I’ve wondered this for a while and a quick Google hasn’t yielded great results.
When films, particularly full CGI films, are made, do they truly make it frame by frame? Or do they desgin the full 3d world and put cameras into the software to “film” the scene? And how extensive to they get?
For example, in the car chase ending for Toy Story, would they have designed and modeled the entire neighborhood and used “cameras” in the scene to film it? Would they fully 3d model each house and “play” the scene to film it? Or would they design and create small pieces and put them together like traditional cartoon?
I always imagined it was similar to the StarCraft map editor. I could build the map, add in units and then assign them AI cues to move through routes or take actions based on programmed cues. Very curious how it works on big budget films.
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Just like a Hollywood set, they model out the area that will be in the shot, the further away the lower the detail. Animation is keyed, or key framed, you set an objects location, rotation, and scale, then set it again further in time. The software calculates what happens in between, and the animator adjusts and readjusts.
There are camera objects in each scene, they operate/simulate real world cameras, you can use all the same settings, lenses, etc.
AI, procedural mapping, simulations, physics, can do a ton of the work. You don’t animate a crowd, you more set the number of people, adjust locations, and tweak. All the background motion is calculated based on user settings, you don’t animate leaves on trees individually, or even model the trees themselves, it’s procedurally generated based on settings.
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