Hi,
I am creating a 3 minute animated short and I am completely new to 3D. I have modelled, rigged and textured my model and environment, but now I have no idea on how to proceed.
Do I just make the whole timeline 3 minutes and start animating? Is there a way that I can separated segments of animations or shots? Do I need separate files?
Does anyone know of a tutorial that can help me?
Hi Tina
Well my first piece of advice would be to not try and make a 3 minute film if you’ve never done it before. Personally I’d think about starting off with some short simple tests to learn a few things first before I jumped straight in. It’ll help find any problems that may exist in your model or rig and fix them before you get into the film itself as well as just getting more comfortable with things.
But if you don’t want to do that then you have to really break the film up into different scenes or shots and then edit it all together using editing software like Premiere or Final Cut Pro. I don’t know of any tutorials on it though I’m afraid.
Good luck
Trav
Hi Trav,
Thank you very much for the reply! Unfortunately it has to be 3 minute, its for an animation course at university. (We have lectures on the animation principles but not on the software :sad: )
I have no problem working with Premier and agree it will be better to make separate parts/shots. But when you say I must break it up, do you mean different files? (Example: Copy my environment file, add the character, animate and render?)
Regards
Tina
My recomendation…
First of all… DO A STORYBOARD. It’ll help you to develop your idea.
Then make some pieces of animation or shots. Don’t try to animate 3minutes = 4320Frames.
Next Step is to choose the cameras. I suppose you’re going to make some camera shots, you can use that and do one animation for each camera shoot.
And finaly… do the animation, from the global to the simply.
Hi,
Thank you for the reply. Lucky I have made an animatic, so I have the shots planned as well as the timing.
How should I do the pieces? Should each be in a separate files? At the moment my environment and my character are in different .max files. Should I add my character to the environment and then copy that file, and make separate animations?
What do you mean “from the global to the simply”?
Regards
Tina
Sorry about my english, but I’m spanish.
Ok… the pieces are:
If In the begining there is a person walking along and then he stop and look to other person doing something you can animate it continuosly. But then if you change your camera shoot like a first plane to the other person doing something you can animate that in other track (not other animation, just other track of animation). In some programs they call it “clips”.
For the animation just open the environment and import the character. If the environment it’s too big and in each animation you only see a part of the plane you can take just a piece and delete the rest of the geometry that we aren’t going to see. I don’t know if I explain it correctly…
“from the global to the simply” I want to say that first you only have to put the key posses. In block, and then do the inbetweens, etc…
Don’t loose time doing it perfectly, first try to find the correct timing with just a few keys.
For example for an action like a character grabing something you just have to put the following keys:
1º the first walk of the character.
2º when he grab the object.
3º when he stop walking at the end.
Then when you do that and get the perfect timing you have to do the inbetweens.
Do you understand correctly??
I would recomend you try to import the characters and environment as Reference. So if you have to change something on them, you do it on the matrix file, and all the animation files will follow, once they are referenced.
3 Mins are too much… 1 min is too much! IMHO, quality is more important than quantity. Good luck anyway!
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