Animations, something which is used a lot within the art industry, whether it be an animated film, films in general and games. All these new pieces of art within the industry will have some form of animation within their project.
Within this trimester, we learnt about how animations work, and how to implement them. The way animations work can either be done frame-by-frame, or by using key-frames.
Frame-by-Frame method
The frame-by-frame method is when the animator will have to draw out or manually move the model frame-by-frame. Remember the old Mickey Mouse art/sketches? Those were used by the frame-by-frame method, where they drew every single action and frame it took for Mickey to raise his hands or close his eyes or any single action he has done within that small sketch. The frame-by-frame method allows more accuracy within the animations and more smoothness for your animation movements. However, it takes a lot of time, as it will need to be drawn frame-by-frame, hence the name.
Key-frame method
The key-frame method uses the computer to predict its movement in-between two key-points. So for example, if I wanted to raise a leg, I would put a key-frame in the standing position, and the next key-frame when the leg has been raised in-front of the character. The computer will then predict the movement of the leg in-between these two key-frames, resulting in on animation for the character to raise their leg. This method does not require a lot of time to make, however the quality in the animation has been watered down for its ease of accessibility and use.
The way animations work is that the character models or models themselves will have a rig, or a bone. This is only true if the animations you're working with are for characters/animals. If its for an inanimate object, such as a box falling down or being pushed over, then all you need to do is to record the movements, and voila, animation finished and ready to use. The main focus here, is for the character model. Once the model has been rigged, this is when the controllers will be made. The controllers are what controls each limbs. These controllers will work in unison with each other, to make a plethora of animations. Running, walking, shooting, crouching, sneaking, anything, you name it. Once these animations have been recorded, you can now import them to unity, and use them in any way you like.
I hope this short post on how animations work and how animations are made has helped you. As always, enjoy your day, and good luck with your work, for those who do have work to do!
For 3D, you've covered an important step to animating a character or animal, (which is rigging and skinning) by creating bones and setting the controllers for each joint in order to animate the character.
ReplyDeleteIn 2D you've mentioned using in-betweens which is the act of redrawing what's between the 2 main frames. You could have talked about how 2D animations start off by blocking out the main frames (main frame of the action happening) and then adding more frames in between in order to smoothen out the animation, hence the name "in-between".
Overall, you've given a clear understanding of how animation works in both 2D and 3D. ^^