3D computer graphics is multidisciplinary. It necessitates several aspects of graphic arts, video editing, photography and a whole lot of resourcefulness. We chose to give you an overview of it by looking at the outlines, divided into 4 categories. Needless to say that what's explained here is only a small part of all needed to create 3D computer graphics. These quite simples explanations allow to understand a little better the processes in the backstage of this ever-renewing activity. We chose, in this introduction, to describe the steps to go from a simple drawing to an animated short. In this case, a scorpion in a desert set.
The first step is generally to chose a style for all the elements in the scene, most of the time starting from reference pictures or drawings (fig. 1). Then they are made into tridimensionnal objects (fig. 2). Then these objects are textured, that is to say, they are given visual properties that determine their aspect. Here, we applied a metallic car paint to our scorpion, making him shiny as can be (fig. 3). The beast will next be animated, which is a very long and tedious process, and finally the complete scene will be rendered, that is to say that the application will take all of the above-mentionned elements and synthetize the final result, one frame at a time. Of course, every single element can be reused in other sets, to obtain other results (fig. 4).
Take your time to discover these mere explanations, which we hope will let you better understand the mechanisms of this new type of image making. Trait d'esprit welcomes you into our laboratory !