Any advice on 3D animation?

[KoulFireChick]

I'm new to this 3D animation stuff, for me and my team this will be the first year we do a 3D animation and I wanted to know can someone tell me or help me what the 3D animation should be about or any ideas?

that and I would like to know if you know of the best 3D animation program to use.

[Jreed129]

well if your planing on entering the animation competition you would need to use 3DS MAX from autodesk and discreet.

if you go to autodesk.firstbase.com you can find the prompt for this year and work your ideas off of that

[KoulFireChick]

thanks alot, I'll take a look at that soon ^.^

Edit: it doesn't work O.o.....I MUST TRY AGAIN!

[Durza16]

The prompt is inventing a new invention to benfit your community

[richalex2010]

close, but the link is HERE (http://firstbasefrc.autodesk.com).
Use both the Autodesk tutorials, and others. Autodesk has links to community sites on their 3DS Max site and/or the FIRSTbase site.

[Testament-Doom]

Glad you're interested in working with 3D animation. Well, of course, the only program we can use for this part of the competition is 3D studio max, but it's a really good program, quite easy to learn. Practice with the program a lot and you'll pick up on some things. 3D studio max is an art tool. You can create limitless things with the program. The best way to learn is to fiddle around with the program, try some tutorials out and make your own variations, mess with certain things. 3D studio max is quite complicated, but easy to understand once you get the hang of it. Good luck on your future endeavors! :)

[fireball3004]

Advice... am I qualified? not really, but after 3 animations, this is what I've learned.
1. make timeline
2. go to firstbase.autodesk.com and download 3DS MAX
3. pick an idea quickly (must be about a new inovation for your community)
4. Make a story board + script (check your time, only aloted 30seconds)
5. Have someone record the audio while you get to work (make sure it's good audio)
6. start off by modeling your scenes (have a good mental picture first)
7. model the objects (have a good mental picture, and maybe check out some pictures)
8. start animating with key frames and trajectories (follow your audio)
9. render (leave extra time for this step)
10. clip it together in combustion (if it ever gets running or do it hush hush in another program)
11. fill out the form and submit your entry.
12. sit back, relax, and feel proud of yourself for getting it all done

[Corporat]

8. start animating with key frames and trajectories (follow your audio)

Not that that's a bad way of doing it, but I'd wait for the full video to be completed before you worry about audio (unless you plan on lip-synching, an of course you may want to have your music picked early on). Its a lot easier to vary your narration speed to your animation than to vary your voice based upon your animation.

[BuddyB309]

Not that that's a bad way of doing it, but I'd wait for the full video to be completed before you worry about audio (unless you plan on lip-synching, an of course you may want to have your music picked early on). Its a lot easier to vary your narration speed to your animation than to vary your voice based upon your animation.

I disagree with you. Even big studios have all of their audio completed before they even touch the models in animation. You want your film to match up with the music that you selected otherwise it will turn out really really bad.

The only audio that can wait till the end is sound effects.

[Mazin]

Tackle something you know is within your abilities.
And finish early.

[fireball3004]

Tackle something you know is within your abilities.
And finish early.

brilliant advice ^^

[BuddyB309]

Here is the best advice I give anybody.

learn the program over the summer!

Making your animation for the AVA is like taking the test. Its time to create the animation. So why do people constantly wait till the season to learn the program? Its like deciding to start studying when you are taking the test. You not going to do well.

So what if the program is loaded on school computers? You can get a copy of the program for very cheep if you purchase an educational package. I've even seen autodesk handing out educational license of 3ds max for free.

[teammember_342]

Do a 3D animation. My advice!

[Sunshift]

brilliant advice ^^

Finishing early is for noobs! :P

I finish with my fellow animators at someone's house at 3 am the morning of the day it's due every year!

Yeah, that's how I roll :cool:


actually, our first year it was 4:30, we had finished it into AVI, but it needed to be MOV. F***! several hours searching the internet for a avi to mov converter, then just broke down and bought Quicktime Pro.

[Mazin]

Finishing early is for noobs! :P
actually, our first year it was 4:30, we had finished it into AVI, but it needed to be MOV. F***! several hours searching the internet for a avi to mov converter, then just broke down and bought Quicktime Pro.

oh rofl, you coulda just recoded your project with 3ds max and saved the $X it took for QT Pro.

Go into 3ds max > Rendering > Video Post, add your avi as an input event, and pick QuickTime as an output event. Win.

Or, if you are good with computers, you coulda just (re-)encoded it with mencoder (actually you can encode anything with mencoder).

[richalex2010]

oh rofl, you coulda just recoded your project with 3ds max and saved the $X it took for QT Pro.

Go into 3ds max > Rendering > Video Post, add your avi as an input event, and pick QuickTime as an output event. Win.

Or, if you are good with computers, you coulda just (re-)encoded it with mencoder (actually you can encode anything with mencoder).

Another way would be to use VLC Media Player. If you can figure out which encoding to use for audio/video, it works well. Of couse, I'm never able to figure it out...
You should have VLC anyways, just because it's a great media player ;-)
http://www.videolan.org/