OUAN603 - Learning Blender 3D & Why I Chose 3D Backgrounds

The crafting of the animation and the approach I took to making it was quite carefully planning for this project because I wanted to be able to create a high quality animation [or best I could] whilst also distributing my time across several other segments of the project to tell the story. This meant saving time where I could, or being as efficient as possible but achieving the best results.

Working alone I knew that I would have a lot of work to do, perhaps more than I could do given the timescale, if I had to create every single background as well as animating on top and additional lighting retouching at the end. To save time in this respect I took a small risk and chose to develop a 3D space where I could set the camera wherever I wanted, change the focal length for depth of field and basically create backgrounds as I needed them. I would need to make some small adjustments but once the background was completed but it would save time in the long run as I could derive all the shots I needed from that scene. This worked for the reason that the whole animation is set in the same kitchen with some other spaced around the apartment implied but not shown specifically. As long as I created a scene with enough attention to detail and visual interest it should be a good method to creating the environment for the animation.

Once I decided to pursue this I needed it so succeed otherwise it would have been a large waste of time and resources learning or revisiting software and attempting to create something that didn't work. After coming across Blender 3D - a free, open source 3D software and viewing several videos on the results you can get with it, I decided I would use that. Some of the appeal of Blender stemmed from the relatively simplistic built in material options as well as the lighting options and the node editor that can be used to develop surfaces, textures and colour within objects. This coupled with the online resources available that led to the discovery of the software for me, confirmed my choice. I started by creating a simple scene to get used to the tools. Again, the dedication to picking up a new piece of software felt like a risk and I was constantly thinking about the time I was dedicating to it but it felt necessary in order to make a somewhat polished animation.

The simple test scene I created allowed me to tap into the program's lighting options, texturing, use of the node editor, modelling and compositional features. Basically everything I needed that would allow me to create my environments in 3D.