What do you think of when you think 3D? Those retro paper glasses with red-and-blue plastic lenses that debuted in ‘50s movie theatres? An immersive experience or amusement park ride? Maybe 3D printing? (Come on, it’s totally Toy Story for all of us, right?) 3D animation is the art of manipulating objects within three planes to make them look as realistic as possible. So hold on tight—we’re taking you for a ride down the Z axis.
3D Video Animation Production
What is 3D animation?
How is 3D animation used?
Get ready to have your minds BLOWN. You’ve probably seen a snappy 3D animation at the movies or a trade show that you’re aware is animated. It looked pretty cool, and that’s why you’re calling us. But did you know that 3D animation is used in media all the time to make things look better than real life? Case-in-point: car commercials. The cars look amazing, right? So smooth. So much detail. MOST ARE 3D ANIMATIONS! And now, for your consideration, Scandinavian furniture catalogs. Also rendered in 3D! Why? It’s cost-effective and looks better than real—it looks perfect.
Benefits of 3D animation
If product visualization is everything to your brand or service, 3D animation is the best way to make it shine. It’s also the perfect fit for showcasing products you can’t capture on video, or that make a video shoot unsafe or prohibitively expensive. 3D animation can also go places the eye can’t see, illustrating processes that occur underground, inside pipes, inside the human anatomy, and the list goes on. It’s the X-ray vision you’ve always wanted.
Speed is also a crucial component of 3D animation. Not only can you make an object look beautiful—you can explain its benefits faster, reaching a wider audience than you could in real time. 3D animation can be a tool to more efficiently tell your story, and it can also give viewers access to angles they wouldn’t typically see, allowing you to sell more features. And because of its better-than-real-life appearance, 3D animation can dazzle from all the way across a room, making it a great choice for trade shows.
3D marketing case study: Sonic Far Field
This project was as meta as they get. Schlumberger, a leading oilfield services company, tasked us with illustrating, in 3D design, its Sonic Far Field technology—a product they created that uses its own 3D design. It was a perfect fit from the start, because we had to take viewers into invisible spaces: underground, inside wellbores, and through sound waves. The tool uses acoustic signals to determine where hydrocarbons are likely to be in the rock being drilled, giving oil and gas operators a three-dimensional data spread. Using all three planes, we were able to breathe life into what is essentially a fancy pole, adding meaningful value to their audience by allowing them to easily visualize complex technology.
Our 3D animation process
It’s a little more intricate than a 2D animation process due to the technical complexity of three planes and all that geometry and modelling stuff we’re not gonna get into right now. But here’s what you can expect:
- Let’s kick it off. We’ll schedule a formal kickoff meeting to align on your vision for the project and discuss our ideas for making it even more amazing.
- The script will be our guide. We can’t jump into to visuals just yet! While our ideas are marinating, we’ll develop a formal script that will align any voiceover or on-screen text with the visuals, ensuring your messaging is on point.
- Sweet sounds of success. Once the script is approved, we’ll select voiceover talent and music to review with you. Sound production can elevate a concept or throw it completely off—we’ll guide you in the best direction.
- Time for 3D setup. This is a meticulous process for us. This is when we acquire models of the objects we’ll be rendering in 3D and bringing them to life with full prep—lighting, texturing, environment creation, and storyboarding, so you can see how it all unfolds.
- Animatic review. We’ll create a full draft form of the animation for review.
- Rendering, motions graphics, and sound effects. Once the animation is complete, we’ll render the final images, ensuring every pixel is in place. We’ll add and mix the sound, and add any motion graphics on top.
Every process is unique, but by sticking to our internal methodology and communicating transparently, we guarantee you’ll see a polished outcome. 3D animation has come so much further than that thing jumping out at you on the movie screen—it’s a multimedia technique that will inform how we consume marketing and entertainment content for years to come, through augmented reality and immersive technologies. It gives us a depth of product visualization that will continue to launch products and brands into their fullest expressions.
