computer animation an example of computer animation which is produced in the motion capture technique computer animation is the process used for generating animated images the more general term computergenerated imagery cgi encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images while computer animation only refers to the moving images modern computer animation usually uses 3d computer graphics although 2d computer graphics are still used for stylistic low bandwidth and faster realtime renderings sometimes the target of the animation is the computer itself but sometimes film as well computer animation is essentially a digital successor to the stop motion techniques using 3d models and traditional animation techniques using framebyframe animation of 2d illustrations computergenerated animations are more controllable than other more physically based processes constructing miniatures for effects shots or hiring extras for crowd scenes and because it allows the creation of images that would not be feasible using any other technology it can also allow a single graphic artist to produce such content without the use of actors expensive set pieces or props to create the illusion of movement an image is displayed on the computer monitor and repeatedly replaced by a new image that is similar to it but advanced slightly in time usually at a rate of 24 25 or 30 framessecond this technique is identical to how the illusion of movement is achieved with television and motion pictures for 3d animations objects models are built on the computer monitor modeled and 3d figures are rigged with a virtual skeleton for 2d figure animations separate objects illustrations and separate transparent layers are used with or without that virtual skeleton then the limbs eyes mouth clothes etc of the figure are moved by the animator on key frames the differences in appearance between key frames are automatically calculated by the computer in a process known as tweening or morphing finally the animation is rendered for 3d animations all frames must be rendered after the modeling is complete for 2d vector animations the rendering process is the key frame illustration process while tweened frames are rendered as needed for prerecorded presentations the rendered frames are transferred to a different format or medium like digital video the frames may also be rendered in real time as they are presented to the enduser audience low bandwidth animations transmitted via the internet eg adobe flash x3d often use software on the endusers computer to render in real time as an alternative to streaming or preloaded high bandwidth animations explanation to trick the eye and the brain into thinking they are seeing a smoothly moving object the pictures should be drawn at around 12 frames per second or faster conventional handdrawn cartoon animation often uses 15 frames per second in order to save on the number of drawings needed but this is usually accepted because of the stylized nature of cartoons to produce more realistic imagery computer animation demands higher frame rates films seen in theaters in the united states run at 24 frames per second which is sufficient to create the illusion of continuous movement for high resolution adapters are used history history of computer animation see also timeline of computer animation in film and television early digital computer animation was developed at bell telephone laboratories in the 1960s by edward e zajac frank w sinden kenneth c knowlton and a michael noll in 1967 a computer animation named hummingbird was created by charles csuri and james shaffer in 1968 a computer animation called kitty was created with besm4 by nikolai konstantinov depicting a cat moving around in 1971 a computer animation called metadata was created showing various shapes an early step in the history of computer animation was the sequel to the 1973 film westworld a sciencefiction film about a society in which robots live and work among humans developments in cgi technologies are reported each year at siggraph developers of computer games and 3d video cards strive to achieve the same visual quality on personal computers in realtime as is possible for cgi films and animation with the rapid advancement of realtime rendering quality artists began to use game engines to render noninteractive movies which led to the art form machinima the very first full length computer animated television series was reboot animation methods in this gif of a 2d flash animation each stick of the figure is keyframed over time to create motion in most 3d computer animation systems an animator creates a simplified representation of a characters anatomy which is analogous to a skeleton or stick figure the character woody in toy story for example uses 700 avars 100 in the face alone the computer doesnt usually render the skeletal model directly it is invisible but it does use the skeletal model to compute the exact position and orientation of that certain character which is eventually rendered into an image thus by changing the values of avars over time the animator creates motion by making the character move from frame to frame there are several methods for generating the avar values to obtain realistic motion traditionally animators manipulate the avars directly in contrast a newer method called motion capture makes use of live action footage each method has its advantages and as of 2007 games and films are using either or both of these methods in productions keyframe animation can produce motions that would be difficult or impossible to act out while motion capture can reproduce the subtleties of a particular actor for example in the 2006 film pirates of the caribbean dead mans chest bill nighy provided the performance for the character davy jones even though nighy doesnt appear in the movie himself the movie benefited from his performance by recording the nuances of his body language posture facial expressions etc thus motion capture is appropriate in situations where believable realistic behavior and action is required but the types of characters required exceed what can be done throughout the conventional costuming modeling 3d computer animation combines 3d models of objects and programmed or hand keyframed movement these models are constructed out of geometrical vertices faces and edges in a 3d coordinate system objects are sculpted much like real clay or plaster working from general forms to specific details with various sculpting tools unless a 3d model is intended to be a solid color it must be painted with textures for realism a bonejoint animation system is set up to deform the cgi model eg to make a humanoid model walk in a process known as rigging the virtual marionette is given various controllers and handles for controlling movement 3d models rigged for animation may contain thousands of control points for example woody from toy story uses 700 specialized animation controllers rhythm and hues studios labored for two years to create aslan in the movie the chronicles of narnia the lion the witch and the wardrobe which had about 1851 controllers 742 in the face alone in the 2004 film the day after tomorrow designers had to design forces of extreme weather with the help of video references and accurate meteorological facts for the 2005 remake of king kong actor andy serkis was used to help designers pinpoint the gorillas prime location in the shots and used his expressions to model human characteristics onto the creature serkis had earlier provided the voice and performance for gollum in j r r tolkiens the lord of the rings trilogy equipment a raytraced 3d model of a jack inside a cube and the jack alone below computer animation can be created with a computer and an animation software some impressive animation can be achieved even with basic programs however the rendering can take a lot of time on an ordinary home computer the result is a computeranimated movie that can be completed in about one to five years however this process is not composed solely of rendering a workstation typically costs 200016000 with the more expensive stations being able to render much faster due to the more technologicallyadvanced hardware that they contain professionals also use digital movie cameras motionperformance capture bluescreens film editing software props and other tools used for movie animation facial animation computer facial animation the realistic modeling of human facial features is both one of the most challenging and sought after elements in computergenerated imagery computer facial animation is a highly complex field where models typically include a very large number of animation variables the facial action coding system with 46 action units lip bite or squint which had been developed in 1976 became a popular basis for many systems in some cases an affective space the pad emotional state model can be used to assign specific emotions to the faces of avatars realism realism in computer animation can mean making each frame look photorealistic in the sense that the scene is rendered to resemble a photograph or make the characters animation believable and lifelike one of the greatest challenges in computer animation has been creating human characters that look and move with the highest degree of realism part of the difficulty in making pleasing realistic human characters is the uncanny valley the concept where the human audience up to a point tends to have an increasingly negative emotional response as a human replica looks and acts more and more human films that have attempted photorealistic human characters such as the polar express have been criticized as creepy and disconcerting the goal of computer animation is not always to emulate live action as closely as possible so many animated films instead feature characters who are anthropomorphic animals fantasy creatures and characters superheroes or otherwise have nonrealistic cartoonlike proportions films play media cgi film made using machinima cgi short films have been produced as independent animation since 1976 the first completely computeranimated movie was toy story 1995 but veggietales is the first american fully 3d computer animated series sold directly made in 1993 its success inspired other animation series such as reboot in 1994 animation studios list of animation studios the examples and perspective in this section deal primarily with the united states and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject you may improve this article discuss the issue on the talk page or create a new article as appropriate may 2018 learn how and when to remove this template message some notable producers of computeranimated feature films include animal logic films include happy feet 2006 legend of the guardians the owls of gahoole 2010 walking with dinosaurs 2013 and the lego movie 2014 blue sky studios films include ice age 2002 robots 2005 horton hears a who 2008 rio 2011 the peanuts movie 2015 dreamworks animation films include shrek 2001 madagascar 2005 over the hedge 2006 bee movie 2007 kung fu panda 2008 monsters vs aliens 2009 how to train your dragon 2010 rise of the guardians 2012 the croods 2013 how to train your dragon 2 2014 kung fu panda 3 2016 ilion animation studios films include planet 51 2009 mortadelo and filemon mission implausible 2014wonder park 2019 and luck 2021 illumination entertainment films include despicable me 2010 the lorax 2012 minions 2015 the secret life of pets 2016 sing 2016 and the grinch 2018 industrial light magic films include rango 2011 and strange magic 2015 pacific data images films include antz 1998 shrek 2001 madagascar 2005 megamind 2010 mr peabody and sherman 2014 pixar animation studios films include toy story 1995 a bugs life 1998 monsters inc 2001 finding nemo 2003 cars 2006 reel fx animation studios films include free birds 2013 and the book of life 2014 sony pictures animation films include open season 2006 surfs up 2007 cloudy with a chance of meatballs 2009 the smurfs 2011 hotel transylvania 2012 cloudy with a chance of meatballs 2 2013 hotel transylvania 2 2015 and the emoji movie 2017 sony pictures imageworks films include the angry birds movie 2016 walt disney animation studios films include tangled 2010 wreckit ralph 2012 frozen 2013 big hero 6 2014 zootopia 2016 moana 2016 warner animation group films include the lego movie 2014 storks 2016 the lego batman movie 2017 and smallfoot 2018 triggerfish animation studios films include zambezia film 2013 khumba 2014 web animations the popularity of websites that allow members to upload their own movies for others to view has created a growing community of amateur computer animators with utilities and programs often included free with modern operating systems many users can make their own animated movies and shorts several free and opensource animation software applications exist as well the ease at which these animations can be distributed has attracted professional animation talent also companies such as powtoon and goanimate attempt to bridged the gap by giving amateurs access to professional animations as clip art the oldest most backward compatible webbased animations are in the animated gif format which can be uploaded and seen on the web easily however the raster graphics format of gif animations slows the download and frame rate especially with larger screen sizes the growing demand for higher quality webbased animations was met by a vector graphics alternative that relied on the use of a plugin for decades flash animations were the most popular format until the web development community abandoned support for the flash player plugin web browsers on mobile devices and mobile operating systems never fully supported the flash plugin by this time internet bandwidth and download speeds increased making raster graphic animations more convenient some of the more complex vector graphic animations had a slower frame rate due to complex rendering than some of the raster graphic alternatives many of the gif and flash animations were already converted to digital video formats which were compatible with mobile devices and reduced file sizes via video compression technology however compatibility was still problematic as some of the popular video formats such as apples quicktime and microsoft silverlight required plugins youtube the most popular video viewing website was also relying on the flash plugin to deliver digital video in the flash video format the latest alternatives are html5 compatible animations technologies such as javascript and css animations made sequencing the movement of images in html5 web pages more convenient svg animations offered a vector graphic alternative to the original flash graphic format smartsketch youtube offers an html5 alternative for digital video apng animated png offered a raster graphic alternative to animated gif files that enables multilevel transparency not available in gifs see also comparison of html5 and flash detailed examples and pseudocode in 2d computer animation moving objects are often referred to as sprites a sprite is an image that has a location associated with it the location of the sprite is changed slightly between each displayed frame to make the sprite appear to move the following pseudocode makes a sprite move from left to right var int x 0 y screenheight 2 while x screenwidth drawbackground drawspriteatxy x y draw on top of the background x x 5 move to the right computer animation uses different techniques to produce animations most frequently sophisticated mathematics is used to manipulate complex threedimensional polygons apply textures lighting and other effects to the polygons and finally rendering the complete image a sophisticated graphical user interface may be used to create the animation and arrange its choreography another technique called constructive solid geometry defines objects by conducting boolean operations on regular shapes and has the advantage that animations may be accurately produced at any resolution computerassisted vs computergenerated to animate means figuratively to give life to there are two basic methods that animators commonly use to accomplish this computerassisted animation is usually classed as twodimensional 2d animation drawings are either hand drawn pencil to paper or interactively drawn on the computer using different assisting appliances and are positioned into specific software packages within the software package the creator places drawings into different key frames which fundamentally create an outline of the most important movements examples of films produced using computerassisted animation are the little mermaid the rescuers down under beauty and the beast aladdin the lion king pocahontas the hunchback of notre dame hercules mulan the road to el dorado and tarzan computergenerated animation is known as threedimensional 3d animation creators design an object or character with an x a y and a z axis no penciltopaper drawings create the way computer generated animation works the object or character created will then be taken into a software key framing and tweening are also carried out in computer generated animation but are also a lot of techniques used that do not relate to traditional animation animators can break physical laws by using mathematical algorithms to cheat mass force and gravity rulings fundamentally time scale and quality could be said to be a preferred way to produce animation as they are two major things that are enhanced by using computer generated animation another positive aspect of cga is the fact one can create a flock of creatures to act independently when created as a group an animals fur can be programmed to wave in the wind and lie flat when it rains instead of programming each strand of hair separately a few examples of computergenerated animation movies are toy story frozen and shrek animation portal computer graphics portal animation animation database autodesk avar animation variable computergenerated imagery cgi new york institute of technology computer graphics lab computer representation of surfaces handover humanoid animation list of animation studios list of computeranimated films list of computeranimated television series medical animation morph target animation machinima recording video from games and virtual worlds motion capture procedural animation ray tracing rich representation language skeletal animation timeline of computer animation in film and television virtual artifact wireframe model 12 basic principles of animation citations works cited library resources about computer animation resources in your library resources in other libraries beane andy 2012 3d animation essentials indianapolis indiana john wiley sons isbn9781118147481 kuperberg marcia 2002 a guide to computer animation for tv games multimedia and web focal press isbn0240516710 magnenat thalmann nadia thalmann daniel 2004 handbook of virtual humans wiley publishing isbn0470023163 masson terrence 1999 cg 101 a computer graphics industry reference digital fauxtography inc isbn073570046x means sean p december 28 2011 pixar founders utahmade hand added to national film registry the salt lake tribune retrieved january 8 2012 paiva ana prada rui picard rosalind w 2007 facial expression synthesis using pad emotional parameters for a chinese expressive avatar affective computing and intelligent interaction springer sciencebusiness media isbn3540748881 parent rick 2012 computer animation algorithms and techniques ohio elsevier isbn9780124158429 pereira fernando c n ebrahimi touradj 2002 the mpeg4 book new jersey imsc press isbn0130616214 parke frederic i waters keith 2008 computer facial animation 2nd ed massachusetts ak peters ltd isbn1568814488 sito tom 2013 moving innovation a history of computer animation massachusetts mit press isbn9780262019095 media related to computer animations at wikimedia 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