all your still sequences are rendered a good editor / compositor is the next software package you will need so Premier and After Effects from Adobe or Final cut pro and Shake on the Mac, open source Blender the animation package has these things built in but has the reputation of being a tad awkward to use. I use Premier Pro to bring in the sequences and add the speech, Foley and music save the output as a DVAVI.
Your DVAVI is the ready to be exported to media. DV tape is used a lot although a medium which is basically Sellotape and iron filings has always given me the shivers. The route out would best be a DVD authoring package such as encore or DVD architect allowing you to put together menus, interactive features and if you have the will and/or wherewithal even a 5.1 audio sound track via Cubase or Protools [the AC3 audio file format supports this].
So, the processes making a piece of animation is a series of phases using an array of tools not just dicking around in a funky 3D package because it takes planning and vision to get it right.
The animation pipeline is the production process. From brain storming and script writing through modeling, texturing, rigging, sound recording, animating and compositing to media production it describes and allows you to plan the whole process. More importantly it allows you to list the tools which you will need to complete the job of producing a piece of animation.
All idea creation and script writing need are some late nights, a note pad and a good supply of black coffee to come up with doable results. But if that fails plagiarizing old 1968 Scooby Doo scripts can sort your missing story structure out. If spelling and grammar is not you strong suite then Microsoft’s Word or Open office can be a big help.
Generally the nitty gritty starts with the sketching of characters often in meetings where we should be paying attention to more “important” things, pens and paper are all you really need here but more coffee can help too.
So modeling is where we really need our software tools for the first time. My modeler of choice is 3d Studio Max but there are many. Most packages use similar techniques and terminology but concepts and work flow can vary massively. The technique that the field seems to have settled on in resent years for characters seems to be subdivision modeling, a technique brought to the fore by Pixar in the early 1990’s. Most 3D animation packages support this modeling method really well and there are several just modelers around also like Modo and Zbrush that do only that. Once you have you characters designed and built they will need texturing and a stand alone image editor is usually used for that. Adobe’s Photoshop or the Gimp are both strong contenders for this job. A good audio package such as Sound forge is essential for acquiring your voices and Foley [sound effects] not to mention a sound studio if you can get one.
Animating comes next; this is the fun stuff and happens in your main 3D package, again 3D Studio Max works best for me, but Maya is a firm favorite of film makers and Cinema 4D is making up ground fast, Lightwave is an old but doable package and XSI that was once part of Softimagé Silicon Graphics used to be where Maya is now. Not to mention Houdini.
Each frame is exported as a still ready for compositing 720x576 is PALDV standard. The still image files you chose differs from project to project but Targa’s remain one of the most useable of formats it is a lossless format and due to the fact that most compositing software will read it’s the alpha channel [premiere for some reason ignores a Tiff’s alpha]. So after all your still sequences are rendered a good editor / compositor is the next software package you will need so Premier and After Effects from Adobe or Final cut pro and Shake on the Mac, open source Blender the animation package has these things built in but has the reputation of being a tad awkward to use. I use Premier Pro to bring in the sequences and add the speech, Foley and music save the output as a DVAVI.
Your DVAVI is the ready to be exported to media. DV tape is used a lot although a medium which is basically Sellotape and iron filings has always given me the shivers. The route out would best be a DVD authoring package such as encore or DVD architect allowing you to put together menus, interactive features and if you have the will and/or wherewithal even a 5.1 audio sound track via Cubase or Protools [the AC3 audio file format supports this].
So, the processes making a piece of animation is a series of phases using an array of tools not just dicking around in a funky 3D package because it takes planning and vision to get it right.
Given the task to produce a 3D four legged walker for next weeks lesson, have a few ideas on if i can get to grips with the program some more, i can spice my walker up some to give it a little personality.
First bit of info given with regards to our assignment for the first few weeks, we have to create an IDENT for the channel 27 including all the gubbins to give it some life.
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