Steps to Animation

Technical 3D Animation and Competition
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I just wanted to know how some of the teams around here went about making animations on 3ds Max. Not necessarily the ones made during build season, but just any animation.

I’m not looking for tutorials, as I have already located the ones I need. I just want a general idea of where to start and what the basic steps are. My team’s main contact talks about storyboarding, which is something I’ve never done before and have no idea how to do. Can someone give me some tips?

Most appreciated!

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I’m not sure how others go about it, but this is basically the general order of things I do.

  1. I’ll brainstorm/storyboard - The most important part for me is a good idea that will keep me interested. A storyboard does not have to be a set design unless otherwise specified (like during build season). On my other projects, I usually just end up writing out different steps with some lengths on them describing what I’ll do. Sometimes I’ll sketch out what I want things to look like.
  2. Modeling - For this step, I usually create a seperate scene for each model, and then later merge them into one. This way modeling isn’t slowed down by a massive amount of objects in the scene. I’ll usually include textures with this.
  3. Compiling - This is where I look at what I have planned and create each scene with everything I need in it (through merging of the objects I’ve already made).
  4. Audio - I would normally include audio in each scene I working with if applicable at this point. This way if I have any cues of when to animate what, I don’t have to work off of time and multiplying out my fps.
  5. Lighting - Make it look pretty with lights!
  6. Animation - This is where I animate everything from simple objects and bipeds to cloth and whatever else I might need to include. If I have a lot of objects, while animating I’ll hide what I’m not using or set some to display as box to have it run faster.
  7. Effects - Particles is what I would use most often in this step. Some particles I’ll put in before the animating if they pretain to the scene, but it doesn’t really matter unless it’s actually involved in the animation and not just background effect. Other effects usually include things such as fog or lighting effects. Sometimes I’ll do this entire step before animating. It doesn’t really matter though I guess it could in some situations.
  8. Rendering - A lot of the time I’ll render in something like 320x280 to make it fast and check for any small problems I have. After that checks out I then end up rendering in something like 720x480 (what can I say? FIRST has got me set on it).
  9. Post Processing - Any after effects done in photoshop or another video/audio editor and anything else I want to do with the animation. (Don’t use this step for FIRST stuff unless you’re using Combustion. They won’t like it)

Hope I helped! :slight_smile:

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oh and here a word of advice. PLEASE DO NOT SHOOT FOR REALISM!!

Your making animation. You can make anything you want. So why so many teams shoot for realism? Why not a Jimmy Newtron style or something even more off the wall like a Zune Commercial?

I’ve seen way to many teams try to make realistic human characters or realistic robots that most of the time turn out bad. Human characters are VERY difficult to animate right. Actually, they are the most difficult thing to animate in the animation world. (Besides cats and spiders) You don’t need human characters for a good animation. Just look at the one I made Infant Intolerable

I’ve made a list that 90% of the teams follow. If you want to be different don’t follow this list.

1: showing the playing field
2: showing their teams robot that they made in inventor. Normally its competing in the game.
3: showing the earth
4: using Bipeds that aren’t even skinned walking around in the god awefull default biped walk.
5: Shot of the machine shop and kids are working on the machines. (Normally shown before 1 and 2)
6: 360 degree shots like in the matrix: this is a god awefull shot for cinema P
photography. Think of any movie that is not the matrix or a movie making fun of the matrix that uses that type of shot. Can’t think of any? Because its such a ridiculous shot its not needed in any situation. Its only in the matrix because they were saying “Look what we can do!”

  1. Exessive camera movement. Its my pet peeve. I hate when teams over key the camera.

In 2007 our animation team did not follow this list and it got us the National AVA award with our animation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03opcTOLMGo&feature=channel_page

Remember, Animation is considered an art form. So lets stick to making it look more like art by adding lots of style.

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