Hello Animators,
I'm going to school for Game Design and Animation. I'm doing a project for school and I need to describe the animation process to my class. From a concept sketch to a full 3D character. The steps in a basic outline would be great! Any information will help. Thank you.
-DB
how do they expect you to describe something you havent done yet. if you have yet to go from concept to finished model. you can google the process, obviously, but that will be someone elses process. your process may be different.
without doing a concept on paper I can get the idea right in the viewport from drawing shapes or modeling with a loose surface. in my 3d program, max. but its quite common for concepts to be done in zbrush because its so easy to use.
who is to say what your process will be but I understand there attempting to give you a structure/workflow
tyree,
Thanks for the response. They aren't expecting me do explain a process that I don't know. The project is to take a process, preferably something you do, and explain it to the other students that are in my class as well as the instructor. I am new to the art world. So I don't really have any processes that I use. So I found it to be a great chance to talk to real animators and learn from them. I just need a few points that I can write into paragraphs. Example; start with concept art, then take the concept art to the computer and recreate it, add all of the wiring to the model, ect. Do you know what I mean?
-DB
what you described is exactly how it happens. take the concept image and recreate it. what program your using will define the process for both modeling and animating
in my 3d program, max. for the animation I usually already have an idea, I start animating and get the body mechanics right for the motion. then I adjust the speed, force or softness of the motion. the rest is fine tuning
one point thats never mentioned but should be is what you draw on paper and how it will look once its being translated by a rig. may not always be what you had in mind. your rig and how well you know it, will play a large part in your animation.
this is a common critique from 2d animators and its a real one. a 2d person doesnt have to worry about his pen causing his drawing to go in an unexpected direction. but with 3d animation knowing your rig and how to control it is key
What's a rig? I'm completely new at this. I haven't taken any of my animation classes yet. So if you had to make a numbered list of the different steps of animating what would they be?
Oh and do you have any work that I could check out?
-Dakota Brower
The rig is the skeleton of the model. To make it easier on you, there are books in the book store that give steps. As it has already been said, you could Google or Wikipedia for steps, then you could come here to ask a more narrowed question.
How about this.
Creating the idea
Writing
Storyboarding
Recording Sound
Layout
Character Design
Timing
Preparing Artwork
Animation with all of its sub step
Editing
Sound Desgin
Wontobe,
I tried looking it up several times. I didn't like the results that I found. No one listed out the steps or even talked about them really. It would be things like messing around with the preferences of programs and other things like that. Trust me I tried. I had a hard time coming up with the actual question that I had. I wanted to actually talk to people about it rather than just read information. I thought, on a website like this people would be more than happy to talk about it.
Where does making the skeleton fall into the list?
Thanks,
Dakota Brower
You make your model then you build the rigging.
I think you should leave out 3d stuff and just do a simple animation process.
The Idea
Storyboard
Layout
Animatic
Character Design
... Key Possess
Inbetween
Editing
There is no fix sequence but there are basic steps that must happen before other work can be done. There is also a lot of cycles, for example, character design does not just happen once. A character could and often does get several make overs.
Good luck.
wontobe I think you would scare most beginners away from animating if you presented that long list to them, before any animating could be done. what your saying is true but there is a better way to present it to a beginner so there not overwhelmed
since he is going to be doing animation for videogames. he needs to be comfortable with idea of dealing with a skeleton/rig. the rig is your pencil, but just because you can move a skeleton/rig around and get a motion doesnt mean you know how to animate.
the animation process itself was created long before videogames or personal computers with just pencil and paper and knowledge of how motion is percieved. this may be a little confusing but you dont need a 3d program to learn how to animate. the process itself is seperate from the tool, its just knowledge about motion. thats something you can learn from reading and experimenting without ever touching a 3d progam
but were back to this, since your doing it for videogames your knowledge of motion will have to be expressed thru a rig/skeleton. thats what videogames use to make animation happen. this knowledge of motion I speak of, is something you will have to acquire. now remember its seperate from the rig or the 3d program, but has to be expressed thru a rig from within a 3d program
here is something you can look at thats playing in a 3d engine. this is a 3d player, not video. you will have to install the player. it should auto install
best viewed in internet exploer, firefox doesnt play right, I dont know why
the spacebar is the forward motion , the up arrow key is the back motion
http://bleed.110mb.com/control.html
if it doesnt auto download here is the link to the player
http://www.dxstudio.com/download2.aspx
Dude, I don't get what your saying. The way Wontobe explained it is the simplest way to explain the process. I'm about to be a senior in high school, heading for an animation career, but even I understand that stuff.
If you're talking about starting REALLY simple, than you must be implying drawing stick figures, because you can't really go much lower from there.
If the process needs to be described........what other way is there to describe it?
Like it or not, animation is a complex craft, involving many steps, techniques and methods, and demands many different kinds of disciplines just to realize a single finished frame of animation.
Frankly, if those 8 listed steps ( which break down to dozens of sub-steps each) intimidate a newcomer, so be it. Being scared of how involved it all is isn't going to change the nature of the craft at all.
To the Original Poster--there's numerous books out there that describe the animation process.
In addition, there's several web-sites that offer a description of the process, and can be found by using a search engine. A quick check on Alta Vista revealed 56,300,000 entries.
"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)