Why 3D modelers get more known in CG world than animators

Lonny

I would like to ask something. I have seen that , there is more chances for 3D modeler/character artist to get known in CG world than animators.

There get more attention than animators. I am not jealous about this, Just i want to know why?

For example, their work got published in magazines, online forums, sites. There have events or conferences for CG, and i think 3D modelers, Zbrush, Making of characters, have more people, than character animation.

Kel-Shaded

More people are interested in seeing 3D and 2D character art than they are animation, clear in the number of applicants, the career plans of students and the queues of those in unemployment lines after.

If thats what they want to see then someone needs to host the event...

PyrZern

Maybe it's because we can't showcase an animation in a magazine yet

ZacD

I blame mocap.

Lonny

Yeah, we still cant see animation in magazines. Damn J'K Rowling idea in HP:)

Why to blame mocap ZacD?

Amsterdam Hilton Hotel

Lonny wrote: »

Why to blame mocap ZacD?

I imagine that some people regard it as automated work, instead of work produced from nothing but the vision of an animator. Most people outside of the trade will not understand the amount of effort that goes into making the data usable. They also never get exposed to the challenges of directing and choreographing the recording in the first place.

Richard Kain

Animation, by its very nature, is tedious and boring. It is one of the most time consuming aspects of this craft.

It is also extremely important. And mocap or not, it takes a really good animator to make this medium truly shine. If I were in charge of hiring, I would place considerably more emphasis on acquiring and keeping good animators.

They don't get as much attention as sculptors and painters for the same reason that graphic novel writers don't get as much attention as the artists. It's not that they deserve less, it's just that their contributions can be more difficult to package.

Mask_Salesman

More sites promoting 3d related aspects of CG than there are promoting animation?

I don't think however this reflects in the talent of either, the fewer animators I do know of are (imo) of higher standard than the average mass that do 3d.

Lonny

Many animators i asked for MoCap, they told me that with MoCap, they can understand better movement of the character. But, Blizzard cinematic animators, make animation from scratch

Is 3D scanning data is also automated work for character artists?

slipsius

I think they are more known because they tend to do more personal projects. Most (not all) the animations that get posted online for personal projects, especially game cycles and game related animations are posted by beginners who just don't compare to the quality of the character artists. It seems the really good animators don't tend to do a lot of personal projects, or at least, don't post them. The online animation community just isnt as big. Doesnt mean there are less of us out there. Just doesnt seem to be the same community. How many animation competitions do we see? Besides 11secondclub..... none?

That said, when you`re amazing,and you post personal work, shit gets featured. It's all about quality and presentation. My facebook is filled with posts about this. And I would say its due to equal parts of quality and presentation. The animation is flawless, but its also a gif that makes it easily viewable by EVERYONE. You dont need some people to install anything, or hit play or anything like that.



Polycounts very own StephenVyas

CordellC

^ was also frontpaged on reddit for a while

Sukotto

If we're strictly talking the game industry I think its mainly because games are so much more than just animation and they tend to have larger teams. With movies the animation is a lot more prevalent. And back in the old days, many animators were very well-known: Eric Goldberg and Glen Keane still work at Disney, then you have Don Bluth, and the 9 Old Men of Disney.

But with a lot of games(and CG movies, not necessarily animated ones) the teams are so large its harder to pinpoint what exactly a specific animator did with a lot of the automated stuff in games. Plus with a lot of games, the specific style of an animator is much less apparent. If you know your animation, you can totally tell who animated a specific character in a Disney movie

Di$array

Soon as I saw the title of this thread I immediately thought about StephenVyas update the other day on WAYWO thread.

Personally I still remember when a piece of animation was applied to one of my models during my University days. I was totally blown away as it made the piece come alive with believability. Still brings a smile to my face.

But as a few people have mention on this thread I believe it is in the delivery of the animation, be it gif or embedded video. It’s easier for a 3D artist just to post up a picture and people give it a few second glance and move on. Whereas animation requires you spend a bit more time viewing the piece.

Also if the animation is off a tad people instantly notice it. They’ve got a tough gig.

Richard Kain

Just on a personal note, high-quality animation is part of what got me into this whole scene to begin with.

Back in the Q2PMP days, I would download all of the Quake 2 models from this site, and spend hours looking at them in the debug viewer level. It was a lot of fun for me to check out all of the animations people had made for their models, cycling through each one to appreciate the detail of the motion. This was back when bone-based animation was just beginning to catch on, and the majority of animation was still just keyframes of blend shapes. It was also one of the first times we got to see fully interpolated animations running at 60+ frames per second. (on a machine with a decent 3D card)

I've been a huge fan of animation since I was very young, and still am. The current project I'm working on is focused on making animation faster and easier for the end-user.

MainManiac

Most games have animations that are just 'good enough' to pass. Very rarely do you see them excel and go all out.

But I think this is partly because animation is still some complex stuff on the engine side. It'd be very difficult to have something like Stephen made in a game that isn't a cutscene.


Game animations aren't as good as they could be because tech still limits their fluidity. This is why movies prioritize expressive animation whereas games need it at a consistent level of compatibility. This in turn brings the bar lower and very skilled animators aren't able to use their full potential. It brings everyone closer to an average so you never see many standout unless they make an effort to like Stephen has.

Mcejn

I don't think this is true at all. I'd say the opposite is probably more true. Maybe you just aren't looking in the right places? Zbrushcentral, 3D world and Polycount aren't animation focused.

slipsius

So which sites ARE animation focused then? 11SecondClub is really the only one, and it's mostly filled with amateurs that aren't top teir quality.

Mcejn

11secondclub is pretty sweet. Here's a few others that have some worthy resources.

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/
http://animatorsresource.blogspot.com/
http://www.animatorisland.com/
http://onanimation.com/
http://www.animationmentor.com/
http://framexframe.tumblr.com/

There's just as many if not more for animation as there are for environment/3d artist. There are also just as many bad ones too. I know (as primarily an environment artist) that I can recall just as many if not more great animators and concept artists than I can great 3D artists. A lot of resources are also shared such as CTN and siggraph.

dfacto

Good 2d or 3d advertises itself when you look at it. You can see some good visuals for a few seconds and go "WOW". Good animation is a seamless part of the world unless there's a crappy animation to compare it to, so unless you're specifically looking at animations for animation's sake you'll never notice them.

Shrike

How often does tech artist stuff get featured ? Interface ? Theres literally nothing about interface, there is no forum for UI artists, and few appreciate our work.
When people are reviewing a game, animation is always counted. "Well animation quality is not as good" is what you hear often. The players care atleast. Interface ? I have yet to hear from some youtube or magazine reviewer to talk about a game interface, no matter how insanely well executed it was.

People just have more relation to solid objects. If you ask a environment artist, they will say that character artist get all the attention, because they do characters, so I guess its not all black and white

I think you will find a lot more animation presence on portals like youtube, which is just another medium. A magazine can simply not feature animation, and a forum like polycount makes it not very convenient I would say. Its not hard to make a gif and embed something, but what we learn from conversion rates is that a couple clicks or seconds can hold the majority off from doing a specific task

Pancakes

It's because animators don't post their stuff. Plain and simple. You can go through the Pimping and Previews area and go for a hundred pages without seeing anyone post an animation.

xvampire

from what I know
animator tend to be easier to associate with actually.

when they ask "what is your job?", then you answer I am animator at pixar, it will became its a straight forward answer. very easy to digest by people who are not from the industry ( animation and game).

at least in my country, some animator got interviewed a lot by locals mainstream media.

the rest probably because we hang around with modelers. in my school back then most scholarship was given to animators, because animation reel usually have more hits in youtube. so they can promote their school effectively.


someone like tech artist, rigging TD, etc is the least known in industry .... but it means more jobs to them, because they have less competition.

slipsius

Shrike wrote: »

How often does tech artist stuff get featured ? Interface ? Theres literally nothing about interface, there is no forum for UI artists, and few appreciate our work.
When people are reviewing a game, animation is always counted. "Well animation quality is not as good" is what you hear often. The players care atleast. Interface ? I have yet to hear from some youtube or magazine reviewer to talk about a game interface, no matter how insanely well executed it was.

People just have more relation to solid objects. If you ask a environment artist, they will say that character artist get all the attention, because they do characters, so I guess its not all black and white

I think you will find a lot more animation presence on portals like youtube, which is just another medium. A magazine can simply not feature animation, and a forum like polycount makes it not very convenient I would say. Its not hard to make a gif and embed something, but what we learn from conversion rates is that a couple clicks or seconds can hold the majority off from doing a specific task

This isn't entirely true. Well, maybe it is on a large scale, but there have definitely been games that stood out to me because of the UI. Dead Space had a killer UI. Splinter Cell: Conviction, the ONLY thing that I remember about that game is how amazing the UI was. Especially with the quest details being projected onto the world.