How to create a Pixar-like 3D animation

These days animated characters can be seen everywhere: advertising, movies, websites and even in corporate presentations. If you’ve seen any of Pixar’s 3D animation movies, like Up, Toy Story, Monsters Inc and Finding Nemo – you’ll know that Pixar has created some of the best 3D animation in the world.

This article outlines how the Pixar-like animation production process works.

Cartoon Character Design

Designing a cartoon character means not only sketching the look of the character but also figuring out all the character’s traits and personality. Various sketches are created in rough draft with the character’s personality in mind. It’s important to remember that good characters have clear attributes, are easily recognisable, likeable and unique.

Storyboarding

Storyboards are usually hand-drawn quick sketches, displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing the final animation. The storyboarding process was first developed at the Walt Disney Studio during the early 1930s. It’s the fastest and cheapest way to figure out if your story is going to work before any expensive and time consuming animation begins. It gives the creative team a chance to assess which parts of the story need to change before it’s too late or too expensive to do so.

3D Modeling

The first step on the computer in most 3D projects is creating the outer shell of the objects that will be used in the scene. There are different methods and tools to build a 3D model, but it ultimately ends in the creation of a connection of polygons to form the outer shape of your character or object. These polygons form an approximate outline and are later ‘smoothed-out’ into rounded-shapes using computer algorithms, sometimes called hyper-nurbs.

Character Rigging

This is the process that enables an Animator to turn a static 3D model into a life-like character. It's a technical, necessary step - vital for all good character animation. Rigging is like putting virtual skeletons and muscles within a virtual skin. 3d riggers use complex techniques such as joints, muscle simulations, IK and FK dynamics, morphs and weighting. The final rigged character can be passed on to the animators in order to bring the final story to life.

Texturing

Texturing is the part of the designers job that puts in the bumps, lumps, reflections, colouring, specular lighting and other bits of jiggery pokery that make the final render. A comprehensive material system is key to creating realistic and convincing 3D images. Texturing includes defining an object's colour, diffusion, luminance, transparency, reflection, environment, fog, bump, alpha, specular, glow, displacement and illumination properties.

Lighting

Lighting your scene is both an artistic and technical process, essential in creating the final look and mood of the finished render. Lighting is a very important aspect of any 3D render. Just like a poorly lit photograph, a 3D scene without proper lighting will fail to meet modern high expectations.

3D artists use lighting set-ups such as spot lights, tube lighting and global illumination. There are different kinds of shadow simulation such as soft, hard or realistic area shadows. The more realistic the shadow and lighting, the longer it will take to render the image.

Sound

Actors voices are recorded early on in the production process so animators can lip sync the characters to the recorded audio. Sound effects and music are usually added towards the end of the production, just like any other movie.

Animation

Animation is a highly time-consuming art form that has developed from techniques pioneered by the first Disney animators, classic 2D animators like Richard Williams, and modern 3D animation studios like Pixar and Dreamworks. Cartoon animation is entirely different from motion-capture animation as it takes advantage of exaggeration techniques, such as squash and stretch – creating poses and movements that aren’t actually possible in the real world.

Dynamics and Simulations

To create added realism, a cartoon animation may require dynamic simulations such as gravity, Wind, Collisions, Hair, Fur and Jiggle - to name a few. Sophisticated Hair and Cloth simulations add greatly to the final render times.

Rendering

A rendering is a particular view of a 3D model that has been converted into a realistic image. Final renders include lighting, shadows, reflection and refraction and the application of textures to surfaces.  Movies show 24 frames per second and a single one of these frames can take anything from minutes to hours to render. By linking up several computers, or render farms, frames can be computed at a faster rate. It’s generally true that the more complex the scene, the longer the render.

Final Edit

At the end of the production process, there’s still some cutting and pasting of scenes needed in order to make the final edit. Lastly, all the sounds and music are carefully mixed in to create the final movie. It's then up to your audience to decide whether all that hard work was worth it!

Rocket your scenes into the fourth dimension with Flying 3D's animation studio.

copyright Jon Ireland 2009