3D Animation Services and Explainer Video Productions
Our 3D animation services are great for telling a story, to describe a service or to visualise a particular product or process. Here at Painting Pixels our talented team of professional artists, specialise in creating highly detailed 3D models, 3D animations and 3D visualisations for a wide range of service sectors; including:
•Corporate •SME •Aerospace •Defense and Security •Banking •Chemistry and Medical •Electronics •Manufacturing •Engineering •Public •Telecommunications •Transport •Tourism •Utilities and Energy •Entertainment •Language •Education •Social •Building and Architecture •Regeneration •Government
Have a quick watch through our 3d animation and modelling showreel to get you inspired!
Contact us today to start your 3d animated production or visit either our London or Ipswich based 3d animation studio.
Our 3D Animation Services
Using 3D modelling and 3D animation services, our team of 3D artists have created some amazing 3D animations and visuals including complex organic character models, sophisticated rigging, hyper realistic automotive visualisation, technical industrial renders, 3D stereoscopic animations, 3D logo’s and animated i-dents, to name a few!
Below you’ll see a handful of categories for our 3D animation services just to give you an idea of some of the categories we work with, but we can pretty much design and model anything for anything and it doesn’t need to be defined in an category!
3D Character Modelling and Animation
For TV, film, web icons, mascots, animated cartoon series, company branding and identity etc
3D Automotive Design and Animation
To showcase latest supercar designs for TV adverts and promotional material etc
3D Industrial Modelling and Animation
To showcase complex industrial machines and processes
3D Logo Design and Animated I-dents
Branding and websites. Animated versions are perfect for the beginning of presentations and corporate videos etc
3D Architectural Modelling
To create 3D renders for sales brochures, planning and animated fly-throughs
3D Medical Animations
Demonstrate and explain precise medical processes and procedures to help in medical learning and training.
3D Product Design and Prototyping
To help visualise and build a new product for better marketing and sales to winning a new patent etc
3D Interior Design and Animation
For show homes and developments, using 3D renders to market and sell
3D Environmental Set Design
For TV, films and planning process. From fantasy scenes to real world environments
3D Interactive Services
Showcase any product or scene in real-time 3D and rotate in 360 degrees for an interactive immersive demonstration
3D Photogrammetry Services
Visualise any real-world large scene and extend and build on it with your ideas
3D Printing
Print anything in 3D for prototyping or selling.
So the above are just some examples of our 3D animation services categories. But we do much more, we are a full production company so our 3d animation services can be used for large complex productions for high budget website campaigns, TV adverts, TV series, live on-stage animated productions, 3D stereoscopic animations to even cinema. We can create any form of 3D animation or render no matter how complex or obscure at the highest levels and output as a 3d stereoscopic production, full 1080p HD quality, 4K or even higher.
Our 3D animation services can also be seamlessly integrated with our 2D animation services and video production 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.
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