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3D animation. Volumetric animation in Photoshop

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ANIMATION, kind of synthetic art. Technologically, its essence boils down to the fact that a sequential series of still images is fixed on a film by frame-by-frame shooting, and the projection of these images on a screen at a speed of 24 frames (in the days of silent films - 16 frames) per second creates the illusion of movement. The very word "animation" means "animation"; in our country, this term appeared in the 1980s, replacing the previous definition of "animation" (from the Latin word meaning "multiplication"). And, if the old definition was based on a technological principle, then the new one reveals the true meaning of what is happening: an inanimate image comes to life before our eyes. Animated cinema, which until then was referred to as a "film genre", rightfully began to be considered an independent screen art.

In order for a drawn or three-dimensional character to come to life on the screen, its movement is divided into separate phases, and then filmed. If you carefully look at the captured film, you can see that in each frame the position of the character is slightly different from the previous and subsequent frames, this creates an illusion of movement when projected onto the screen, based on the ability of the human retina to hold the image for some time, while on it does not overlay the next image.

This phenomenon, described in detail already in the work of the ancient Greek mathematician and physicist Ptolemy for 150 years BC, people noticed and began to use a very long time ago; many modern researchers calculate the age of animation not even in centuries, but in millennia. Of course, we are not talking about films, but about still images that “came to life” when a person moved himself or simply looked from one to another. Rock carvings from the Lascaux cave in France and the Altamira cave in Spain (for example, a bull with six legs and two tails painted on the wall ten thousand years ago), ancient Egyptian reliefs, and paintings on Greek vases are considered such prototypes of animated films. Our country also had its own "ancient animation" - on the shores of Lake Onega, stones were found with images of a hunter and a frog engraved on them, which "came to life" when the rays of the setting sun fell on them. One of the progenitors of animation is considered to be the shadow theater widespread in the countries of the East.

But even if you do not look so far, animation even then turns out to be older than cinema: the date of its birth is considered to be 1892, when the first session of "light pantomimes" took place in the optical theater of the French inventor and artist Emile Reynaud (1844-1918). True, various optical toys were invented even earlier, with the help of which it was possible to revive still images. For example, a phenakistiscope is a circle, along the edge of which there are a number of drawings, which represent successive phases of the movement of the same character; it was rotated, looking at the drawings through the slit. Another device - a zootrope - is a rotating drum with slots, inside of which is placed a tape with the same row of patterns; at the same time, the final and initial phases of the movement must coincide, and then the pictures come to life: the horse is galloping, the girl is jumping over the rope. But these and other optical toys, such as a notebook with phases of movement drawn on each page, were intended for a single viewer. Reynaud constructed his apparatus on the basis of the zootrope, improving it by equipping it with a system of mirrors and connecting it to a magic lantern. Now the image appeared on the screen, and many viewers could see it at once. He showed them programs from several stories, the session lasted fifteen to twenty minutes. Reynaud drew, colored and assembled all his "films" himself, putting the image on long tapes, each plot consisted of several hundred pictures. He was the first to apply some of the techniques that later became the basis of animation technology, including the separate drawing of characters and scenery. In 1893-1894 he created his masterpiece - Around the cockpit (Autour d "une cabine), but already in 1895 the birth of cinema dealt him a crushing blow: Reynaud's man-made tapes could not compete with faster-produced and cheaper films. The desperate inventor smashed his apparatus and drowned it in the Seine along with the tapes, only two of them survived, Poor Pierrot (Pauvre Pierrot) and Around the cockpit. And just a few days later, cinema magnate Leon Gaumont approached him: he wanted to buy his apparatus and “films” for the museum. Reynaud's contributions to animation cannot be overestimated, and yet he cannot be called the creator of the first animated film in history, since he did not use film as an image carrier.

Film historians still have not come to an agreement on who should be considered the author of the first real animated film. Some argue that the first animated film in the history of mankind - Phantasmagoria (fantasmagorie, 1908) Frenchman Emile Cohl (real name Courtet, 1857-1938). Kohl was not familiar with the latest American invention, transparent celluloid, and therefore drew his characters, “phantoshes”, on paper and could not make a separate background or draw only those details that changed position from frame to frame. He had to repeat every frame anew, so the characters could only be very conventional. But he had a huge capacity for work and even under these circumstances he made dozens of films. Subsequently, Kohl began to use more advanced technical means and began to work faster; his filmography includes more than three hundred titles, unfortunately, many films are irretrievably lost. Other film historians, not without reason, believe that the first animator in the world was the Englishman James Stuart Blackton (1875–1941), who emigrated to the United States, whose first animation experience, the film magic drawings(The Enchanted Drawings), dates back to 1900 (although there were no intermediate phases in this film yet). In any case, one thing is certain: the immediate forerunners of the first animated films were magazine illustrations, cartoons, and comics. The first film of the American animator Winsor McKay (1869–1934) was born from a newspaper comic strip. Little Nemo (Little Nemo, 1911). The film was made on a bet with three colleagues who marveled at McKay's incredible speed at drawing, and is included integral part in a music hall number, with which McKay has been performing since 1906: he drew two profiles on the board, male and female, and, changing just a few dashes, changed the age of the characters - from childhood to old age. Later, he performed on stage and during the premiere of another of his films, Dinosaur Gertie (Gertie the Dinosaur, 1914): he turned to a cartoon character, persuading Gertie to repeat one of his tricks, for example, playing with a ball, and she complied with the request. McKay was the first to use loop technology in animation, using the same set of sheets of celluloid for repeating movements: this made it possible not to draw the movements again each time and significantly reduced the film production process.

There are many pioneers in the field of animation: for example, Raoul Barr was the first to use perforated celluloid; his invention made it possible to fix a patterned sheet with pins. And Pat Sullivan made a breakthrough of a different kind: he owns the first independent, non-comic book animated character, Felix the Cat (1917); Felix would later become the first animated character to make his way from the screen to the pages of comics. The Felix films were black and white and silent.

But the most famous among the pioneers of animation was Walt Disney: he not only developed the technology for the production of cartoons, which is called Disney (in another way - classical, which also says a lot), but also created a real cartoon empire. He also owns the first sound cartoon Steamboat Willie (steamboat Willie, 1928), and the first musical cartoon Dance of the Skeletons (The Skeleton Dance, 1929), and the first hand-drawn feature-length cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1938). He was so famous that once his six-year-old daughter Diana asked if he was really the same Walt Disney, and then asked her dad for an autograph. Disney films marked the beginning of commercial animation; his goal was to produce as many films as possible that would appeal to the audience, and at the same time spend as little time and effort on work as possible. This is how the "signature" Disney characters appeared, including the famous mouse - Mickey Mouse. His carefully calculated childish proportions (large head in relation to the body) touched the audience, and the well-thought-out design was convenient for artists who had to depict him from a wide variety of angles. Stephen Bosustov, who worked at the Disney studio in his youth, said that, tired of characters with rounded outlines, he dreamed of drawing someone triangular or square. In the end, he, along with a group of like-minded people, left Disney, created his own studio and his own style and method of work.

If there is still debate about who was the author of the first animated film, then the name of the founder of volumetric animation is beyond doubt: he was the Russian director, artist and cameraman Vladislav Starevich (1882–1965). The first puppet film in history is considered The Beautiful Lucanida, or the Bloody War of the Hornets and Mustaches(1912). Even earlier, Starevich tried to make a documentary about the battle of two stag beetles, but the beetles froze as soon as he turned on the light. Then he remembered how he once revived drawings on the margins of notebooks, and came up with a way to “revive” dead beetles. He passed a thin wire through their paws, sticking it to the shell with wax, fixed the paws in a plasticine base and began to shoot, dividing the movement into phases. In the following films by Starevich - Cinematographer's Revenge (1912), dragonfly and ant(1913) - insects also acted. The puppets were so delicately made and moved so naturally that the audience thought he had managed to train real insects. His most famous work is a feature film. Reinecke-Lis (Le roman de Renart, 1939), on which the director worked for about ten years (by this time he had already moved to France). He wrote the script himself, he himself was an artist, cameraman and animator, only his daughter helped him in his work. Starevich never wanted to reveal his secrets to anyone, and it is still unknown what exactly he made dolls from: it was a very plastic material, and the faces of the characters were surprisingly mobile and expressive.

In those years when the Disney empire was being created in America, animation studios also began to appear in the USSR. Like Emil Kohl once, Soviet animators did not know celluloid and made do with paper. Unlike the Western ones, the first Soviet cartoons were not drawn: they featured flat paper puppets on hinges, reminiscent of shadow theater puppets. But such puppets had very limited possibilities of movement, and soon animators came up with cut-out paper transfers. In this case, each phase of the movement was drawn separately, cut out along the contour and attached to the background. Here there was more freedom, but it was difficult to accurately fix the position of the relay. Sometimes the background, together with the phase of movement, was drawn for each frame on separate sheets of paper fastened with pins (landscape method); sometimes they used a technique that combined the landscape method and cut-out arrangement. This technology, cut-out shifting on pins (the phases were cut out and superimposed on the background, connecting them to the pins with a thin strip of paper for accuracy of fixation in the frame) gave the maximum freedom achievable when working with paper, almost the same as when using celluloid. It was then, in the twenties, that those who would later be called classics began to work: I. Ivanov-Vano (1900-1987), M. Tsekhanovsky (1889-1965). Domestic animation went its own way, on which there were many achievements and discoveries. One of the best films of the early period was mail(1929) by Tsekhanovsky, the first staged sound film made in mixed media: an articulated puppet combined with a translation. Many years later, Ivanov-Vano would write that the modern viewer mail impresses with its perfection, amazing organicity of all expressive components, directing skill, purity graphic form, the expressiveness of the movement of the characters, the sound design, will call the film a model that many artists have long been equal to.

Almost simultaneously, in the early 1930s, the most interesting experiments were being carried out in the field of "drawn sound"; this was done by a group led by the theoretical musician and mathematician A. Avraamov. Drawings made directly on the film, and then passed through a photoelectric cell, were supposed to turn the sound in the same way as it is reproduced from the curve on the phonogram obtained when recording ordinary sounds. It was assumed that new technology will open up unprecedented prospects for the development of animation, allowing you to smoothly transform human speech into music or music into the sounds of nature. Already in 1930, one of Avraamov's employees, N. Voinov, achieved the first results, and a year later he made a cartoon with drawn sound - Dancing crow. However, this method has not been widely adopted. Later, the achievements of Soviet researchers were used by others; N. McLaren worked especially successfully with drawn sound, and sometimes he is even credited with the priority in the field of creating drawn sound. Nevertheless, McLaren himself never hid the fact that he was familiar with the work of Soviet animators who experimented with drawn sound.

No one knows how Russian animation would have developed further, if not for one event that determined its fate for many years: in 1933, Walt Disney films were shown in Moscow. They made a stunning impression; the animators were immediately required to create "their own, Soviet Mickey Mouse", and just three years later, in 1936, the Soyuzmultfilm studio appeared in Moscow, arranged according to the American model. Soviet animators adopted not only the technology, but also the aesthetics of Disney. For several decades, only one path of development was possible for them, only one thing was required of them: to create films for children with extremely realistic characters. Animators themselves fell under the spell of Disney films and sought to imitate him. Animation, which originated as a serious and independent art, has turned into entertainment. True, it cannot be said that during the years of existence “under the hypnosis of Disney”, as Ivanov-Vano defined this period, nothing worthy was created: it is enough to recall gray neck(1948) L. Amalrik and V. Polkovnikov, snow queen(1957) L. Atamanova.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the “eclair” became a favorite technique for most Soviet animators: first, live actors were filmed on film, then their figures and movements were redrawn on paper and celluloid. This technique, at first considered auxiliary, gradually spread, defining not only the technology, but also the aesthetics of films. In the first half of the 1950s, almost all human characters in films were made using eclairs, and there were some successes along the way. This is how the movie was made golden antelope(1954) L. Atamanova, who became a classic of Soviet animation.

In 1953, a second, puppet association was opened at Soyuzmultfilm. Until then, there were few puppet films in our country, and they were mostly adaptations of puppet shows. The most notable event in this area was the combined film by A. Ptushko New Gulliver(1935). But in the late 1930s, Ptushko finally went into feature films, the puppet studio, which he led, ceased to exist, and now the animators had to start all over again, having no work experience.

In hand-drawn animation, by the early 1960s, changes began to occur. Attempts to break away from the established tradition began already in the late 1950s, but the most notable event was the appearance of the film big trouble(1961) by the Brumberg sisters, stylized as a child's drawing. And soon after that he made his debut as director F. Khitruk, and his first film History of one crime(1962) made a stunning impression. Everything here was new: the satirical solution of the theme, the form of narration, and the visual solution (by the artist S. Alimov, for whom this picture was also a debut): a bold combination of hand-drawn animation with photo-cutting and flat laying, the use of a split screen. The following works of Khitruk, - Toptyzhka (1964), Vacation Boniface (1965), Man in a frame (1966), Film, film, film!(1968), which became classics of animated films, largely determined its further development. Since that time, a variety of styles and genres have been born in animation. In 1966 film Once upon a time there was Kozyavin debuted A. Khrzhanovsky, one of the most interesting directors of today's animation and perhaps the last representative of the generation of "old masters" who continues to shoot. From the second half of the 1960s, bright works appeared in the puppet association, for example, My green crocodile(1965) V. Kurchevsky, Mitten R. Kachanova (1967), Clew(1968) N. Serebryakova. And further - on the rise; it was during these years, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, that popular and currently popular characters appeared on the screens: Winnie the Pooh, Crocodile Gena and Cheburashka, Malysh and Carlson.

The next significant event not only in Russian or Soviet, but also in world animation was in the 1970s films by Y. Norshtein Fox and Hare (1973), Heron and Crane (1974), Hedgehog in the fog(1975) and tale of tales(1979), a few years later recognized by critics and film critics as "the best cartoon of all time." Norshtein is not only a talented director who, together with the artist F. Yarbusova, created a new aesthetics of the animated film, but also an outstanding inventor. Speaking of Norshtein, it is impossible not to mention the cameraman, who worked on many of his films, A. Zhukovsky, who, even before meeting with Norshtein, invented unique equipment for filming, and their creative union turned out to be extremely fruitful.

At the turn of the 1970s-1980s, many other talented and innovative films were made, suffice it to mention Pushkin's trilogy by A. Khrzhanovsky ( I fly to you with memories, 1977; And I'm with you again, 1981; Autumn, 1982), where Pushkin's drawings come to life organically combined with documentary footage; Once upon a time there was a dog(1982) and Ant travel(1983) E. Nazarova; Separated(1980) by N. Serebryakov, and especially the film by I. Garanina booth(1981), which does not exist in 3D animation: a one-of-a-kind experience of turning a theater puppet into a movie puppet, changing the system of conventions in front of the viewer.

In the late 1980s, a new generation of directors came to animation, the most prominent figures here were Ivan Maksimov ( Bolero, 5/4 ,Wind along the shore), Alexander Petrov ( Cow,The Old Man and the Sea), Irina Evteeva ( Elixir,Petersburg). If Petrov and Evteeva are known mainly due to the unusual technologies that they use in their work, then Maximov is one of those few directors who managed to create their own world on the screen, his characters cannot but be recognized at first sight with all their diversity.

Even in Soviet times, each of the republics had its own school of animation, there were outstanding masters, such as E. Sivokon (Ukraine), R. Raamat (Estonia), R. Saakyants (Armenia); they all continue to work.

During the existence of animation, many bright names have appeared all over the world, and several large schools, such as, for example, the famous Zagreb school in Yugoslavia, the head of which D. Vukotic became famous for the film Surrogate (Surogat, 1961), the first foreign cartoon to be awarded an Oscar. In other countries of Eastern Europe - Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary - animation was also a popular art form, everywhere there were famous masters. Czech animation stands out in particular; here you can name the creators of the national school of puppet film G.Tyrlova, K.Zeman and I.Trnka, whose film Hand (Ruka, 1965) in the list of the best cartoons of all time takes fourth place. This is the tragic story of an artist who is turned into a puppet and destroyed by the authorities. Interestingly, the "human" role here is assigned to the doll, and the inhuman power is embodied by a living human hand.

On different continents, different countries ah, talented directors and artists of animated films appeared at different times. As early as 1919, L. Reiniger, known for her silhouette films made in a style close to shadow theater, began working in Germany. In France, which can be called the ancestral home of animation, there are such outstanding directors as P. Grimaud, J. Lagioni; in England the most famous director was D.Halas, but in recent years he has been eclipsed by N.Park; R. Serve in Belgium, B. Bozzetto, G. Gianini and E. Luzzatti in Italy, P. Driessen in the Netherlands; less well-known, but certainly noteworthy are the animated films of Scandinavian directors. True, the farther, the more difficult it becomes to determine the nationality of the film, directors work where fate throws them or where they have the opportunity to shoot. For example, Z. Rybchinsky began his career in Poland and continued in America. The Russian director V. Starevich, also a Pole by nationality, worked for many years in France; the creator of the needle screen A. Alekseev is considered a French director. And the Oscar-winning film by Russian director Alexander Petrov The Old Man and the Sea filmed in Canada, a country where the most favorable conditions for animation are traditionally created.

The most prominent Canadian film director known worldwide for his films is the Scot Norman McLaren (1914–1987), who has worked in Canada since 1941. He is known as the creator of the cameraless method, but his contribution to the world of animated cinema is far from limited to this. Each of his films was a bold experiment that invariably led to successful decisions, he worked with equal success in a variety of techniques, a variety of styles. In film Thrush (Le merle, 1958), filmed in the traditional way on a cartoon machine, a character made of sticks breaks into its component parts to a cheerful song and folds up again; several films - the best of them is considered gray hen (La poulette grise, 1947) - made in the technique of pastel, which McLaren painted directly under the camera on the filming table; the director repeatedly turned to the method of frame-by-frame shooting of live actors. The widest range - from abstract fantasies Shimmering void (Blinkity blank, 1954) before repeated exposure to pas de deux (pas de deux, 1967), which in the strict sense of the word is not an animated film. McLaren created an animation department at the National Film Center of Canada in Montreal, where D. Dunning, the author of the famous yellow submarine (yellow submarine, 1968) and began her career Caroline Liv, working alternately in two of the most difficult and capricious techniques, painting on glass and powder, and occupying an honorable second place in the list of the best cartoons, right after Norstein, with her film The street (The street, 1976). Another well-known Canadian director is F. Buck, one of his films is also in the top ten in the world.

Among the countries of the East in the field of animation, none can compare with Japan. The point is not only that Japan has long become one of the largest suppliers of animation products, in Japan, animation and comics - anime and manga (it is no coincidence that there are special names for them) - occupy a very special place and are the subject of a separate study. In addition, in Japan, as in other countries, there is not only commercial animation produced in huge quantities, but also author's animation. One of the most famous Japanese directors is Kihachiro Kawamoto. Making your films she-devil, 1973;house on fire, 1979), Kawamoto drew on the traditions of Japanese art. The heyday of national animation in Japan falls on the 1960s and 1970s, at that time a group of young filmmakers opposed the stereotypes that had developed in animated films. The most prominent representative of this trend was Yoji Kuri, an artist, writer and director. He worked in a variety of media, sometimes combining drawings, photographs and newspaper clippings in one film. In addition, he introduced into the animation motives of longing, disappointment, uncertainty, loneliness that were not characteristic of it before.

The farther, the more clearly marked the divergence between the author's and commercial animation, while both are less and less dependent on geographical boundaries. Commercial animation across countries is becoming increasingly monotonous; the author's is becoming more and more free and independent, it is less and less possible to trace the features of national culture in it. But, as Dusan Vukotic once said, animation is “an art whose boundaries coincide with the boundaries of fantasy”, which means that it knows no boundaries.

ANIMATION TECHNOLOGIES

Hand-drawn animation.

Most often, when talking about hand-drawn films, they mean those made by the classic or, as it is also called, the Disney method, i.e. using the technology that was once developed at the Disney studio. Such films are made by a big team. Of course, as with any technology, a film is created by a screenwriter, director, production designer, cameraman, and composer. And besides - the animators who develop the movements of the characters; phasers who make intermediate phases of movements; drawers, whose job is to draw the details of the characters. All this preliminary work is done in pencil on tracing paper. Then the contourers transfer the drawing to celluloid, and the fillers paint with special paints. Since celluloid is transparent, usually the background, the fixed and moving parts of the characters are drawn on separate sheets. The sheets have slits that are put on the pins, so when applied, parts of the pattern match. The final stage of work is frame-by-frame shooting. Gagmen also worked at the Disney studio, who were engaged in inventing gags - funny tricks. During the first viewing, the timekeeper kept track of whether the audience was laughing often enough. If there was silence for ten seconds, then one of the scenes turned out to be unsuccessful and should have been redone.

Most of the cartoon films in studios around the world are made in this way. However, this is far from the only way to make hand-drawn films. In addition to commercial, there is also author's animation, and in our time, a film is often made by one person, most often with the help of a computer, sometimes with a small team. The technique can be very diverse: they draw with a simple pencil on tracing paper, watercolor on wallpaper, colored pencils, oil paints on celluloid, in a word, complete freedom of choice. The only thing that unites all these options is the presence of prepared drawings, which remain unchanged after shooting.

Volumetric animation.

Often it is inaccurately called a puppet, although not always the actual puppets act in films. Of course, here, as in hand-drawn animation, there is a classic technology: after the character is invented by the artist, the masters make the doll, starting with the frame and ending with the clothes. Sometimes for the same character they make several heads with different facial expressions, sometimes in the process of shooting they change only the eyes or the lower part of the face - so that the doll can speak. It happens that individual details need to be repeated on a different scale: for example, I. Garanina used in her films, in addition to dolls, also larger masks. Finished dolls are placed in the scenery and start frame-by-frame shooting. The work of an animator in 3D animation is very close to the work of an actor, with the difference that he usually has to play not one, but several roles, subtly changing the pose of each character. The work of the operator is also very important here: no less depends on him than in feature films.

Sometimes directors working in volumetric animation take real objects instead of specially made dolls, and then they can use the properties of the materials from which these objects are made: for example, in the film by G. Bardin Conflict matches really burn out. And in the famous film by the Czech director I. Trnka Hand the partner of the traditional film puppet was an ordinary human hand.

Plasticine can also be attributed to volumetric animation. With plasticine, each director works in his own way. If for Nick Park this is just a very malleable material, close to what Starevich used in his time, then in the films of A. Tatarsky both the characters and the environment are constantly transformed, and the boxers from the film by G. Bardin brack, reviving, do not lose their plasticine essence: when a hole is punched in the body of one of them, he immediately covers it up with a piece of the same plasticine.

Translation.

Initially, this technology appeared, as they say, from poverty. It is much easier to cut out individual parts of the figure and move them under the camera than to make a hand-drawn film. However, over time, it turned out that the relaying has the richest possibilities. Back in 1964 F. Khitruk, making a film Toptyzhka, used the repositioning technique to make the characters fluffy. But Yu.Norshtein reached true perfection in this area. He not only divides the character's figure into large parts (head, torso, arms and legs or paws), but sometimes crushes him to infinity using various materials; he scratches and draws lines on pieces of foil and celluloid, and then arranges these pieces on horizontal glass tiers arranged on different distance away from the camera, and then the character becomes three-dimensional.

Painting on glass.

This is probably the most time-consuming technology that requires special skill. There are no pre-prepared characters and scenery that would only have to be removed. The artist, who is also an animator, paints a picture with oil paints right under the camera every time, gradually adding new strokes. This technique is used by the Canadian director K. Liv and the Russian director Alexander Petrov, who became famous for the film The Old Man and the Sea(1999), for which he received an Oscar.

Powder technique.

Various bulk materials can be used here - sand, coffee grounds, salt; usually films made in powder technique are monochrome, but it is possible, using, for example, multi-colored spices, to make a color film. Here, as with oil paints on glass, the characters and scenery are born under the camera during the shooting. This is an inexpensive, but very complex technology, since the powder is a capricious material, and because of any mistake, you have to start all over again.

Needle screen.

One of the rarest animation technologies. The needle screen was invented in the early 1930s by A. Alekseev. He is vertical plane, through which evenly distributed long thin needles pass. These needles - there may be several thousand of them - can move perpendicular to the plane of the screen. The needles point towards the lens and therefore remain invisible themselves, but if they are extended unevenly, they cast a shadow. By moving the light source, you can change the length of the shadows and get a new image every time, even without changing the position of the needles. In this technique, for example, a film is made Night on Bald Mountain (1933).

Tubeless animation.

As the name implies, here films are made without a camera. The absence of a camera led the creator of the N. McLaren method to the idea of drawing directly on the film, at first without observing frame divisions. Subsequently, McLaren created a special machine for drawing on film. The machine consists of a clamping frame with a gear mechanism that ensures the exact position of the frame, and a special optical system, reflecting the last drawn frame to the next, still blank film frame.

Pixelation.

This is a special kind of animation: real human figures are used as the subject of frame-by-frame shooting. The person here is not so much an actor as material for the animator.

Computer animation.

Various technologies fit this definition. Computer animation can be two-dimensional and three-dimensional, there is also a computer translation. At first, animators perceived the computer simply as an assistant that would save them from the most difficult and boring work, but over time it turned out that its capabilities are much richer: it allows you to imitate any technique, any materials, any style. However, even the most advanced computer remains just a tool. Many believe that the future belongs to computer technology, and yet how the film will turn out depends only on the person sitting at the computer.

Of course, only more or less common animation technologies are listed here, but in fact there are much more of them, and they are used in a wide variety of combinations: hand-drawn animation with translation, hand-drawn animation with puppet, participation in an animated film of live actors. Just as there are many ways to use plasticine, making the concept of "plasticine animation" very vague, there are many options for working, for example, with paper, and M.Oselo's white lace films do not at all resemble the plasticine experiments of V.Kurchevsky in the film Flying Proletarian(dir. I. Ivanov-Vano and I. Boyarsky, 1962). G.Bardin used new material in almost every of his films, and, trying to create an all-encompassing classification, one would have to come up with specifically for him, for example, “rope animation”, “wire animation”. I. Evteeva created her own technology, the secrets of which she willingly reveals, but no one undertakes to repeat her experience: she shoots live actors on film, and then manually paints each frame.

Alexandra Vasilkova

Literature:

Karanovich A.G. My doll friends. M., 1971
Ivanov-Vano I.P. frame by frame. M., 1980
The Wisdom of Fiction. M., 1980
Film Making. M., 1990

Creating a three-dimensional character for a logo or commercial is only half the battle. As soon as the appearance of your character is ready, agreed and approved, the fun begins - the creation of 3d animation. This is a time-consuming and incredibly interesting process, which ultimately allows you to "revive" any idea.. For example, to teach a character to talk to a client, be sad and happy, think and move, jump into adventures and show on your fingers how to apply your product.

The work of 3d animators is a colossal work that allows you to create not just a moving picture, but also a completely reliable reality around. How three-dimensional animation is created and what miracles can be done skillfully, we will analyze in more detail in the article.

To quote Dr. Frankenstein: it's alive!

Animation 3D objects differs significantly from 2d animation - "flat" cartoons, where the volume was achieved with the help of perspective and the correct painting of characters and the environment. Today, technology allows you to immediately show its shape with lighting and camera movement. In this case, the concept of animation changes:

2d animation- creating the illusion of movement or changing the shape of objects using techniques.

animation 3d— automatic movement or transformation of objects in space and time.

Simply put, before it was necessary to draw the movement of each character frame by frame. Now it is enough to create a three-dimensional model of the character, after which it can be moved in space without additional efforts and drawings. But it’s easy to say, but in reality, animating a 3d model of characters is a rather complicated process. To make the figurine move, it is not enough to have access to a computer and smart programs. You also need to imagine how the hero can move, what forces affect him (not those that are higher, but, for example, gravity, the force of friction and resistance).

If you want to get with character, it is important to turn to animators who are aware of all the subtleties and are ready to fanatically work out every detail. Not only gait, but also facial expressions, and the movement of hairs, and the sliding of fabric (if the hero, of course, wears clothes).

To take into account everything at once, you need to be a little magician and a little genius - quite a good description for the animators of the KLONA studio.

How to create non-zombies: features of 3d character animation

As modern wisdom says: nothing is a zombie but a zombie. And if your hero is not him, then the animation of the character should be “live”, or, as they say now, verbal. The viewer must believe that the hero is really walking, looking, grimacing or smiling. interacts with the environment.

The creation and animation of a 3d character is the creation of a story that is told not by words on paper (or screen), but by movement. For example, a character's facial expressions can say a lot about a character. But for this, he must have a sufficiently “quality” face to make the muscles move.

When the question is approached without due diligence or at half strength, as a rule, something is obtained at least unnatural, and sometimes even frightening.

Therefore, let's take as a starting point, and see what can be done with it:

Animate by keyframes;
Animate along a path;
Create animation in dynamic environment;
Animate using motion capture.

Each of the ways is easiest to explain, considering not only the technology, but also examples.

Keyframe animation: from point A to point B

- one of the most common ways to create 3D character animation. The essence of the method is this: on the time scale, several main points are set at which the position or shape of the object changes. The animator sets the required parameters of the model in the specified frames, and the program calculates the "intermediate" states automatically.

Example: For simplicity, let's take a rubber ball that hits the ground and bounces up. To display one such "jump", the process must be broken down into three stages: the ball at the top - the ball on the ground - the ball again at the top. In a good way, you should set more key frames, take into account a bunch of little things. Like the fact that when falling, the rubber case is stretched, and when it is hit, it is flattened.

If you correctly deform the object at each fixed point in time, the 3d animation will turn out to be as natural as possible.

Not always 3d models of characters are people or animals. Our hero can be any object, for example, a flying camera or a UFO (in general, everything that is enough for fantasy). In this case, flashing lights and rotating along the axis will not be enough - not interesting. But to make the object fly along the trajectory, and even “send” the camera to monitor the movement, approaching and moving away in time ...

And skillful handling of focus (that's exactly what a 3d animation studio should be able to do) will turn a simple circling of an object in space into an almost fascinating blockbuster.

The essence of the method is to:

set the starting point (beginning of the object's path);
designate the trajectory (the path that the object makes);
specify the end point (where the model should stop).

After the character/object is “attached” to the trajectory, the program itself calculates and creates the movement. If you add the animation of the object itself (flapping wings, opening airlocks, retracting the landing gear) and “playing” with the camera, you can achieve very interesting effects.

The CLONE studio team knows exactly how to make a simple movement along a laid route and breathtakingly dynamic.

Our hero is not in a vacuum. Any character is surrounded by some kind of reality, in which there is necessarily gravity (if it is not in space), the movement of air masses and other types of vibrations. All this should be taken into account so that the character animation is realistic enough.

What does the result of such an animation look like and where can it be observed?

In detail. When a character walks through the city, and the cloak flutters in the gusts of wind, or when the hair sticks to the face under water, all this is achieved thanks to animation taking into account environmental factors.

Strictly speaking, animation in dynamic environment- rather computational work with deep immersion in the physical characteristics of objects. But without all this, even the most detailed 3d modeling will not make the character come alive.

Motion capture: turning a movie into a cartoon

Motion capture technology- young, but very popular. Today, motion capture is used in almost all science fiction films. The essence of this method is extremely simple:

sensors are attached to the actor;
while the actor is moving, the cameras record the positions of the sensors;
their displacement is processed by the program and creates a moving "skeleton" with a set of key frames;
the resulting information package is “wrapped” with a shell - for this, 3d character modeling is used.

As a result, the actions of the hero are realistic, convincing, and the animators do not have to deal with physics and remember where something bends.

Annotation: For many who are starting to learn 3ds Max, animation is the most interesting step in creating a 3D scene. Making objects move on their own - what could be more interesting? Well, in this lecture you will learn how to do it. It outlines the basic principles of 3D animation, and also talks about modules for creating dynamic interactions and animation with particles.

Animation: from hand-drawn to 3D

You might be surprised to know that 3D animation was born much earlier than computers.

The very concept of animation in its primitive form was familiar to man five thousand years ago. For example, not so long ago, during archaeological excavations in the southeast of Iran, a clay goblet was discovered, on which drawings were clearly preserved. In these images, you can see a kid jumping up and tearing off the leaves with his teeth at different points in time. When a person looked from one such image to another, the pictures "came to life".

In the 19th century, there were many different devices, which "animated" a number of pictures. For example, one of these devices, the zootrope, was a drum, inside which there were a large number of similar pictures, which were slightly different from each other. Such images captured frames of a simple cyclical action, for example, a child jumping with a rope, an ostrich running, etc. Looking through the cracks in the body of a rotating drum, the viewer saw "animated" pictures.

With the advent of cinema came puppet animation, which can be considered the first three-dimensional animation. The dolls were placed on the set, the animators set their position, after which the frame was shot. Then the position of the arms, legs and other parts of the body of the characters changed, and the next frame was shot. And so - until the cartoon was ready.

In fact, the animation that is created in 3ds Max is a direct descendant of puppet animation. The principle of its creation has remained the same, but today, thanks to more advanced technical means, the procedure is simplified. The main advantage of computer animation over puppet animation is that in order to "revive" virtual puppets, the animator does not need to work on every shot of the film, but it is enough to do it only selectively.

Computer animation is based on the concept key personnel. Instead of setting the position of objects in each frame, it is enough for the 3D animator to show the program the start and end positions of the subjects, and the movement in all intermediate frames will be calculated automatically based on this data. The frames in which the position of objects is indicated are called key frames.

Keyframe Animation

Getting objects to move on the screen is easy with 3ds Max. The most convenient way is to use the automatic keyframe creation mode. What does this mean? Imagine that you need to make a scene with a moving teapot. There are three steps to create this simple animation.

Turn on the automatic creation of animation keyframes by pressing the Auto Key button, which is located under the animation scale.
Move the animation slider, setting it to some next frame.
Change the position of an object in space.

If you then try to play the animation using the Play Animation button, which is located under the scale, you will see how the teapot moves in the projection window.

When you moved an object in auto keyframe mode, you specified the start and end coordinates for the teapot, and based on that information, 3ds Max determined the position of the object at each of the intermediate frames.

This method allows you to animate any parameters of an object. For example, by animating the value of the Opacity (Opacity) parameter in the material settings of an object, you can make an animation in which the object will gradually become invisible, and by setting different values of the Multiplier parameter (Brightness) repeatedly in keyframes for a light source, you can make the light blink.

On the animation scale, key frames are indicated by markers. To move between key frames animation uses the Key Mode Toggle button (Switching between keyframes). Keyframes can be managed - change their position, delete, assign to groups of objects, adjust parameters, etc. For example, to delete a keyframe, use the context menu that appears when you click right click mouse on the marker (Fig. 8.1), and to move it is enough to change the position of the marker by holding the mouse button.

Rice. 8.1.

Trying to create an animation

In order to understand how animation is created in 3ds Max, we suggest that you create a simple scene and animate it.

Create a teapot in the viewport, for which go to the Create tab of the command panel, in the category geometry(Geometry) select the line Standard Primitives (Standard primitives) and click the button Teapot (Teapot). It is more convenient to work with one projection window, and not with four at once, so expand the window Perspective (Perspective) in full screen using the keyboard shortcut Alt + W.

The object created by default consists of a small number of polygons, so it looks angular. If you rotate the kettle, then pay attention that the spout is not even, but with kinks. To fix this, go to the tab Modify (Change) command panel and in the properties of the object, increase the parameter Segments (Number of segments).

Now you can start creating animation. Using the modifier Slice (Slice), you can create a video in which the teapot will gradually appear. Select the object, go to the tab Modify (Change) command panel, select from the list Modifier List (List of modifiers) modifier Slice (Slice). This modifier divides the object by a conditional plane and cuts off a part of it.

In our case, in the modifier settings, you need to specify the Remove Top parameter. In this case, the object will disappear, since by default the plane lies at its base.

To create an animation, switch to keyframe mode by pressing the Auto Key button below the animation scale at the bottom of the screen. In this case, the area over which the animation slider moves will turn red. Move the animation slider to the hundredth frame (to the far right), expand the list modifier Slice (Slice) in the stack by clicking on the plus sign next to its name and switch to editing mode Slice Plane (Slice surface). Now you will be able to move the object clipping plane up along the Z axis so that the teapot is fully visible. If you play the animation by clicking on the Play Animation button, you can see the kettle gradually appear in the viewport.

Change animation duration

By default, animations created in 3ds Max are set to 101 frames for NTSC video (29.97 fps). It is easy to calculate that with these settings, you can perform an animation that lasts about three seconds. To change the duration of the animation, use the Time Configuration window (Figure 8.2), which is called using the button of the same name located under the animation control buttons.

Rice. 8.2.

The corresponding parameters are in the Animation area (Animation). In addition to the duration of the animation, in the Time Configuration window, you can also select the video format ( Pal / NTSC ), the number of frames per second ( FPS ), how time information is displayed on the animation slider, and other parameters.

Changing the Animation Flow

In real life, the nature of the movement of objects and the performance of any actions can be different. To make it clearer what is meant, remember how the fan rotates. Immediately after switching on, it spins the blades with acceleration until it reaches the desired speed. Then it rotates at a constant speed, and after turning off, it gradually reduces the speed. When creating such an animation, it is necessary not only to specify the parameters of the object, but also to set the nature of its flow at different stages: when turned on, when the fan reaches its operating speed, and after turning it off.

If we mathematically display the dependence of an animated parameter (or animation key, as it is also called) on time, then each keyframe will be characterized by two curves that determine functional dependencies An animated parameter between the current keyframe and the previous one, and between the current keyframe and the next one. In many 3D editors, including 3ds Max, this graphical dependency can be controlled by defining the nature of the animation.

To do this, 3ds Max provides dependency presets, according to which animated parameters can change. Most fast way change the nature of the animation flow - use the Default In / Out button Tangents for New Keys(Tangent Markers, which are used by default) on the Animation Control Bar. Clicking it opens a list with icons of available dependency stubs (Fig. 8.3).

Rice. 8.3.

You can also change the nature of the animation flow using the Track View window (Track Editor), which can be opened with the Graph Editors> New Track View command (Graphic Editors> New Track Editor). The third way is in the Key Info (Basic) rollout of the Motion tab on the command bar.

3ds Max provides seven basic presets, each of which changes the value of an animated parameter as follows:

Auto (Automatic) - automatically changes the value of the animated parameter, smoothing the curve at the break point;
Custom - allows you to set the shape of the dependency curve manually;
Fast (Fast) - with acceleration;
Slow (Slow) - with deceleration;
Step (Step) - according to the step schedule;
Linear (Linear) - linearly;

Smooth (Smoothed) - smoothly. This type function is selected by default.

Trying to create a more complex animation

You already know how simple animation is created in 3ds Max. The program automatically calculates the parameter value in all intermediate frames enclosed between two keyframes. However, creating animation is a much more complex process than it might seem at first glance.

Try, for example, to create an animated scene with some rotating object, for example, Teapot (Teapot). Turn on the automatic keyframing mode, move the animation slider to the extreme right position, and then rotate the teapot around some axis. If we now play the resulting animation in the projection window, we can see that the speed with which the three-dimensional model will rotate is not constant. The reason is that the animated parameter is not linearly dependent on the default rotation controller, so the object speeds up and then slows down as it rotates.

To be able to change the dependency of an animated parameter, you must right-click on a keyframe on the animation track and select the key of the parameter whose characteristics you want to change.

Try playing the animation now. You will see that the kettle rotates at a constant angular velocity.

Parameter Collector window

For more convenient creation animations in 3ds Max have a window - Parameter Collector(Parameter collector). Thanks to it, you will be able to manage the properties of objects much faster.

These changes can affect the positions of objects, the shape of objects determined by the action of various modifiers, the properties of the materials of objects (color, gloss, transparency), the state of the environment, and many other components of the scene that allow animation. In 3ds Max, you can animate any characteristics of all objects - primitives, lights, cameras, auxiliary objects. By setting object parameter values in keyframes, you can make objects move in the scene, change texture, increase or decrease in size. Playing back a rendered sequence of frames at a speed fast enough to give the illusion of smooth motion brings the scene to life. The number of frames per unit of animation time required to ensure smooth scene changes is set during the time interval setting process. It's typically 30 fps in 3ds Max, although it's 24 fps in movies and 25 fps in TV. Each individual animation frame is no different from the rendered images of the 3D scene seen in the previous exercises. Thus, the creation of animation consists in multiple automatic repetition of the scene image rendering cycle in the selected projection window with automatic introduction of the necessary changes to this scene, i.e. in multiple rendering. Therefore, the computing power of the animation machine is most in demand. There are three basic concepts to understand in order to master animation techniques: keyframes, animation keys, and animation controllers. key frames call the frames in which the values of the animated parameters change. To create an animation in 3ds Max, it is enough to specify the parameter values in keyframes, and the program will automatically calculate the change in parameters from one keyframe to another. Animation Keys the values of the animated parameters in keyframes are called. Animation controllers call the ways to control the change of animated parameters, as well as the nature of these changes (evenly in the interval between key frames, with acceleration, etc.). Animated parameters change control is performed by adjusting the shape of the change graph or by setting the change trajectory. At the bottom of the 3ds Max screen is a line of tracks (scale) of the animation, on which the icons of the keyframes of the animation of the selected objects are located (Fig. 1). Rice. 1 The track bar can be turned into a simplified editor of functional curves, which are graphs of animated parameters changing over time. To do this, click on the button Open Mini Curve Editor(Open Mini Curve Editor) located on the left side of the track bar. The program implements two animation modes by the key method: automatic animation mode (with automatic creation of keys) and forced animation mode (with forced creation of keys). The keyframe creation mode is activated using the button Auto Key(Automatic setting of animation keys) located under the animation scale (Fig. 2). Rice. 2 Any change to the scene settings in the current frame is remembered, and a keyframe marker appears on the animation timeline. The button is used to move between animation keyframes. keymodeToggle(Animation frame switching mode) . By default, the duration of the generated animation is 101 frames. With this setting, you can create an animation that is about three seconds long. To set animation display options in the viewport, use the dialog box Time Configuration(Timing configuration s x parameters) (Fig. 3), which is opened using the button of the same name Source: