Week One

Pre-production

In the digital industry like film, games and animation there are three stages of production, first being pre-production where the idea of the product or animation is setup in detail to create a road map of the production process. These include the idea, story, storyboard, animatic and design, once these steps are completed, the next stage begins production.

In the production stage, the process of the animation begins and is mostly the longest stage as everything from the pre-production is now being created from the layout, R&D, models, textures, rigging/setup, animation, VFX, lighting, and rendering. But as the animation production continues things can change in order to fit the story or clients idea, so sometimes if an animation isn’t working in a certain scene they would go back to the layout to make changes and this is done with a lot of the steps, which is the reason why the production stage takes the longer to complete.

However once this is all done the final stage post-production beginning, mostly as editing everything from the render. Compositing, 2d VFX/motion graphics, color correction and lastly final output.

http://www.slideshare.net/Veetildigital/pre-productionpost-process-in-3d-animation

3D Modeling

https://10dollarwp.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/3dmodelling.jpg

Modeling is the process of taking an object like a box or the car above and molding it into a 3D mesh. The basis of modeling starts with a single point that is placed in a location in the X,Y and Z, these points are called vertex. Adding in another vertex you are then able to connect them creating a two-dimensional line or an edge, adding a third vertex you then create a three-dimensional object called a face or polygon. Using these you are then able to create objects like the car above. However in modeling there are different ways you can go about modeling an object:

1. Spline or Patch modeling
2. Box modeling
3. Poly modeling/edge extrusion

Using these different methods make it's easier when creating a certain object like a building, barrel or character for an animation.

As well as modeling, 3D sculpting is used to create high detailed models that would normally be too different to do using the modeling methods above, using sculpting software like Zbrush you can create high detail 3d models faster and convert them into a 3d mesh which can then be rigging and animated.

http://www.animationarena.com/introduction-to-3d-modeling.html