A Beginner’s Guide to 3D Animation

3D Animation is an art form that uses motion to bring life into hand-drawn characters, props, and vehicles. You have seen the best of 3D Animation in movies, games, and TV shows. With the growth of the gaming and animation industry, more and more people are getting inclined to 3D animation.

If you have played video games or if you are a fan of baby Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy 2, making a career out of this might have crossed your mind. A career in 3D animation needs a specific set of skills. The first step is to make sure you know what you are getting into. The second is to find yourself the best 3D Animation training institute in Bangalore. Before signing in, ask this question: Does the 3D Animation course come with placements?

Here is a brief guide to 3D Animation for aspiring animators or beginners. If you’re planning to create a shot by yourself, here is your guide.

Planning

Planning or the pre-production stage in the animation industry involves storyboarding, scriptwriting, and visual development. This is where the story blocks are created. Before you get all worked up with the technicalities of 3D design, it is important to create a story for your film. Sketch out the outline of your story, the characters, sets, and props. Next, you can take random stills that will depict the background or the overall feel of your film.

Skilled animators find this stage the most challenging. None of the 3D Animation courses in Bangalore can teach you how to be creative. It only needs a pure artist’s eye to see what others can’t.

Modeling and Texturing

TAfter you have mastered the first stage, here is the second step - Modeling and Texturing. You will not be able to animate anything unless you make it. So in this stage, you will need a basic understanding of how to manipulate 3D objects after you have created them. Once you have created the objects, you’ll have to learn how to use 3D software to render the characteristics to your created objects.

If you are a beginner, you’ll need 3D animation training in Bangalore. For example, if you have a scene with a talking tree stump, you will have to use a cylinder base to add the characteristics of a tree. After the tree is created, you need to fix the light exposure, color, and texture to make it come to life.

Lighting

You might have noticed that an object has different effects depending on the light exposure - daylight, indoor light, or moonlight. To master this stage, you will need the eyes of a filmmaker. The lights will create the mood of your scene and highlight characteristics for the viewers to perceive the thought behind the characters.

For this stage, you will need to know certain 3D tools and light set-up. You have the best 3D animation training in Bangalore to help you prep for this stage. Some training and lessons in 3D software will help you know how to configure lights into the scene and modify them to create the perfect realistic set-up for a visual treat.

Layout

Now that you have created the scenes according to your storyboard, the next step would be to arrange these scenes according to their occurrence. The scenes should be arranged from the viewer’s perspective to bring out the storyline and message of your movie. This stage would need you to think like a scriptwriter or editor. You need to start light and gradually proceed to the climax

To make this process visually pleasing, you can find help and inspiration from animated videos and Japanese anime. You can also go for viewer’s reviews on certain anime series for a better understanding of a story layout. You can set your target audience first, before proceeding with the layout, which might make your job easier.

Animation

After you have created a layout, you need to give bones to your characters, so that you can control their activities. This is much like the puppet show where you will have the strings in your hand. Most characters are inspired by real-life personalities. At this point, your characters will be in motion but would still fine finish to refine their movements, unless your movie is on robots.

To render emotions, patterns, and real-life movements into the characters, you will need to follow a few animation principles. Get yourself trained with professionals at a good 3D animation institute in Bangalore to find the best results out of this step.

Rendering

You are almost done. If you are trained in some 3D software, you will be well aware of this stage. This is where you command your 3D software to convert the complete 3D data into a 2D movie. Also, this is the stage where you understand how good you have done so far, like a report card at the end of your semester. If there are discrepancies, you can change or modify the scenes and again go for a render.

The process involves a steady balance between speed calculation and the quality of the 3D animates. For a beginner, this would be the most tedious step. If you feel any better, the best animators also went through this process.

Editing

If you have completed the rendering, this step would be the easiest. Editing is the ultimate process before you share your movie with the viewers. This process involves cutting and rearranging scenes to make your movie more eye-pleasing. You can experiment with light exposure, the colors, and elements that constitute your scenes. Check what brings out the best mood of the scene. This ultimate trial and error run will need some patience from your end.

Popular 3D Tools

Now that you have the basic idea of the trade, you will need to find suitable software to work on. Professionals might argue that it does not matter which software you use, as you are alone responsible for delivering the best quality out of any software. But, every 3D Animation software has a specific set of algorithms that best suits a particular kind of user.

However, if you are just starting, looking into jobs in this field, you would require to know certain standard software. The most recognized tool would be Maya. Most companies require animators who are experts in Maya illustrator, among other profile requirements. ILM Imaginative will provide you an A-Z knowledge about 3D Animation and tools involved with 3D design and rendering.