Skills Paper :
“The importance of using Video/Photo Reference in 3D Animation”
By: Jeremy Smith

Using Video/Photo reference in 3D Animation is the most accurate way to produce high quality Animations. Getting up and actually physically acting out and recording a few scenes or taking pictures of yourself blocking out poses is very beneficial when animating. Being able to convey what you see in a video or in a photograph into a pose or a full-fledged animation is a great skill to have when animating. “Free handing” animations or animating without reference is not just tricky and hard to do, but is a poor way to animate. Not using reference when animating can lead to many problems and difficulties when making animations.

Personally I extensively use reference when animating. The majority of the time I will actually get up and physically record myself walking around or doing certain poses in front of a camera. . Doing this is not just good reference, but allows you as the animator to kind of walk in the shoes of the character and get a certain feel for what the animation should look and feel like. Most of the time animations are done at a frame rate of 24 FPS (Frames Per Second). Lets say you are animating a simple walk cycle – having a character walk a distance – and say you want the walk cycle to be 3 seconds long, recording yourself doing the walk cycle will tell you the timing of the animation and what poses should be at what frames(the pose at second 1 of the recording will be between frames 0-23, second 2 between frames 24-47, and second 3 between frames 48-62 for example).

Being able to convey and recreate what you see in a video or photograph is key when animating. The term being able to “see” in 3D is used a lot when using pictures as reference. Yes humans can see in 3D but what this term is referring to is seeing a flat picture or object and recreating that into an X,Y, Z coordinate grid, which represents 3D space. The key thing in reinterpreting what you see in video is timing, timing is everything. If your timing is off the whole animation will fall apart . Doing a ten second animation at 24 FPS (Frames Per Second) leaves you with an animation that is 240 frames long. What you will want to do is have a “Key Frame” set for each and every significant pose that the character is doing throughout the animation. If the character jumps in the air at second 10 of the video then you will have a “Key Frame” set at frame 240 of your character in the air jumping to keep continuity with your video reference.

A Key Frame is a place holder for the polygonal geometry that makes up the character in your 3D world. The key to animating is posing your character then setting the key frames of the characters geometry, doing so allows the program you are using to store that pose at that specific frame. After setting one fey frame you can pose the character again a few frames or seconds later with a different significant pose of the animation. Setting keys is the basis and basics of 3D animation.

There are many tools used while creating animation, to name just a few you will need a keyboard, a mouse, a 3D program (Such as Autodesk Maya, or 3DS MAX), and to be creative. There is not a single job out there that is done professionally where you do not need a specific set of tools to get said job done.

“Free Handing” animations and not using reference when creating them can lead you to many problems as an animator. Using the walk cycle example again, we know how it looks for someone to walk it is a very simple action. Being so simple is what makes it so hard to animate, especially without any kinda of reference whatsoever. Free Handing a walk cycle is what we cal in animation as Dangerous. The legs of the character may bend too much or lock at the knees too much or not move as fluidly as a real human being would if they were. Without reference of some kind the animator will not be able to capture the “ease in” and “ease out” of a human. The ease in is the acceleration of the walk and the ease out is the deceleration of the walk as a human would walk in real life. Making the animation convincing and real looking is key when animating.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that humans have a complex way of moving or move in “curves' and not in straight lines say like a robot. Capturing the natural flow of a human moving is what makes animations look real to the audience. Even as a human imitating a robot while doing the dance still cannot help but put in natural curves of their body in with the motions of the dance.

Giving “Weight” to a character is another important thing to try to capture while animating. If a character is heavier an d weighs more than it should move as such, and not move faster than a larger person would move or have the capabilities or limitations of a skinnier character. Have an accurate representation of a characters center point of gravity coincides with “weighing” him and makes for good Fluid” animations or accurate animations with good flow.

Concluding that using video/photo reference is by far the most accurate way of animating because it leads to creating more accurate work than without. Avoid problems such as not conveying what you see within your reference. Going off of reference gives you a feel of where to start when animating because you have physical proof in front of you. Recording or taking pictures of yourself gives you as the animator a certain feel of what to do in the animation and just helps overall.