Paula Rojas Blog

As it goes, our mediums are paper and 3D. We’ve figured out quite a bit on paper and, in fact, have laid out a game plan fairly well based on our designs and storyboard. The only thing left to do is to translate this information on paper into a proper format for 3D.

Part of this translation will be to figure out what part of our animated shots will be 3D and what parts will be non-3D. For instance, the sky. Most 3D animations contain an image map of the sky in place of actually building little 3D models of clouds and haze and such. Most 3D packages have an approach to deal with this situation through the use of 2D backdrops seen by camera, or polygons mapped with a 2D sky image .

The bottom line is that no matter what purpose your sky serves, it is usually a 2D flat image based on a painting or photo. So, with that in mind, the goal of this section is to indicate on your storyboards what is to be a 3D model and what is to be a 2D replacement. It goes without saying that every animation contains image maps, but to what benefit can we get simple image maps to take the place of literally hours of 3D work?

Breaking down your story into necessary 3D and 2D elements will give you a comprehensive list of what you need to create for each scene. Scene 1 of “Feed the Dog” is a good example of how the full combination of 3D and 2D elements work together to create the final shot.

the elements needed for this scene looks like this:

• 2D elements: Sky, mountains, and forest
• 3D elements: Bleep and grass

My 2D elements can be a combination of basic 3D geometry and an image map. I don’t need to spend hours building a 3D model of a forest when I’m not actually going into it.

Through the use of a painted image map or photo, I can give the illusion that a huge forest is off in the distance. In the case of “Feed the Dog,” I used painted image maps on single polygons for the forest and mountain. The sky is more of a spherical image map projected onto a hemispherical shaped 3D model.