Anime style animation (and cartoons in general) normally use cel shading – 3D computer animation shading, but made to look more flat. So before you start on your own animation project, what shader should you use? Historical background In 2D animation originally cartoons were hand painted on sheets of cellophane. Each frame was hand drawn … More To Cel Shade or Not Cel Shade – that is the question!
This is my summary of a podcast I found on YouTube (its available on multiple platforms) from “Bulletproof Screenwriting“, an interview with Karl Iglesias (author, teacher, and consultant in scriptwriting). The whole Bulletproof series looks great if you want to learn more about screenwriting (I just subscribed to the podcast myself), but here are my … More Emotional Impact in Scriptwriting
There are many great resources out there on how to move the camera for a great camera shot. Here I share a few videos introducing the basic concepts and then get into when to use those concepts. Basic camera shots Bloop Animation shared this video on The basics of camera shots (most common ones you … More The use of camera movements
The following is how I upgrade my 2021.2.0b5 projects to 2022.1.1f1 (my new baseline version). I am doing this as there have been a number of relevant fixes/improvements in Sequences and HDRP that I want to take advantage of. (2022.2 looks interesting as well as there appears to be a new water rendering system built … More Unity Built in Render Pipeline to HDRP Upgrade Instructions
Depth of field is a Unity camera effect in allows you to blur the background and foreground, creating greater focus on your character. I recently wrote an article about how to achieve depth of field in HDRP (which I am going to assume you have already read), but upgrading the opening shot of my series … More HDRP Depth of Field with moving targets
In this blog I talk about the artistic side of deciding what to include in a location design. I am using Unity to do my animations, mainly purchasing assets from the Unity Asset store and similar for my locations. If I had to create them myself I would probably never get anything done. This often … More Artistic considerations when designing a location
What are the normal stages in creating an 3D animated video? There are variations depending on whether you are doing a full length movie, a short film, a TikTok video, or (as in my case) a motion web comic series, but there is more in common than is different. So here are the phases of … More My Stages of Animation Production using VRoid Studio and Unity
I am in the process of upgrading my Unity project from the Built in Render Pipeline to the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP). HDRP does some effects differently, one of which is the Depth of Field effect which is useful for background (or foreground) blurring. (I have blogged on effects like this previously, for the … More HDRP Camera Depth of Field Effects (blur)
The Unity Sequences package support has a number of features to make it easier to create movies, game cutscenes, or in my case short animated video clips for including in my motion webcomic. When I first started using Sequences, I planned to use Scene Activation tracks, but over time I found a number of limitations … More Why I Stopped using Scene Activation in Unity
One common problem with animating characters is when you instantly cut from one pose to another for characters with physics on hair or cloth. Physics engines often interpret the change of position as high velocity movement, causing more extreme hair and cloth bounces. The short animation in the tweet below is cool, but clearly shows … More Animation Hair and Cloth Physics Bounces
Extra Ordinary, the Series 