Guide ยท 3D animation
What it actually is, why it sells physical products better than photographs, and exactly what you get for your money. No film crew, no studio, nothing to ship.
Live 3D — move your cursor through it
Nothing is filmed. Your product is rebuilt inside software as a shape made of points and surfaces. Virtual lights are placed around it, a virtual camera is pointed at it, and the computer works out what that camera would see. That calculation is called a render.
The result looks like a photograph of something that was never photographed, because in a sense it is one. The physics of the light is simulated.
A camera can only see the outside of a thing that already exists. Animation is not limited that way.
It can show the inside of a sealed unit. It can take a product apart and put it back together. It can show a machine running without stopping your production line. And it can show a product that has not been manufactured yet, which is how businesses take pre-orders on something that only exists as a drawing.
An exploded view is where every part drifts away from the others in order, hangs there so you can see it, then comes back together. If you sell anything that gets assembled, this replaces a whole page of instructions.
An X-ray pass makes the outer shell see-through so the working parts inside are visible. Both of these are the reason a technical product often sells better with forty seconds of animation than with twenty photographs.
First the model: your product is built accurately in software, from your drawings, photos or measurements. Then materials, which means telling the software this part is brushed steel and that part is matte plastic, so light behaves correctly on each.
Then animation: the movement is set with keyframes, which just means marking where something should be at a given moment and letting the computer fill the gap. Then lighting, then rendering, then cutting it to length with the pacing you need.
A video is a stack of still images played fast. Thirty seconds at twenty-five frames a second is seven hundred and fifty separate images, each one individually calculated.
That is why animation is quoted by the second and not by the hour, and why a change to the lighting after rendering has started is not a small change. It is also why the review happens before the final render, not after.
On the product page, where it does the most work. A customer who watches a product move is far more likely to buy it. In WhatsApp, where you can send it straight to someone who is undecided. As a paid ad, where motion stops a thumb better than a photo.
And as instructions. An assembly animation cuts support calls, because people stop phoning to ask which part goes first.
Words you will hear from anyone in this industry, in plain English.
Not usually. Technical drawings with measurements are best. Clear photographs from several angles work too. If it is a simple shape, measurements alone are often enough.
That is fine, and it is common for products that do not exist yet. We will confirm proportions with you before animating, because fixing a wrong shape after rendering is expensive.
One to two weeks for twenty to thirty seconds. Modelling is the slow part. If you already have a 3D file from your manufacturer, it is faster and cheaper.
The finished video in wide format for a website or YouTube, and a square or vertical cut for social media. You get the files, and you own them.
Send a message describing what you sell. If this is the wrong thing for your business, you will be told so — that is cheaper for both of us than the wrong build.