3D Animation for Web & Video

View some of Razworks’ 3D galleries and demonstrations:

Web 3D Architecture Visualization

3D Modeling Gallery

3D Architecture Gallery

University studies have shown that when people can view an object or idea from multiple perspective views, their memory retention of what they have viewed can increase by 75%. This explains why 3D animation is such an effective marketing medium. Contact Razworks to see how 3D animation can improve your message.

Razworks founder Michael Rassel was a lead 3D animator at Viewpoint Corporation in New York City. With such advanced experience, Razworks can specialize in next generation 3D presentations that are normally only available from large, expensive animation studios.

Razworks Sarasota 3D Animation utilizes various software tools when producing a 3d animation. 3DS Max is often used, which is the world’s #1 professional animation software. Mental Ray is world’s #1 rendering software,  which is used to produce photo-realistic lighting simulations of real world environments. Adobe Premiere is the #1 professional video editing software, which is used to assemble the rendered frames of a 3d animation and convert it to video for the Internet, DVD, BluRay and other video formats. Adobe Photoshop is the #1 photo editing software which is used to edit images, such as texture bitmaps for 3d models or images for video sprites, titles or labels. Cakewalk Sonar is the #1 professional audio engineering software, which is used to produce and/or edit the audio for a 3d animation, often including music soundtracks, voice overs and sound effects.

Professional 3D Animation with 3DS Max

3D modeling: Razworks possesses world class expertise in accurately modeling and texture mapping products, architecture and ideas in 3DS Max and other software. Clients can accurately visualize their product in 3D animation before producing an expensive prototype, effectively reducing the amount of costly revisions.

3D Visualization: Bringing your idea to life through 3D Animation allows you to share that idea with colleagues, associates, financiers and potential customers. From a simple outline or pencil sketch Razworks can transform you idea into a visual presentation that will impress your audience.

Photo Realistic Renders: Using the world renown Mental Ray rendering technology with 3DS Max, Razworks can produce photo-realistic images and animations that look so real, they are often difficult to discern from real life photographs and video.

Web 3D: WebGL is the future of both the Internet and 3d animation industry. With the adoption of the HTML5 standard, the Internet is quickly moving into a broad new frontier. Adobe Flash is now officially at end of life, and in it’s place, WebGL will be revolutionizing the Internet for through the decade.

3D Design: Media just looks better when the graphics have been designed in 3D animation software like 3DS Max. Logos, website design, brochures, video graphics, even business cards will have a more professional look and a greater visual impact when designed using 3D Animation software.

Rendering is the final process of creating the actual 2D image or animation from the prepared scene. This can be compared to taking a photo or filming a scene after the setup is finished in real life. Several different, and often specialized, rendering methods have been developed. These range from the distinctly non-realistic wireframe rendering through polygon-based rendering, to more advanced techniques such as: scanline rendering, ray tracing, radiosity, and gobal illumination. Rendering may take from seconds to days for a single image/frame. In general, different methods are better suited for either photo-realistic rendering, or real-time rendering.

Rendering for interactive media, such as games and simulations, is calculated and displayed in real time, at rates of approximately 20 to 120 frames per second. In real-time rendering, the goal is to show as much information as possible as the eye can process in a 30th of a second, or 30 frames per second, which is the standard frame rate for video. The goal of real time rendering is primarily speed and not photo-realism. In fact, here exploitations are made in the way the eye ‘perceives’ the world, and as a result the final image presented is not necessarily that of the real-world, but one close enough for the human eye to tolerate. Rendering software may simulate such visual effects as lens flares, depth of field or motion blur. These are attempts to simulate visual phenomena resulting from the optical characteristics of cameras and of the human eye. These effects can lend an element of realism to a scene, even if the effect is merely a simulated artifact of a camera. This is the basic method employed in interactive video games. The rapid increase in computer processing power has allowed a progressively higher degree of realism for real-time rendering, including techniques such as HDR rendering. Real-time rendering is often polygonal and aided by the computer’s graphic processor unit.

Animations for non-interactive media, such as feature films and video, are rendered much more slowly. Non-real time rendering enables the leveraging of limited processing power in order to obtain higher image quality. Rendering times for individual frames may vary from a few seconds to several days for complex scenes. Rendered frames are stored on a hard disk then can be transferred to other media such as motion picture film or optical disk. These frames are then displayed sequentially at high frame rates, typically 30 frames per second, to achieve the illusion of movement.

When the goal is photo-realism, techniques are employed such as radiosity or global illumination. This is the basic method employed in 3d architecure visualization, product visualization and video cinematics and motion pictures. Techniques have been developed for the purpose of simulating other naturally-occurring effects, such as the interaction of light with various forms of matter.

The rendering process is computationally expensive, given the complex variety of physical processes being simulated. Computer processing power has increased rapidly over the years, allowing for a progressively higher degree of realistic rendering. Film studios that produce computer-generated animations typically make use of render farms to generate images in a timely manner. Directors like Michael Bay are increasingly utilizing 3D film making and animation technologies in an effort to advance the usage and content rate of this remarkable technology. However, falling hardware costs mean that it is entirely possible to create small amounts of 3D animation on a home computer system. The output of the renderer is often used as only one small part of a completed motion-picture scene. Many layers of material may be rendered separately and integrated into the final shot using video editing compositing software.

Photo realistic 3D rendering is achieved by using advanced 3d rendering software that simulates real world lighting and how light bounces from surface to surface.

Global Illumination rendering engines are typically produce the most photo realistic images of any 3d rendering software. Mental Ray and Vray are the most popular global illumination software, and use advanced techniques and global illumination algorithms such as path tracing, photon mapping, irradiance maps and directly computed global illumination. The use of these techniques often makes it preferable to conventional renderers which are provided as standard with 3d software, and generally renders using these technique can appear more photo-realistic to the human eye, as actual lighting effects are more realistically emulated.

Global illumination software is extensively used in the 3D development of film productions, multi-million dollar video game productions, and photo realistic 3D renderings for architecture visualization.

Global illumination is a general name for a group of algorithms used in 3D computer graphics that are meant to add more realistic lighting to 3D scenes. Such algorithms take into account not only the light which comes directly from a light source (direct illumination), but also subsequent cases in which light rays from the same source are reflected by other surfaces in the scene (indirect illumination).

Theoretically reflections, refractions, and shadows are all examples of global illumination, because when simulating them, one object affects the rendering of another object (as opposed to an object being affected only by a direct light). In practice, however, only the simulation of diffuse inter-reflection or caustics is called global illumination.

Images rendered using global illumination algorithms often appear more photorealistic than images rendered using only direct illumination algorithms. However, such images are computationally more expensive and consequently much slower to generate. One common approach is to compute the global illumination of a scene and store that information with the geometry, i.e., radiosity. That stored data can then be used to generate images from different viewpoints for generating walkthroughs of a scene without having to go through expensive lighting calculations repeatedly.

Radiosity, ray tracing, beam tracing, cone tracing, path tracing, metropolis light transport, ambient occlusion, photon mapping, and image based lighting are examples of algorithms used in global illumination, some of which may be used together to yield results that are fast, but accurate.

These algorithms model diffuse inter-reflection which is a very important part of global illumination; however most of these (excluding radiosity) also model specular reflection, which makes them more accurate algorithms to solve the lighting equation and provide a more realistically illuminated scene.

3D animation is essentially a digital successor to the art of stop motion animation of 3D models and frame-by-frame animation of 2D illustrations. For 3D animations, objects, or 3d models, are built, or modeled, on the computer using high end specialized 3D computer animation software like 3DS Max, Softimage or Maya.

There are many different ways animating a scene in 3D computer software programs like 3DS Max. Object animation, material or texture animation, camera animation, environment animation, lighting animation, special effects animation, etc. The two most common types of animation are object animation and camera animation.

Architecture visualization widely uses camera animation to create fly-bys and walk-throughs of buildings and landscapes. Product animation will use both camera animation to pan and rotate the view perspective and object animation to demonstrates a products functionality.

3D models require materials and/or bitmap textures to be applied to the 3d mesh to create the appearance of a real world surface, typically through procedural or projection mapping. Physical attributes such as color, reflection, bump and transparancy are produced by materials and textures.

Simulation of reflection/scattering and shading are used to describe the appearance of a surface. Although these issues may seem like problems all on their own, they are studied almost exclusively within the context of rendering. Modern 3D computer graphics rely heavily on a simplified reflection model called Phong reflection model (not to be confused with Phong shading). In refraction of light, an important concept is the refractive index. In most 3D programming implementations, the term for this value is “index of refraction,” usually abbreviated “IOR.” Shading can be broken down into two orthogonal issues, which are often studied independently:

* Reflection/Scattering – How light interacts with the surface at a given point
* Shading – How material properties vary across the surface

Reflection or scattering is the relationship between incoming and outgoing illumination at a given point. Descriptions of scattering are usually given in terms of a bidirectional scattering distribution function or BSDF. Popular reflection rendering techniques in 3D computer graphics include:

* Flat shading: A technique that shades each polygon of an object based on the polygon’s “normal” and the position and intensity of a light source.
* Gouraud shading: Invented by H. Gouraud in 1971, a fast and resource-conscious vertex shading technique used to simulate smoothly shaded surfaces.
* Texture mapping: A technique for simulating a large amount of surface detail by mapping images (textures) onto polygons.
* Phong shading: Invented by Bui Tuong Phong, used to simulate specular highlights and smooth shaded surfaces.
* Bump mapping: Invented by Jim Blinn, a normal-perturbation technique used to simulate wrinkled surfaces.
* Cel shading: A technique used to imitate the look of hand-drawn animation.

Shading addresses how different types of scattering are distributed across the surface (i.e., which scattering function applies where). Descriptions of this kind are typically expressed with a program called a shader. (Note that there is some confusion since the word “shader” is sometimes used for programs that describe local geometric variation.) A simple example of shading is texture mapping, which uses an image to specify the diffuse color at each point on a surface, giving it more apparent detail.

3D Models can be produced automatically or manually. The manual 3d modeling process of preparing geometric wireframes is similar to plastic arts such as sculpting. Once the wireframe is formed, procedural colors, surfaces and textures can be applied to give the 3d model realistic surfaces. Photographs and painted or computer generated images can also be applied to the models surface to give a more real world visual appearance.

3D models portray a 3 dimensional object using a collection of points in 3D space, commonly called vertices. Vertices are typically connected by geometric triangles to create faced polygons. The face of the polygon is what is rendered as a visible surface on the 3D model. By combining hundreds and thousands of polygon faces, a 3D mesh is created.

3D models are widely used anywhere in 3D graphics. Actually, their use predates the widespread use of 3D graphics on personal computers. Many computer games used pre-rendered images of 3D models as sprites before computers could render them in real-time.

Today, 3D models are used in a wide variety of fields. The medical industry uses detailed models of organs and simulations. The movie industry uses 3D characters and objects for animated and real-life motion pictures. The video game industry uses 3D models as assets and environments for computer and video games. The science community uses 3d models for chemical compounds, theoretical simulation, and scientific grants proposals. The architecture industry uses 3D models to visualize proposed buildings and landscapes. The engineering community uses 3d models to prototype new devices, vehicles and structures. The earth science community has started to construct 3D geological models for Global positioning visualization and climate studies.

High-end authoring software like 3D Studio Max, Softimage and Maya produce striking images and animations that cannot be produced via any other method. 3D media has proven to produce superior marketing impact in comparison to traditional media.

Michael Rassel is an expert in 3D modeling and animation. He was a lead artist for Metacreation’s real-time geometry lab. Michael was also a lead artist and Producer for one of the world’s leading 3D modeling companies, Viewpoint. At Viewpoint’s NYC media production department, Michael helped the company develop it’s flagship software while focusing on producing photo-realistic 3D models, animations and interactive presentations for real-time display on the Viewpoint Media Player. Michael was honored with a 2001 Communication Award for his Viewpoint media production of Hewlett Packard’s HP Briefingroom.

Whether your medium is video, real-time, or print, Razworks has the expertise and experience to deliver the 3D modeling innovation your project demands.