Renders are awesome, ain’t they? Sometimes, you stumble upon one and you find yourself staring at it for a solid minute, admiring its beauty, aesthetic, and probably…boobs.
As wonderful as 3D stills can be, every once in awhile we crave a little motion. We like action in our pictures just like we like action in our everyday lives, and it’s not just this generation, either. Artists have been experimenting with moving pictures even before electricity was readily available, and cartoons are nearly as old as silent movies.
How is this related to 3D, you may ask? Well, animating renders isn’t all that different from traditional illustrating, when you think about it. Even if you’re using a model, someone had to make it from scratch at some point. The process is, of course, completely different, but the time it takes to rig 3D can rival the time it takes to make a traditional cartoon.
Early 3D animations
I remember the first 3D animation I ever saw. It was a clip from Black Widow production’s ‘the princess has come of age’. (2005) For the time, it was groundbreaking, but if you were to watch it now you would immediately notice how poorly it has aged.
Most early 3D porn animations were almost exclusive to Japanese studios, like Umemaro 3D, and there were very few studios actively making 3D content in the mid 2000s. The content that could be found was important for the development of the genre, but let’s be honest: overall it left a lot to be desired.
Five years later, however, there were way more options. Hardware and software improved and independent artists (as opposed to big budget studios) were better equipped to break into the market. The amount of looped, semi and fully animated content one could find was beginning to become overwhelming.
The Now
3D Animation has come a looooong way. With the rise of increasingly powerful and affordable hardware, many artists are able to release decent animated content at a fairly steady pace. With the advent of SFM (source filmmaker) and other ‘sandbox’ type software, artists can do half the work for double the payout. That’s not to say it’s easy, only that much of the super time consuming work can be seriously cut down. This usually results in longer videos, but there are major limitations to using such software versus manually rigging.
Regardless, this insurgence of independent artists has helped to open up the community in very noticeable ways. Because of the demand, more freelancers, like voice actors and writers, have been coming out of the woodwork. Both hobbyists and pros have been involving themselves in 3D more than ever before, and I’ve seen some awesome collabs just within the last year.
Why do so many modern animations look the same?
Good question!
Consider this: an artist can spend anywhere between 30 minutes and several hours on a single image before it’s even rendered. Depending on the method used for animation, manual rigging can take literal hours for just a few seconds of movement.
This is probably why SFM is so popular, because it has a built in physics engine, giving an artist the option to use what is essentially a preset movement, much like any other asset. The downside to this, (I mentioned earlier) is that the artist is limited to work within the confines of the software. Tons of artists collectively use the same convenient skins and textures, this is why so many animations that use the same software have a tendency to look, well, samey.
I’m certainly not judging anyone who uses premade this or that, but I will say that most successful 3D animators (the ones that sell their work) usually have a uniqueness that can only be obtained by doing things the hard way.
The future
It’s happening now, in small ways, but the foreseeable future of 3D animations is probably VR. Several fully fledged productions already give the viewer the ability to change angles and watch an animation from any viewpoint. Pair this with a VR headset, and you’ve got an animation that a person can actually walk around inside of! Naturally, this will probably lead to some interactive play, merging some animations into games, but if you’re anything like me, you may prefer to just stand back and watch.
It’s an awesome time we’re living in, because we get to experience the evolution of moving 3D. As animation improves, it will continue to blur the lines between reality and fiction. Many artists have already made strides past simple loops, marking certain works as full fledged ‘movies’. Pair the incredible visuals with things like learning A.I. and we just might create that robot apocalypse I keep hearing so much about.
Death by sexy android anime chick… I could think of worse ways to go.
