workflow advice

[Govinda__]

All workflows are different, so the question is really too broad, but here’s an example drawn from reality a few years ago. No reason to choose it except it came to mind and it was the most orderly process I’ve been involved in–if only for two weeks. 😀

Designer at Troika in Los Angeles designs storyboards in photoshop and Zaxworks. Animators at Drive Studios take these storyboards and rebuild in Cinema 4D. They present these styleframes back to the designer for him to approve their fidelity to his design. Once approved, the Drive guys animate for several months, regularly presenting the client low-rez renders at half-size, NTSC anti-aliasing for motion approval. Upon approval of each of the several hundred pieces, final rendering begins at 1920×1080 60fps on a small render farm, which all in all takes weeks. Then on to compositing, wherein the Drive guys apply to the raw CG various After Effects layer and effect recipes that they’ve concocted to soften the 3D and give it a slight glowy effect that the designer achieved in the storyboards.

Cut to you turning on your television to ESPN Sportscenter. The show opens with spinning 3d turbines…the show breaks to commercial with various 3d graphic effects…the show cuts to segments with various 3d graphic effects…the show ends with the spinning turbines.