Want 3d Modeling To Be Animated

What's better, animation or 3D modeling?

Can we use an analogy here?3D Modeling is like building a car that you can feel, touch and sit in, and3D animation is like driving the car to places you want to go.Most of us take it for granted that they are two very different tasks to be done by different people.But how about self-driving cars? A self-driving car car will take you to places without your driving it. The big question is “can we do the same in 3D?”The answer is YES, at least in the very important yet highly challenging 3D-face-animation, the equivalence of self-driving cars already exists.NaturlFront software will model a 3D-face-model from a face-photo in a few seconds, by only a few mouse-clicks, and the created 3D-model will resemble the person on the photo, including both texture and geometry.Moreover, once the 3D-face is created, it will automatically have high-quality 3D animation built-in. You can instantly get facial expressions and mouth-shapes you want, and blend them together, all by a few simple mouse-clicks. You can get solid 3D-animation very easily without any of traditionally time-consuming methods such as rigging, creating blendshapes, key-framing, or motion capture.You can watch this video for more details.Can you tell me what the boundary of animation and modeling is here?If you are the sort of person that is eager to try a self-driving car, why not try the innovative 3D solution?Thank you.

I want to learn 3D modeling and animation Do I need to learn 2D art befor learning 3D?

I would say a very strong yes.I have worked with a great many amazing 3D artists. Some of them moved on to work at Pixar and ILM. The very best of them all started-out with pencils and the ability to draw.   If you can't operate this.  I think you will struggle to operate Maya or ZBrush.There are some individuals who skip drawing and regard 3D as a technical rather than artistic endeavour. They learned how to operate 3D applications and generate images.  But for the most part, they do less well than the classically trained artists. Without a strong set of 2d foundation skills, many 3D "operators" ended up doing CAD-like work.     The best artists start with the ability to draw.  The most important part of that ability is the ability to see;  To look at forms and break them down.   These visual abilities can then transcend the medium. It didn't matter whether they were using paper and graphics, pixels and photoshop, or polygons and subdivision surfaces. Those with the best 2d skills inevitably become the best 3D artists.It's also worth noting that professional animators and character artists often have extensive knowledge of anatomy.   Many have attended life-drawing classes and are classically trained artists.There was a very noticeable difference in the work produced.  The 2D artists could often do less work, and still produce better images.  The straight-to-3d guys would invest in detail and process, but not be able to see why their images were unsatisfactory.

How long should it take to animate a 3D model?

As noted there can be a lot of setup time and cleanup when dealing with mocap. Regardless of whether motion capture or hand animation is used, the real time hit comes from rigging and handling animation data, deformations etc. once everything is set up, animation can go very quickly. On Green lantern we captured motion of some digital characters in an afternoon, another afternoon for cleanup, after which we had simple rigs moving very realistically... But rigging the characters fully, and in particular creating systems for facial animation and realistic deformation of skin and clothing took several weeks. Most motion capture records positions of bones, all the details like movement of skin/muscle/fat/clothing/hair have to be added in through a variety of techniques. "Hand" animation is likewise, animators can rough in motion very quickly, but all the details and nuances that take things to a believable point take time.

Does 3d animation modeling need to reflect the real scale?

In my experience, you do what works, and what works is hardly ever reflective of reality. In the case of the scenario you outlined above, I don't think I know of a single case where animators have used anything like real dimensions, because - as the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy succinctly puts it: "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is." There is just no way you can convey that on a screen. No movie - ever - has done anything like a realistic representation of real dimensions of space. Anything you think you know about space, about movement in space, about distances in space, about landing on planets, about interactions between spacecraft, about fighting in space, about travelling in space - everything you know about space you've learned from a movie is completely wrong. I would extrapolate the 'do what works' rule to all CG in fact. I've been involved in several projects where the animators get so hung up on the physics of something that they lose complete track of the fact that it just doesn't look right. As I tell students when I give lectures, movies are about illusion. Nothing on that screen that you see, and nothing you hear, is real. It's ALL illusion. If you think something is real, that's just because the illusion is working properly.

For learning 3D animation, should one first master 3D modeling?

No. Animators have enough to worry about and no reason to learn modeling. They do learn some techniques that are used in modeling because those techniques are also used for animation. Deformations, etc. If anything, it’s the other way around; modelers should learn some animation. The two jobs (modeling and animating) involve different aesthetics. Like art directors versus directors in film, they have different guidelines, different preoccupations.