Earlier this month, MightyGiant attended the ‘Animating Tomorrow’ event hosted by the Manchester Animation Festival at MediaCity, Manchester. The two-day event brought together industry professionals to share their insights, techniques, and innovations in the world of animation. The event featured a variety of speakers and workshops, each offering valuable takeaways for animators and creatives alike.
Dane Winn from Blue Zoo showcased an exciting development in facial rigging. Using Blender a universal face rig designed to handle most abstract faces with robustness and efficiency. The rig featured procedural controls for eyes (shader and geometry node-based) and a mouth setup utilizing booleans for animation. While effective in the demo, we found the boolean-based mouth animation method somewhat flawed. It required substantial geometry and could be buggy within Blender.
The most impressive aspect of Dane’s face rig was its adaptability. It could be applied to any mesh with options to switch between 2D and 3D mouth configurations. Not only could users animate the face, but they could also adjust the rig’s appearance to be either 2D or 3D even after animation was completed, thanks to its procedural nature. The team at Blue Zoo is currently working on making the entire rig geometry-node-based. It also has plans to release it to the community soon.
On a side note, Blue Zoo works primarily with Blender for about 90% of their projects. Even opting for it over Cinema 4D. Dane, a long-time Maya user, praised Blender for its robustness and user-friendliness. We also discussed a few technical challenges, such as UV stretching and animation issues, which we at MightyGiant have tackled during projects like Dreams.
Andy Elliot from Dock10 demonstrated their innovative approach to using AI for animation, including the creation of 3D scan data sets of their cast, motion capture workflows, and real-time relighting. This technology allows them to bypass traditional green screen post-processing, enhancing efficiency and realism.
Dock10 has already employed these techniques for projects like Channel 5’s Dinosaur – with Stephen Fry and Bitesize Daily a children’s educational show (with graphics from MightyGiant!). The real-time AI tools they use can remove green screens, add shadows on virtual backgrounds, reflections, and various effects, all during live production.
Andy also introduced their upcoming sci-fi hero show, Elementals, where four kids use science-based powers. They utilize 3D scans and motion capture data to ensure smooth interactions with virtual backgrounds. However, the legal complexities surrounding AI training data were highlighted, as they must delete the training data once the contract with the cast ends.
VR technology is transforming stop-motion animation. Using Gravity Sketch, Darren demonstrated how to create 3D worlds and environments in VR with precise scaling and camera placement. Attendees could also try Quest 3 VR setups spread across the venue.
He provided insights into his work on Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run for Aardman, where he builds virtual environments to pre-plan and optimize hundreds of shots. This VR workflow allows for efficient layout creation, accurate scaling, and camera positioning.
This presentation by Victor Paredes was a personal highlight, demonstrating how Moho’s vector-based rigging system makes 2D animation remarkably intuitive. Its rigging tools allow for easy creation of controllers for various parts of the body, including IK-based setups for efficient movement.
What truly caught our attention was Moho’s ability to tweak designs and visuals even after animation is complete. This procedural approach retains animation data while allowing for stylistic adjustments a powerful tool for creative flexibility.
Vitor also shared Moho’s journey and how he and his partner acquired the software, recognizing its potential and undertaking a complete overhaul to enhance its capabilities.
An inspiring experience, packed with valuable insights from industry leaders and practical tools to elevate animation work. We’re excited to implement some of these learnings into our future projects at MightyGiant.