A Quick Overview of the 3D Animation Process For Beginners

3D animation is a complex process that involves many different steps. Understanding what these steps are and how they work together is essential for those looking to learn 3D animation. Let’s take a look at the four main stages of the 3D animation process: Planning, Blocking, Splining, and Polish.

Planning Your Animation:

The planning stage is the foundation of any successful 3D animation scene. This is where you define the goals and story point of the scene, determine how you will approach the scene in terms of acting and body mechanics, and compile your reference material. The Planning stage can be broken down into the following steps:

• Understanding the Goal or story point of the scene-Finding the story point of a 3D animated scene is an essential part of the 3D animation planning stage. This is the point where you define the scene’s core elements and how they will contribute to the overall message or theme of the film. If you are working on a film, then you will be provided with an animatic of the sequence and scene that you are working on, which along with the Director, will provide you with information on how the character needs to perform. The storyboard helps outline what animation needs to be created and in which order, providing a roadmap for the rest of the project. During this stage, it’s also important to consider how much time each scene will take to animate and decide whether there are any shortcuts that can be taken to save time and meet your deadline.

• Compiling reference material including reference video-Reference video can be an invaluable tool for 3D animators. By using animation reference video, 3D animators can achieve more convincing body mechanics within a performance. Reference video also allows 3D animators to bring more nuance and subtlety to their 3D animation performances by providing the animator with a foundation to which they can exaggerate. it is very important for the animator to act out their own scenes to capture reference from. This will allow the animator to feel the body mechanics which better helps the animator to understand the motion, acting, and ease of the performance. If the performance and movement feel contrived, then it is probably not meant to be.

• Defining the parameters of the scene. This includes frame count, production deadlines, and any limitations of the rig that will be used in the scene.

3D Animation Blocking:

Once you’ve planned out your scene, it’s time to move on to blocking. Blocking is where you set up your scene by creating the main key poses and breakdowns which define the main performance of the scene. This stage allows animators to quickly test out ideas before moving on to more detailed versions later on in the process. The Blocking stage consists of the following components:

• Storytelling Key(s)- This is the one or two single poses that sum up the entire story point of your scene with one single pose. It helps to imagine if your scene had no movement in it and was a one-panel cartoon. Shorter scenes can get away with one pose, while longer scenes may need two to three poses.

• Keys-Keys in general are the tent poles of the scene. The remaining keys are there to support your main storytelling keys. These are the roadmap to get from one place to the next within a scene to define the action and acting. Most animators have their own process of what works best for them as far as the process goes of approaching the animation of a scene. I highly suggest approaching your blocking stage using stepped tangents in the animation software that you are using. This will hold one pose until it is time to show the next pose avoiding awkward early timing and inbetweens until you have enough keys and breakdowns to define the timing and performance. Another advantage of working in stepped tangents is that it is a fast way to get a preliminary animation test up to show an animation supervisor or director for approval before spending any time on the transitions between main poses.

• Breakdowns-Breakdowns do exactly that, they break down the space between keys. Breakdowns are used when the transitions between keys have to create a unique movement that is not just going from one key to the next in a linear way as if it was an inbetween. Breakdowns will utilize the animation principles such as arcs, drag and overlap, and anticipation for example within the transitionary movement between the keys. Most of the illusion of life comes from your breakdowns and how proficient you are in understanding them.

3D Animation Splining Pass:

After blocking comes splining, where all of your keyframes come together into one cohesive motion sequence. During this stage, you change all of your stepped keyframes and breakdowns into spline tangents. Spline tangents to begin seeing how your transitions will work with the inbetweens. Every animator has their own go-to tangent in this stage, but I suggest using spline tangents as a base when changing over from stepped tangents. Spline tangents move the rig along curved paths between keyframes that ensure smooth transitions between frames. There are other tangents of course that will work as a base, and there are pros and cons to each, but I find that this gives me the best results as far as an initial change over from stepped tangents.

I do need to say that this whole process is referred to as splining, but does not mean that you only use the spline tangent. It is just the term for the process. You will need to use a combination of all the other tangents as you begin smoothing out your transitions and timing between your keys and breakdowns with your graph editor. Besides using the splining process for smoothing and timing, I will turn on my auto key function and add or fine-tune any additional breakdowns within the transitions or even key poses.

Final Animation Polish Pass

The final step in the 3D animation process is polishing- which basically means making sure everything looks perfect before sending it off for rendering! This is where all the little details are added that help bring a scene together. In this stage, animators add more detail by refining characters’ facial expressions, blinks, arcs, overlapping actions, and other subtle nuances that bring life into their animations.

By following this overview of each stage in the process—planning, blocking, splining, and polishing—students can gain a better understanding of how 3D animation works so they can start building upon their own animation process with more confidence. All these steps require careful planning and attention to detail if you want your scene to come out looking great — but with practice and dedication, it is absolutely possible. So if you’re ready to get your scene started, now is the perfect time! Good luck!