subject: The History Of 3d Animation [print this page] In 1995, 2 companies, Disney and Pixar collaborated to produce the first completely computer generated animated film, Toy Story. It was the first film to use 3D animation completely, with incredibly realistic visuals produced by the use of texture, shading, lighting and other features. Whats more? Disney and Pixar received an Oscar for their special achievements and innovations for the film. DreamWorks and Pacific Data Images (PDI) were soon to become their biggest competitors as they came up with the 2nd 3D animated film, Antz in 1998. Antz was released only shortly before Disney and Pixars second animated film A Bugs Life which was released later in the year. Disney (without the collaboration of Pixar) created a film called Dinosaur that was noteworthy because the characters were all animated but the backgrounds were real locations. DreamWorks and PDI later came up with the extremely successful fantasy comedy film called Shrek that even won them the Oscar. Later in 2003, Disney and Pixar came up with another successful movie Finding Nemo.
In 2001, Sony joined the animation scenario with the release of the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The film simulated actors with the help of computer generated imagery. Oscar winner Robert Zemeckis further enhanced the animation technology in his directed film The Polar Express in 2004 by being the first to use performance capture (a system that captures the actors body movements, facial movements, and facial gestures digitally by the help of computerized cameras) in a film.
The 3 phases of 3D creation
The process of creating 3d animation involves 3 phases. Phase 1 is given in details. It has 3 steps:
Modelling- Modelling is the first step. In it the shape of the object is created. 3D models are created using 2 main sources. The 1st in which the artist or engineer creates the model in the computer using a modelling tool;the 2nd in which real world objects are scanned into the computer.
Texturing- After modelling comes texturing. In this step, the polygons that form the model get their colour.
Scene setup- The height, width and depth of both the object and the camera is adjusted to achieve the right setup.
Phase 2 includes layout, animation, adding lighting, motion paths, and trajectories, etc. while phase 3 includes rendering, composting and the final touch.
