Animated CG Film Pipeline

You can make a 2D Animated Short without going through any pipeline. This is especially true if you are just working alone.

But when you are trying to transfer to 3D, the pipeline becomes very important whether you are working solo or with a group.

3D Animated Shorts are a lot harder to make than 2D. It requires more art discipline. You need to have someone skilled at modeling (somewhat similar to a sculptor). You need a person with great painting skills to make the textures. Then you need to have a good video editor. You need to have a rigger. And then an animator.

3D Animated Films requires more people compared to 2D Animated films.

Having said that I like this article from cgtuts describing a CG Animated Film Pipeline.

Sculptris Primer

Sculptris is a very nice digital sculpting software. It takes advantage of dynamic tessellation to keep the number of faces down.

It is a very intuitive software. But you will be able to use it better if you really understand how its various tools work.

Sculptris sculpting primer Part 1 from 3dioot on Vimeo.

Sculptris Primer part 2 from 3dioot on Vimeo.

Sculptris Painting Primer from 3dioot on Vimeo.

The Future of 3D Printing

Blender 2.49 Draw Type Shaded in Blender 2.5 Beta

In Blender 2.49b had a Draw Type feature named Shaded. It allows you to see your 3D Mesh with its texture even if you haven't rendered it yet.

It's is a useful feature because it allows you to get a sense of how your model would approximately look like when it is rendered.

However, in Blender 2.5, "Draw Type" is now called "Viewport Shading". And the previous "Draw Type: Shaded" is no longer there.

Where did it go?

Let's find it.

1. Go to Object Mode
2. Set the Viewport Shading to Solid.
3. Press N
4. The Properties Panel will appear.
5. Scroll Down and find the a section marked Display
6. Click the arrow next to it to show the options for this section
7. Look for Shading
8. Click the check box marked "Textured Solid"
9. You are done.

If you will notice, the option to use GLSL rendering is also in this Properties Panel.

The Cup

Blender 2.5 beta has just been released. But even in using the Alpha version some artist have already created very good CG Short Films. Take this one created by Psl-Man.

The Cup from psl on Vimeo.