- [Voiceover] When you watch an animated film,
it's very easy to notice the difference
between 2D and 3D animation.
Anyone can point out that this is 2D
and this is 3D.
But what is the core difference between the two,
other than the visual result?
What does it mean to make a 2D animation
as opposed to making a 3D one?
Well, actually the making process is very different.
For starters, to make a 2D animation,
you need to be able to draw.
Everything you see in a traditional 2D animation
had to be drawn.
Usually frame by frame.
For a 3D animator, while being able to draw,
well, is definitely an advantage,
it is not mandatory.
When you're animating in a 3D environment,
you move the character kinda like a puppet
right down on the computer.
Alright, so what does it really mean?
In 2D animation you draw the first key pose.
And then the rest of the key poses.
Now you need to draw all the frames in between them.
Notice when the guy's arm is covered by its body,
it's actually gone.
If something is not shown in 2D animation,
you don't have to draw it.
If a character closes his eyes,
the eyeballs does not exist anymore until I draw them again.
This concept is one of the big differences
between the two types of animation.
That's because when you're working in a 3D environment,
all the parts of your character are always there,
and you have to be aware of them.
While in 2D you just draw whatever is seen
and the rest is gone.
Okay, so we all know that animating in 2D
means drawing a lot.
But what does it really mean to animate in 3D?
How does it look?
Well, let's see.
This is a 3D model.
It is rigged.
That means that he is programmed
with all the right virtual bones and controls
to make it as easy for animators as possible
to go ahead with animating it.
Now, this might not be as complex
as what the big studios like Pixar and Disney use,
but it is made with the same principles and concepts
and the animation methods
are kind of similar in all places.
So, as you can see, this model has controls
in every key position in the body.
I can grab one of the controls and move it around.
But that only explains how we can move the model,
not animate it.
Here it'll get a little bit more complex.
Watch this window here.
It's called a graph editor.
3D animation is all about graphs and curves.
I know math and formulas don't belong
an artistic thing like animation, but here it is.
Now, this might seem a little overwhelming
but most of these controls have six different curves
you need to manage.
All at once.
There's that translate curves X, Y and Z
for up, down, left, right, closer and farther away.
And three curves for rotation X, Y, and Z,
also for the three axes of rotation.
And mind you, this is just for controlling one hand.
We have these curves for both hands, two legs, knees,
elbows, neck, back, pelvis, hips,
and each part of each finger.
That's a lot of curves.
Some of the controls have even more than six curves.
So yeah, an animator spends a lot of his time
looking at these graphs and curves.
So now we know about the curves,
but we still didn't cover the animation process.
So let's say this character wants to raise his hand.
We'll go for the first frame in the timeline
and make a keyframe.
A keyframe is you tell the program
you want the hand to be in this position,
at this time period, at this frame.
Now we'll go 10 frames ahead in the timeline
and move the hand up,
make another keyframe.
You can see in the graph editor
that there is a curve on the Y axis of the hand
going up.
That's because the computer interpolates the difference
between the first and second keyframes we made.
So an animator will do what we just did,
but he will also move most parts of the body
for every keyframe and offset some of them
and tweak them for hours and hours.
After a lot of animating the graph editor will look
something like this.
This window here is what 3D animators look at
most of the day.
Well, 2D animators mostly look at drawings.
Another difference is the frame rate
and what happens on moving holds.
What do I mean by that?
Well, in animation we usually work in 24 frames a second.
In 2D animation that means
that there is a drawing every frame 24 times a second.
That sounds like a lot of drawings,
but it's actually not that many.
Because when there's no big or fast movements,
you can settle for one drawing lasting for two frames.
So that's actually 12 drawings per second.
This is called working on two's,
because you're making a change or a new drawing
every two frames.
When the movement is very still,
you might even work on three's and four's
making a new drawing every three or four frames.
You see that a lot in Japanese animation and stop motion.
Sometime they would hold the same drawing for many frames.
In 3D though it doesn't really work that way.
When a 3D character doesn't move at all,
even for one frame,
it seems kinda wrong.
It seems dead.
Look at this example.
The ball settles after a jump,
and if we completely stop its motion,
it seems like a mistake.
While in this 2D animation example
it seems okay to hold the same drawing
when the character hits a hold position.
This makes it a challenge to do what is called
a moving hold in 3D animation.
A moving hold is whenever you need a character
to do nothing,
but still feel like it's alive.
While in 2D and stop motion you can settle for a new drawing
every three to five frames,
or even not have a new drawing at all for a few seconds,
in 3D we always got to keep the character moving,
even a little bit.
And that's not easy.
Well, that's it for now.
There's, of course, a lot more differences
between the two kinds of animation.
But I hope this short overview
gave you a basic understanding
of what it means to animate in 3D
as opposed to animate in 2D.
If you have a topic you want me to cover
or make a tutorial about,
please write it down in the Comment section below.
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and thanks for watching.
(energetic music)