Understanding Dynamics for Better 3D Visual Effects

Any 3D digital application venture is incomplete without 3D effects. Dynamics are the soul of 3D application. Just imagine a game like Call of duty, Counter Strike or Watch Dogs without smoke particulates, fire or flowing clothes, weird right? That’s why 3D dynamics are important for your 3D effects to pack a more powerful punch.

Dynamics make it all easier

They make you work faster. This is because they are a built in physics engine inside your 3D app. It basically gives you an idea of how the objects in the application utilize the rules of actual physics to make the objects move after you apply 3D effects, looking like they’re being subject to forces just like in the actual world.

You can make your object do whatever you want it to. The inbuilt software will help decide what animation and effect will make that action look the most realistic in the game. Under regular key frame animation, the process would be painstakingly tedious and would consume a lot of the animator’s time to smooth out the kinks in motion to achieve perfection in seamless motion animation.

Something as simple as a hockey puck or complex as a building being demolished in a game will be done with ease. While a hockey puck moving around in a mobile air hockey game may not be that difficult or painstaking for animators, the building being demolished in a game of Prototype or even Call of Duty would be difficult to achieve without knowing dynamics.

Getting those smoke, rubble and fire animations to happen during the demolition in perfect sync to make it look and feel more real in not an easy task without dynamics. It also helps the animation be more fluid or “moving realistically with the 3D effects.”

 How is it different from Key Frame Animation?

To get your 3D effects to look so real that it makes your viewers stare in amazement like the latest Sci-Fi movies, key frame animation would simply not work. Many hours of fixing minor glitches in Keyframes would be required which would be frustrating to the animator. To get simulations to be realistic, you don’t need to be a physics whizz.

Each frame is determined relative to the previous frame in dynamics while key frame animation uses the values you input in each frame interval which makes it a more difficult way to animate. One can further use the dynamic simulation to smooth out the simulations by manual editing them with key frame animation on their timeline.

Preset effects are easier with rigid bodies

Rigid bodies are a nice tool in dynamics to allow you to have quick animations for making them look natural without heavy editing. The computer does all of the animation work to make the animation look more real such as a brick wall tumbling down.

Built in 3D effects like nCloth with 3D Maya, for example, can allow you to simulate clothes for your game characters, and make them flow more. Particles are also used in dynamics. All the grass, fur, fog, smoke and other effects that you see in games are possible because of these 3D effects.

To get these 3D effects and more in your 3D application, contact XYZ Creative Group.