Animation Illusion
animation illusion How does CG animation work? I understand 'traditional' animation: artists draw and paint thousands of frames that differ from each other only slightly. These thousands of frame...
animation illusion
 How does CG animation work? I understand 'traditional' animation: artists draw and paint thousands of frames that differ from each other only slightly. These thousands of frames are separately photographed, and when they are projected at 24 frames per second, the illusion is that the drawing/paintings are moving, and therefore 'animated'. I also 'kinda' get how computer images are made by creating shapes and then adding texture. My question is this: is the same principle of traditional animation applied to these computer-generated images? Do thousands of stills have to be generated, so that when these frames are projected at 24 frames per second, they appear to be animated? Or is there software that allows CG images to be animated some other way? Any links to easy-to-understand websites would be great, or a very simple explanation here would be awesome. Thanks! I will try to explain it as simple as possible, then get into the general idea. For CG animations in movies, thousands of still are generated. The generation of these CG stills are called "rendering". Depending on the complexity, it may take hours to days to just render a single still. Because complex images containing things like hair and fur from Narnia movie, or CG character swimming in water take very long to render, these still images are not rendered from a regular home computer. The process of rendering using many computers are called "render farming". The reason why complex images take so much power is because the an animator can not animate every single hair on a character, every time the character moves. So computer has to calculate this, for every single hair for every step a character takes. Another important benefit is that, even the in-between movement of bodies are calculated by the computer, not just hair. So an animator will position a ball on ceiling at frame 1, then scroll to frame 30 and position the ball on the floor. The computer will calculate its movement from frame 2 to 29, because it knows the positions for 1 and 30. This concept is used for all animations from character walking to a sinking ship. This positioning of an object is called "keying". Since you are asking for frame rates, CG movies also have benefit at ease!. Lets say someone hand drew 24 pictures to make a 1 second cartoon. But for viewing in monitors, TV, theatre, all differ in the optimal frame rate to be used.. Like for DVD viewing, it is at 30 frames per second instead of 24 frames per second. But since you do not want the 24 drawings to move faster on a DVD compared to the theatre. You have to somehow turn the 24 pages of drawings into 30 drawings!!! And this is done by showing the same page more than once. With CG, the computer calculates any in-between "keys". So instead of having 24 drawings, computers make more then needed and extras are not used. So instead of an artist drawing a falling ball 24 times to create 1 second animation. The computer animator makes 2 positions of the ball (start) and (end). Then that can be used to generate 60 image sequences of the falling ball. From those 60 images, delete out 35 images... and you get 24 frames, to be played for 24 fps (frames per second) For DVD, delete out 30 images... and you get 30 frames. to be played 30 fps. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Crazy World Of Animation
Animation is an interesting and a challenging field that deals with virtual reality. It is a field that gives hyper real experience of day to day objects. It involves constant innovations and cutting edge technologies to show virtual characters real. It is a medium through which you can convert your ideas and imagination into virtual reality. It makes the text interactive, attractive and appealing to the eye by highlighting the message. It casts an ever lasting impression on viewer’s mind and they will remember it for a long time to come.
Animation is based on the phenomenon of persistence of vision to create an illusion of the movement by the rapid display of sequence of images in 2D or 3D artworks. In simple terms, it creates a false conception of things though technological tricks. This illusion is created by replacing the series of old images with new one that are identical to previous one. 3D artwork is more dynamic and vibrant as compared to 2D artwork because it has an extra dimension. In other words, if you draw character on paper then it will show only front part of the character not its back but in 3D animation you can see your object or character from all directions. Nowadays lots of animation tools and techniques are available that can help you in understanding the concepts of this field. You can find them easily on the Internet.
It has applications in every field like entertainment industry is greatly benefitted by it. It is a cost effective tool for them. They can create mind boggling scenes with ease and without loosing big bucks. Even in pilot training institutes, trainees can test their skills on simulators that were developed by the principles of animation. It can also be used in educating small kids in schools as they easily associate with their cartoon characters. Animation can be used in making network sites more beautiful and interactive. It can also be used effectively in online business. Entrepreneurs use animation for their websites, blogs and other such networking sites to promote their businesses. Animation has its great future ahead as this field is yet to tap its true potential with the development in technology.
About the Author
Lisa Thomson is a great expertise in field of animation. She has written many articles related to animation. This time she has come up explaining the crazy world of animation. Animation adds liveliness to the displays and images. It deals with the virtual reality. For more details visit: http://www.arenamohali.com