The document discusses the various stages of 3D production including pre-production, production, and post-production. It focuses on the pre-production stage which includes concept, storyboards, and animatics. Organic modelling is introduced which refers to modelling living things. Requirements for organic models include being watertight and consisting of a single seamless object. Common organic modelling techniques are described such as box modelling, contour modelling, and sculpting.

1. Datt 2500 Introduction
to 3D Modelling
Week 05

2. Stages of Production

3. Stages of Production
When creating 3D models, it is important to have some
understanding of all of the various stages of production.
When working with a larger team, you will often only be responsible
for one task. On smaller teams you may be responsible for more,
and as an artist you may be responsible for everything. Either way
the more you understand about what is needed for each stage of
production, the better you will become at the jobs you are
responsible for and the smoother production will go.
The stages of production for animation are very similar to film and
videogames.

5. Pre-Production
Most larger productions (animation, videogames, film, plays, etc.) use an
extensive pre-production stage.
The pre-production stage consists of all of the preparation work completed before
the actual production of the work begins. It is the planning stage. (you are
creating a blueprint for the other stages to follow)
Pre-production is very important for complex projects as it is usually the cheapest
stage and any major problems that can be corrected as this point will save
extensive amounts of time and money in the future.
For animation, pre-production usually consists of Concept/story, Visual Design,
Storyboards and sometimes Animatics.

6. Concept
Whether you are making animation that is an artwork or more of a traditional film,
you will need to determine the concept of it early in the pre-production stage.
With many forms of art, determining the concept this early in the process is not a
necessity. With 3D animation, any major changes you make to the core concept at
later changes can significantly add the overall length of production time.
For an artwork, this is where you determine the core idea of your animation (what
is it about or trying to say?). The concept of your work should help inform all of
your future production decisions.
For a narrative film, the concept is the story, it’s structure and it’s characters.
(what is the story really about or trying to say?)

7. Storyboards
A storyboard is a series of sketches that show
how a story will be organized and presented.
It helps to pre-visualize how the director wants
a narrative to be shot or animated. It also helps
communicate the director's ideas to the crew,
actors, producers, collaborators, animators,
etc.

8. Animatics
Animatic: is a movie or animation which has been edited from the storyboards.
-Animatics are extremely useful for determining the timing of a shot within a sequence.
-an animatic gives a much stronger impression of what your final scene will end up as and the structure
of your edit.
-Usually music and transitions that will be present in the final scene are present in the animatic.
-Often simple effects such as zooming and panning are added to simulate any moving camera shots
within the final scene.

9. Production
The production stage is the actual creation of the project.
It is often the most labour intensive and costly stage, therefore
reducing the time of this stage depends on how effective your
post-production stage was.
For 3D Animation, it usually consists of Modelling, Layouts,
Texturing, Rigging, Animation, Lighting, Effects, Sound, and
Rendering

10. Model Sheets
A Model Sheet or Character Board is a series of images of a
character from various angles. They are a template to model
and animate with.
In 2D animation, its main purpose is to standardize the
appearance and art style of a character. This is important
because most 2D animation uses many animators and there
can easily be inconsistencies with how they draw any given
character. These inconsistencies can be costly.
In 3D animation, they are used by the modellers to accurately
create models that reflect the visual design of the project as
closely as possible.

11. The most important angles needed on a modelling sheet for 3D animation
are the front and profile (they match your orthographic view). ¾ views are
important for 2D animation. Some modelling sheets also show various
expressions or poses for characters, these can be helpful to the riggers or
animators to understand what will be required.

12. Layouts
A background layout is the creation of the background for a scene.
They are created from the storyboards made during pre-production.
Because storyboards are often rough and quickly drawn out, the
layout really defines all of the detail and perspective of the
background of a scene.
In 2D animation, it is the line drawing of the background. Depending
on the visual style of the animation, this line work is sometimes
painted in, or painted on top of or completely removed for the final
appearance.
For 3D animation, it is about creating a simple representation of the
3D space the scene will take place in. This is often referred to as
Greyboxing, you are laying out the space to see if it is functional (this
is used in level design of game development as well)

13. Post-Production
The Post-Production stage consists of everything that is needed to be added to
the project in order to finalize it.
The post-production stage is incredibly important to the success of any work and
is really where the artists defines what the the work will finally end up being.
In 3D animation it usually consists of Compositing, Video and Sound Editing,
Colour Correction, and Effects.
Many digital technologies and production techniques have allowed for much of
the work that used to be completed during production, to be completed in post-
production. Because of this, the length of the post-production stage has been
ballooning in large scale productions.

14. Organic Modelling

15. Organic Modelling
For the first section of the course, we are going to be
focusing on Organic Modelling.
Organic Modelling refers to the process of animating “living
things” such as humans, animals, creatures, plants,
monsters, etc.
Hard Surface Modelling refers to the process of modelling
non-living things like objects, buildings, vehicles, etc. (There
was more of a focus on this in Part 1 of the course)

16. Organic vs Hard Surface Modelling
There are many ways you can categorize Organic and Hard
Surface models. There is really no right or wrong answer
here but these are some of the more common distinctions
made:
-Generally Organic Models may be composed of more
rounded and smoother than hard surface models (this is not
always true)
-Organic Models are usually built to be animated by
deformation (Rigging), where hard surface models are rarely
animated through deformation and are often static in a
scene.

17. What is Rigging?
The toolset for building 3D models is not very efficient for animating. Because of
this animators needed to create another technique to animate the polygon
meshes of models.
This technique is called Rigging, and it is the most efficient way to animate a 3D
model.
It is essentially building a skeleton made of joints and bones inside of your model
that is capable of controlling and moving the model in the same way that our
bones move our bodies.
It is much easier and efficient to move and keyframe the joints of a skeleton than
it is to move and keyframe each vertex in a polygon mesh.

18. Organic Modelling Requirements
Because Organic Models are usually animated through
deformation, how you build them can be more restrictive than
hard surface modelling. Below are some things you have to
take into consideration:
Watertight Models- are 3D models that have no holes or split
seams in them (all of the vertices/edges/faces are connected
or stitched together). They are all one solid piece. Imagine if
you filled your model with water, if the water wouldn’t drip out, it
would be watertight. Models

19. Organic Modelling Requirements
Because organic models are often controlled by a single rig, they usually
consist of just one seamless object as opposed to a group of objects. While it
is possible to animate a group of objects with one rig through constraints, it is
not often ideal and the results may vary.
To avoid using groups, you need to combine the different objects in your model
and then stitch the vertices/edges/faces together using commands like bridge
or weld.
Some parts of the body such as the eyes or clothes are often grouped with the
main model and are not controlled by the main rig, this allows them to animate
and move separately from the main rig

20. Organic Modelling Techniques
Typically organic modelling is more difficult than hard surface modelling because
of the irregularity and complexity in their design.
A strong understanding in anatomy will greatly benefit you as both a modeller and
animator.
It is important to understand that there is no one proper way to build a model. The
end result will often be very close to each other. Find the modelling technique you
are comfortable with and keep practicing with it.
3 common modelling techniques are Box Modelling, Contour/Edge Modelling and
Sculpting.

21. Box Modelling
Box or Primitive Modelling is a technique where you begin
modelling with a polygon primitive such as a cube, sphere or
cylinder. The polygon primitive is then manipulated
(translate, scale, rotate, subdivide, extrude of
vertices/edges/faces) to add detail and create the final
model.
It is often good to start with a shape like a cube, because it
consists of only quads and all of the commands you will use
can only create more quads (so there should be no tris or
ngons in the final result).
Box Modelling generally results in models with much lower
polycounts because you are only adding more polygons
where extra detail is necessary.

22. Contour/Edge Modelling
Edge or Contour Modelling is where you begin modelling
by creating a simple polygon, and then continuously
connect more polygons to it to gradually form a three-
dimensional shape (build out the shape from the original
quad)
Edge Modelling typically takes a little longer than Box
Modelling and avoiding tris and ngons takes a little more
understanding.
The advantage of edge modelling is that when you get
good at it, your resulting models will typically have better
typology and need less clean up.

23. Digital Sculpting
Digital Sculpting uses software tools that try to replicate how real-
world clay sculpting functions. (push/pull, smooth, pinch, etc).
If you have experience sculpting, the process will be very intuitive for
you (especially if you use a pen and tablet). It is typically much faster
to sculpt a highly detailed model.
The downside of digital sculpting, is that to add detail into your
model, you need to increase the resolution of the model (increase the
polycount). This results in much higher polycounts than are
necessary.
A work around to this is to retopologize your sculpted model.