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2D animation in 3D software

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, June 2, 2014 Under: Tips
Hey all

Today I'd like to take a look at a previous image I had made, also toon shading, but reveal a clever trick I don't think you may know yet, and if you do, it's a great reminder! :D

First, the image:


This message is paramount to you having a peaceful mind and heart - basically, garbage in, garbage out. What that means is, if you think on sinful things, lustful things and you keep exposing yourself to that, you produce toxicity in your mind and heart. Sin is physically and spiritually bad for you, even though it feels good many times. Sin and lust is poison with a sweet taste and pleasant aroma with a fatal result. Don't indulge in it, seriously, it's better to do what GOD tells us to, than to worry about not doing what HE told us not to do (This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh, Galatians 5:16, KJV).

Now, we've dealt with education on the content of the image, now let's deal with the technical side of it.

When you think of most 2D cartoons, you think of hard lines and slow movements and sometimes only a mouth that moves. But something that is often missed is what we call the background. When our focus is on the animation, it's easily missed, because we just expect it and immediately know something is wrong when it's not there.

Did you know, however, these are usually simply 2D images as well, just in a different medium? The art of 2D animation is drawn animation and painted backgrounds. This allows us in 3D to have a lot of fun with it and take it to the next level, if you will!
 Here's why:
- With modern 3D software, like Blender, you are capable of doing 3D animation and 2D animation with separate styles in the same scene (ie, you can do 2D line animation and 'painted' backgrounds in one go).
- It removes the guess work from the painters and speeds up the preview.

The above is just one example of such a mix. The heart, water, fencing, etc, are all toon shaded materials and outlined with freestyle, but the background is a soft cloud texture. A great example of a mix between the two elements. Here's another example you may recall:



Now, you may be asking, what would taking it to the next level mean here? Well, it's quite simple - compositing.
Compositing allows us to take our images to the next level. While these effects, which we'll get to, have been added in the past, it as far as I think, would've been a very long process and very scene based process.
What kind of effects are we talking here? Not too many, but here are a few:
- Lens distortion
- Sharpen
- Blur
- Glare
- Vignette
- Motion blur
- Color filters
- DOF (Depth of field - focus for short)
- etc.

All these things add to your final image. For example, here is a before and after compositing:

(Before)


(After)

As you can see, in the sun's case, compositing is almost the entire image! Granted, there are examples I've used a bit, but they are still good examples of why these things are needed. Cameras, though great, still can't come close to eye function and efficiency. Those limitations show up in effects like the vignette, glare, distortion, and even chromatic aberration, which I am begging you to use only when needed, haha. Dirt on the lens can even cause a soft blur.

When we do animation, we add these effects to the animation to give it more punch and make it more enjoyable to watch.
On anime, these effects are especially prevalent and I believe it is for the single approach of - handle the animation as though it were real footage. That means, all your effects come after the 2D lines were drawn and colored and so on. See this video:


(Even on the thumbnail you can see the glare from the sun and that it was added after the animation was done)

Well, that's it for this post and I really hope this gave you some insight into how to tackle a 2D animation in 3D software!
Have a great one! Oh, also, if you have any questions regarding this topic, use the contact page and I may answer them in a future post!

Thank YOU!!!!!!!!

In : Tips 


Tags: jesus  2d animation in 3d  3d software  blender  compositing 2d animation 
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