3D Animation Services

Why use 3D animation services for your business?

Using 3D animation services is more accessible then ever before!

With the increase in computational power and capability of 3D software packages, the cost of creating 3D animation is becoming far more accessible to the everyday business. It’s a great technology to help demonstrate a complex process or service.

3D animation services use for engagement

Instead of requiring several long paragraphs of text to explain a service; it’s easier and far more engaging to create a short 20 second, 30 second or 1 minute visually appealing 3D animation to explain a service better for your audience. It’s all about grabbing your audience’s attention and allowing them to understand your product, process or service as quickly and as amusingly as possible.

This is why you will notice a large amount of TV adverts utilise the power of 3D animation for their selling. For example, many product manufacturers use 3D to help showcase their products, as it’s easier for them to manipulate and render an item in any position and also control things lighting and weather and environment etc to allow their showcase piece to look it’s best and reach its full potential, so basically the constraints and laws of the physical world do not matter and or effect your vision for the perfect end result.

How our 3D animation services work?

Once you know you’re ready to start your production and you contact us, the first thing we do is invite you down to our studio and just listen to your story, take notes and talk through all your requirements. If it’s easier for you, we can come and visit you at your office; we usually carry our iPad and MacBook with us so can show you examples etc. In instances were travelling is not possible, we can still have a full consultation over the phone or video call. We do this often with our international client base.

It’s common to not know exactly what you want out of the 3D animation or what aspect of our 3D animation services would work best for you. But this ok and is similar to some of our past clients; so on these instances we would ask what message you are trying to get across and then we would offer suggestions to best tell that story.

Sometimes our clients don’t know what the message is, nor have a fully structured idea of what kind of animation they’re looking for; all they know is that they have a product and they want an animation to help sell that product. In these instances, we would go ahead and research the product on their behalf, create a strategy, create a story and key point messages and continue on and develop idea’s, concepts and write out either a script or screenplay.

However, you may already have a great idea and know how the animation should flow. In these instances, we would talk through your idea in detail and help develop the story further if needed. Once agreed we would move on to the developmental stage, including storyboarding and concept development.

Our range of 3D animation services is vast and so everything we do is fully bespoke and every client requirement is unique. As mentioned above, we create animations for all sorts of different things and different sectors. So we know exactly how the pipeline should flow and so we are happy to Project Manage from start to finish because no matter how the brief is delivered to us, the sequence of events we follow have a similar workflow.

3D Animation Services Production Pipeline

1. Consultation

This is when we have a sit down in our studio, at your address or hold a conversation over the phone and discuss what your requirements are and also what it is that you are trying to achieve through our 3D animation services.

2. Research

Once we have a summary of what the requirements are and have developed on the idea, path and direction. We can then conduct any necessary research that is required, including textures, features, props, photos, stats, writing etc.

3. Idea development

This is where we can help you to develop on your idea, script or vision, backed up by any further research on the topic or assets etc. This is good as it helps strategise where different levels of 3D can be utilised.

4. Scripting/ Screenplay

We can help in the writing of scripts or screenplay. There have been many instances where a client may have a great idea or vision for animation but has not thought through the full system including, structure or step by step process, dialogue, events and/or sequences. So even times where a script or screen play is not requested, we sometimes create a rough version to help structure the workflow of the animation.

5. Concept design

In this stage we create any necessary concepts of characters, props, and environments. We base these visual concepts off the descriptions in the script.

6. Voiceover recording and sound recording

We have a large base of voiceover and audio artist that create all audio for our animations. In this stage we have our audio, sound effects and voiceover pieces recorded.

7. Storyboarding

This is the stage where we take the script, screenplay or story and create a visual, step by step representation of the sequence of events. This works twofold as it helps illustrate to the client how the animation will link together and run. Also it helps us keep on track and understand our animation creation sequence. We often create video storyboards and edit in all voiceover and audio tracks for longer larger budget animations. This helps us keep better sequence timing and track the process better.

8. 3D modelling of all assets

In this stage we create all necessary 3D models, right from the largest 3d environments to detailed 3D characters to the tiniest props. These models are based off the concept sketches created at the concept art stage. We also create the range of phonemes for any character models. Phonemes are the shapes that the face makes as you pronounce as syllable, letter, or word.

9. Texturing

We proceed to texturing all the 3d models. We texture using several different methods including, just applying simple maps to using multiple procedurals to high end UV mapping. On large scenes, multiple styles of texturing can be used; typically we would unwrap and use high level texturing for a 3d character that is close to the camera and perhaps use simpler maps on far off scenery. A good practice that we use is to throw each model into a scene with realistic lighting. Even though the lighting in the final animation may not look like this, it gives us a good start in working out the texture values.

10. Rigging

We rig all objects that require movement and sometimes even rig inanimate objects. We rig non animated objects with simple nodes to help move them around the scene for easier setup. We create more complex rigs for 3D character models. So whether they are bipedal, quadruped or something else, we can create any form of rigging to allow that character or object to animate and move seamlessly.

11. Setup

This is where we take all the created objects, characters and environments and set them all out in the scene as per the storyboard. We create all the camera’s and set them to their shooting angles and ready everything else for animation.

12. Lighting

This is where we fully light the scene in accordance to the descriptions in the script. In this stage we often change some of the values of the texture maps to be more complementary to the scene and lighting environment.

13. Animation

Animation is the step by step process off moving the rigged characters or objects to a position recording their movement and moving the position again. We typically create our animations at 25 frames a second and so a lot of intricate movements need to take place to deliver a single second of animation. Often multiple elements are being animated for every second of footage. This is most common in character animation where the body, limbs and head needs to move and animate along with the expressions of the mouth and eyes, which all need to work in sync with the others in order to allow the animation to look smooth and non-robotic.

Off topic, you’d be surprised at how hard it is to animate a human character properly and at how easy it is to make a human character move in a poor robotic fashion. But most surprisingly if you try and animate a robotic character and try and animate it in that poor quality robotic style you’ll still find that it doesn’t look quite right, even though it’s a robot. This is why at Painting Pixels we only hire the most talented artists who understand the theory behind anatomy, movement and physiology so to have the ability to understand and create more realistic looking and fluid animations sequences.

14. Render output

This is the stage where we allow our large investment in to rendering hardware come in to its own. We set up the scenes and set the directories and hit render. We allow the computers to crunch the numbers and visualise every frame of our animation.

As a minimum we render out at full 1080p HD quality but we can render out at 4K or higher. We unusually agree this in the initial consultation stage or ideas stage. This is because even though we would still technically be able render at higher resolutions, each render time will increase 8 fold and add to costs and also all texture will look blurry as they would have only been created in HD quality instead of 4K and or higher.

15. Video Editing

This is the stage where we compile all the rendered frames and stitch them together in sequence as per the storyboard or animated storyboard. We create any required transitions and make any necessary cuts.

16. Post production special effects

It’s not necessary to use post effect’s on everything though we do tend to add some form of additional effect to spruce up the final look of the animations. Post production effects can be anything from changes in colours, grades to explosions and added smoke and dynamics etc.

17. Sound design and Final Edit

In this stage we add in all the final audio and voiceover tracks, synchronise everything and add additional effects for any post graphics like, explosion or bullets, flashes etc

18. Final output

Final output is the render from the editing suit. We usually have a fully uncompressed render and alternate renders in a variety of formats so that the animation can be viewed on multiple platforms.

19. Delivery

We then deliver the final piece on the agreed platform whether it be a video for use on websites and social media like YouTube or burnt on to physical blu-ray disc.