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Jacob
Student
Canton, Georgia
3
Questions
Asked
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what exactly is modeling, texturing, animation, rendering, set design, special effects?
I know it used in movies and social media sometimes to create human looking objects feel alive but what do you have to do for each like, what is rendering and why is it important what is the importance of texturing? that's what I wanna know what is the point of each of the things listed and what do they do if that makes sense.
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1 answer
Abdul Bunni
Senior Visual Designer/Art Director
11
Answers
New York, New York
Updated
Abdul’s Answer
Hi again! I can try and walk you through the process step by step (feel free to reach out with follow-ups if you want)
Let's say you want to create a 3D scene of a basketball player throwing a ball in a school gym.
You start with a couple of images as reference: a side/front/top views of the character, in this case, a guy (you mainly want the shapes and proportions of the body, face details..etc) and this applies to anything you want to model pretty much. like this: https://ucbugg.github.io/learn.ucbugg/images/organic-modeling/orgmodel_002.jpg
Once you import your references and set them up within the software you create a simple shape.
All of these shapes (cube, sphere, cone,...whatever else) are built the same:
- Face(s)
- Edge(s)
-Vertix (singular)/Vertices (plural)
https://d138zd1ktt9iqe.cloudfront.net/media/seo_landing_files/vertex-of-angle-02-1648461511.png
You take your simple cube and you subdivide it to create smaller faces and more vertices and start moving things around matching the reference in the different views (since you're doing it in 3D space, it needs to make sense in all angles)
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b4/19/99/b41999f895b0690244bba026a684ce47.jpg
After you have your model and you're happy with it, you create a rigging system. it basically means adding "bones" to your model.
https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/3X/1/f/1f14c2db46563345eb33eb2be443692820eda1ae.jpeg
You attach parts of your model to each bone and how much it can influence the model itself. (making sure arms don't bend backward or head twisting all the way around). Now you can take the model and move the bones and rotate them to create the movement which you can animate however you want.
Let's say all the above is done according to the guy playing basketball scene you're working on. you create the gym the same way as well as all the other elements in the environment of your scene. How detailed you want to go is totally up to you!
So, you have a fully modeled and animated scene, but everything looks flat grey! This is where Texturing and Rendering come to play.
(for the sake of simplicity we'll just focus on the main character for now)
You have the basketball player that has skin, wearing clothes, shoes, and holding the ball. All these elements would need to have different materials where you can change the color, change the transparency, reflection, or add an image of fabric and some bump/normal/displacement maps to fake the look of the threads on the cloths or the skin imperfections rather than the default plastic-y grey.
https://media.sketchfab.com/models/748c49515a1b4e198c9ace516355a156/thumbnails/7341298d7c7c43a68eeb10aae02d7d0c/620b833bcaca429c9c6d31a0301dc81d.jpeg
After you've textured everything you can start with the Rendering process. You add the lights to the scene. You add the indirect lights: sunlight shining through the window or an HDRI (a high-resolution image with extra information that you can add onto a sphere or dome that incases your whole scene and creates soft lights and reflections depending on the image you use) and then add your direct lights: lights from the ceiling of the gym or anything else) maybe you add some atmosphere/volumetric effects like sun rays coming through those big gym windows
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Wt-gwdxo-x8/maxresdefault.jpg
You do a test render with low settings to make sure everything looks good then you pump up your settings for the final output, you hit render and the magic happens! your computer will calculate everything you've done within the scene and pretty much everything can affect the render time: if you have high-resolution textures or very detailed 3D objects/scene it'll take longer to render.
I tried to be as detailed as possible without being overwhelming!
Abdul
Check out this series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At9qW8ivJ4Q
Let's say you want to create a 3D scene of a basketball player throwing a ball in a school gym.
You start with a couple of images as reference: a side/front/top views of the character, in this case, a guy (you mainly want the shapes and proportions of the body, face details..etc) and this applies to anything you want to model pretty much. like this: https://ucbugg.github.io/learn.ucbugg/images/organic-modeling/orgmodel_002.jpg
Once you import your references and set them up within the software you create a simple shape.
All of these shapes (cube, sphere, cone,...whatever else) are built the same:
- Face(s)
- Edge(s)
-Vertix (singular)/Vertices (plural)
https://d138zd1ktt9iqe.cloudfront.net/media/seo_landing_files/vertex-of-angle-02-1648461511.png
You take your simple cube and you subdivide it to create smaller faces and more vertices and start moving things around matching the reference in the different views (since you're doing it in 3D space, it needs to make sense in all angles)
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b4/19/99/b41999f895b0690244bba026a684ce47.jpg
After you have your model and you're happy with it, you create a rigging system. it basically means adding "bones" to your model.
https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/3X/1/f/1f14c2db46563345eb33eb2be443692820eda1ae.jpeg
You attach parts of your model to each bone and how much it can influence the model itself. (making sure arms don't bend backward or head twisting all the way around). Now you can take the model and move the bones and rotate them to create the movement which you can animate however you want.
Let's say all the above is done according to the guy playing basketball scene you're working on. you create the gym the same way as well as all the other elements in the environment of your scene. How detailed you want to go is totally up to you!
So, you have a fully modeled and animated scene, but everything looks flat grey! This is where Texturing and Rendering come to play.
(for the sake of simplicity we'll just focus on the main character for now)
You have the basketball player that has skin, wearing clothes, shoes, and holding the ball. All these elements would need to have different materials where you can change the color, change the transparency, reflection, or add an image of fabric and some bump/normal/displacement maps to fake the look of the threads on the cloths or the skin imperfections rather than the default plastic-y grey.
https://media.sketchfab.com/models/748c49515a1b4e198c9ace516355a156/thumbnails/7341298d7c7c43a68eeb10aae02d7d0c/620b833bcaca429c9c6d31a0301dc81d.jpeg
After you've textured everything you can start with the Rendering process. You add the lights to the scene. You add the indirect lights: sunlight shining through the window or an HDRI (a high-resolution image with extra information that you can add onto a sphere or dome that incases your whole scene and creates soft lights and reflections depending on the image you use) and then add your direct lights: lights from the ceiling of the gym or anything else) maybe you add some atmosphere/volumetric effects like sun rays coming through those big gym windows
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Wt-gwdxo-x8/maxresdefault.jpg
You do a test render with low settings to make sure everything looks good then you pump up your settings for the final output, you hit render and the magic happens! your computer will calculate everything you've done within the scene and pretty much everything can affect the render time: if you have high-resolution textures or very detailed 3D objects/scene it'll take longer to render.
I tried to be as detailed as possible without being overwhelming!
Abdul
Abdul recommends the following next steps:
thank you so much this was simple enough for me to understand also thanks for the links this looks amazing and challenging but it'll be a fun challenge
Jacob
+1. I also learned a TON from this. Thank you!
Jared Chung, Admin