3d-animation

Wim van Eck (w. vaneck@kabk Wim van Eck (w.vaneck@kabk.nl) Education: HKU (Design for Virtual Theatre and Games) Leiden University (Media Technology) Working at: KABK (AR Lab) Leiden University (guest researcher) freelancer Website (really not up to date…) www.wimeck.com

What about you? -What do you study? -Why do you want to learn 3d animation? -Do you have any prior experience?

Rough planning -day 1: theory interface Cinema 4d modeling with primitives -day 2: modeling with splines boxmodeling -day 3: materials texturing -day 4: lighting rendering -day 5: animation -day 6: particles compositing motion graphics -day 7: requests presentations

History of Animation

Phenakistoscope (Joseph Plateau, 1832) One variant of the phenakistoscope is a spinning disc mounted vertically on a handle. Around the center of the disc a series of pictures is drawn corresponding to frames of the animation; around its circumference is a series of radial slits. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc's reflection in a mirror. The scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from simply blurring together, so that the user would see a rapid succession of images with the appearance of a motion picture.

Praxinoscope (Charles Reynaud, 1877) The praxinoscope was invented in France in 1877 by Charles-Émile Reynaud. It uses a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. It has an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion.

The Enchanted Drawing (J. Stuart Blackton, 1900) James Stuart Blackton was an important producer of trick films who became one of the originators of the animated film. His company produced many films for the Edison Co. as licensees, and in 1900 Blackton made "The Enchanted Drawing" for Edison. Blackton sketched on a sheet held by an easel. He draws a face on the paper, then a glass and wine bottle. The bottle and glass suddenly become real, much to the dismay of the face on the paper. The artist gives the face a drink, which makes him happy again. The film continues in this vein as other objects such as a hat and cigar are drawn and then magically become real. The tricks were achieved by stopping the camera between frames and making substitutions, a common technique of trick films

Steamboat Willie (1928) Steamboat Willie is an animated cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse. Contrary to claims by some sources, it wasn't the first cartoon produced to feature Mickey, but it was the one that made Mickey Mouse famous. It is noted in the history books as the first animated short with a completely post-produced soundtrack of music, dialogue, and sound effects, although other cartoons with synchronized soundtracks had been exhibited before, notably by Max Fleischer's series Song Car-Tunes starting in May 1924.

King Kong (1933) King Kong contains many revolutionary technical innovations for its time (rear projection, miniature models about 18 inches in height, and trick photography), and some of the most phenomenal stop-motion animation sequences and special effects ever filmed (by chief technician Willis O'Brien, famed for his first feature film The Lost World (1925)).

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is an animated feature, the first produced by Walt Disney Productions. Although it was not the first full-length animated feature to be produced (the 1917 Argentinian film El Apóstol holds that distinction, and there are seven other earlier ones), it was the first animated feature to become widely successful within the English-speaking world and the first to be filmed in Technicolor.

Jason and the Argonauts (1963) Jason and the Argonauts is a fantasy adventure film based upon the characters Jason and the Argonauts of Greek mythology. Directed by Don Chaffey, in collaboration with stop motion animation expert Ray Harryhausen, this film is famous for its stop-motion animated monsters including harpies, the bronze giant Talos, the crashing rocks, and the many-headed Hydra that guards the Golden Fleece. The final sequence wherein an army of seven skeletons rise from the Earth, and attack the heroes is still widely considered to be among the greatest achievements of 20th century motion picture special effects.

Akira (1988) Akira is an animated film by Katsuhiro Otomo based on his manga of the same name. The movie led the way for the growing popularity of anime in the West. One of the reasons for the movie's success was the highly advanced quality of its animation. At the time, most anime was notorious for cutting production corners with limited motion, such as having only the characters' mouths move while their faces remained static. Akira broke from this trend with meticulously detailed scenes, exactingly lip-synched dialogue (a first for an anime production, voices were recorded before the animation was completed, rather than the opposite) and superfluous motion as realized in the film's more than 160,000 animation cels.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) Who Framed Roger Rabbit combined animation and live action. The film takes place in a fictionalized Los Angeles in 1947, where animated characters are real beings who live and work alongside humans in the real world, most of them as actors in animated cartoons. At $70 million, it was one of the most expensive films ever at the time of its release, but it proved a sound investment that eventually brought in over $150 million during its original theatrical release.

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas is a 1993 stop motion animated musical film about the inhabitants of Halloween Town who take over Christmas, directed by stop-motion animator Henry Selick. The film is loosely based on drawings and a poem by Tim Burton, and he served as co-producer. He did not direct the film as is sometimes believed, but he was heavily involved.

Spirited Away (2001) Spirited Away is a film by the Japanese anime studio Studio Ghibli, written and directed by famed animator Hayao Miyazaki. The film received many awards, including the second Oscar ever awarded for Best Animated Feature.

History of 3d-Animation

Tron (1982) Fifteen to twenty minutes of computer-generated animation (blended with the filmed characters) were used in Tron, which was a huge amount at the time, as Tron was one of the first movies to use any form of extended computer-generated sequence. Though the movie has been criticized for lackluster acting and incoherence of plot, the movie is celebrated as a milestone of computer animation.

The Adventures of Andre and Wally B (1984) The Adventures of André and Wally B. is an animated short made in 1984 by the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project, which would later be spun out as a startup company called Pixar. Although it is technically not a Pixar short, the animation was by John Lasseter, who was working on his first computer animated project and would move on to be a pivotal player at Pixar. The animation on the feature was truly groundbreaking at the time, featuring the first use of motion blur in CG animation. Lasseter pushed the envelope by asking for manipulatable shapes capable of the squash and stretch style, as earlier CG models had generally been restricted to rigid geometric shapes.

Luxo Jr. (1986) Luxo Jr. is the first film produced in by Pixar Animation Studios. "Luxo Jr. sent shock waves through the entire industry – to all corners of computer and traditional animation. One of the great achievements of this animation is that it manages to bring everyday items to life, giving them personality and emotions In 1986, Luxo Jr. received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Film. It was the first CGI film nominated for an Academy Award.

The Abyss (1989) Impressive for its compositing, modeling, animation and rendering.

Terminator 2 (1991) Terminator 2 revolutionized the special effects industry, with ground-breaking computer graphics and visual images, particularly in the T-1000 (liquid robot) scenes. The film won four Oscars, all for technical aspects (Best Sound, Best Make Up, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing). Most of the key Terminator effects were provided by Industrial Light and Magic.

Jurassic Park (1993) The stars of this movie, directed by Steven Spielberg, were the realistic looking and moving 3d-dinosaurs, created by Industrial Light and Magic. After seeing it, George Lucas, director of the Star Wars series, concluded the time was there to start working on his new Star Wars movies. In his opinion 3d-animation was now advanced enough to believably create the alien worlds and characters he already wanted to make since the early late seventies.

Toy Story (1995) First CGI feature-length animation, and Pixar's first feature film. The primary characters are toys in the room of the six-year-old boy Andy, and is mostly told from their point of view.

Star Wars: Episode 1 (1999) Almost every shot of this movie is enhanched with 3d-animation. It features very realistic 3d-aliens and environments.

The Iron Giant (1999) Even if Iron Giant looks as if it were completely drawn the traditional way, the big giant robot is actually a 3d-animation. Most of the backgrounds although 2d in look were also 3d renderings.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a science fiction film by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the Final Fantasy series of videogames. It was the first animated feature to seriously attempt photorealistic CGI humans. uncanny

Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (2002) First photorealistic motion captured character for a film, Gollum was also the first digital actor to win an award (BFCA), category created for Best Digital Acting Performance.

Beowolf (2007) Again, an partially successful attempt at creating photorealistic 3d humans.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) Successful attempt at creating photorealistic 3d humans. Most of the time only parts (mostly face) of the characters were 3d.

Avatar (2009) Ground-breaking in combining stereoscopic live and cg footage.

The Adventures of Tintin (2011) CG which maintains the style of the comics.

Which industries use 3d-animation?

Movie industry Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

Movie industry Rango (2011)

Architecture

Architecture

Architecture

Architecture

Visualisation

Visualisation

Visualisation

Visualisation Katinka Fick

Visualisation Katinka Fick

3d printing Design by Lilian van Daal

3d printing The Jansen 3d printed Strandbeest

Videogames Star Wars 1313

Videoclips ‘Sixes Last’ by Alias

Commercials Audi ‘Hummingbird’

Medical

Medical

Art? Do you know any examples of art created with 3d-software? Bring an example next week!

Art? ‘Perfect Creatures’ by Karolina Sobecka

Art? ‘The Monster of Nix’ by Rosto A.D.

Cinema 4d

Cinema 4d Why Cinema 4d -logical interface -Windows and OSX -stable -widely used Made by Maxon (www.maxon.net) Free student license

What’s a 3d model?

What’s a 3d model? Point (vertex)

What’s a 3d model? Edge

What’s a 3d model? Face

What’s a 3d model? Polygon

What’s a 3d model? Flat-shaded

What’s a 3d model? Shaded

What’s a 3d model? Textured

Technical terms

Rendering After making your scene in a 3d-program, you might want to turn it into a picture or movie to save on your hard-disk. This process is called rendering. And if you for example applied a reflective material to an object in your scene, then these reflections will be calculated by the computer during the rendering.

Rendering

Low-poly 3d-model containing relatively few polygons. The less polygons a 3d-model has, the easier it is for the computer to handle. Downside is that it is difficult to create smooth curves without many polygons

High-poly 3d-model containing relatively many polygons. More difficult for a computer to handle, but you can create very smooth curves

Realtime -direct interaction, you can for example walk around in the scene -example: videogames

Pre-rendered -no interaction, you can only play or stop the movie -Can take hours for one frame to render -example: movies

But… Realtime is getting better…

Using Cinema 4d

Modelling using primitives

Modelling using 2d-planes

Modelling using 2d-planes