Category: FMP

My topic i chose to research was Cel Shading In Animation, Two questions i wanted to ask regarding this research was If Cel shading could be used to save time as opposed to traditional shaders when rendering and if so, how much time would this save when doing rendering. When doing some traditional realistic 3D Renders, things need to be as photorealistic as possible and this can up render times to the point at which rendering simply 90 frames can take days or even weeks depending on how complex a scene is. I wanted to research whether or not using stylized shading could circumvent some of this problem, and if so to how much of a degree.

After looking into some of the research regarding my hypothesis, it seems that while photorealistic rendering is heavier on machines overall, there are some things to keep in mind when researching this topic, for example the software that is used in edge detection to create these outlined and cel shaded models needs to usually be tweaked to fit the correct style. However a lot of the techniques described like Bump mapping in the Towards real time photorealistic rendering: challenges and solutions paper, are not present in Cel shaded animation and thus cut down heavily on render time. The time that is saved by not rendering in Photo Realistic Renderings may be allocated to getting the correct look when doing NPR Renderings.

Keywords used: “Shaders in rendering”, “Photorealistic rendering times”

Sources:

Cel shading with OSL in Renderman 21 for Maya: https://nccastaff.bournemouth.ac.uk/jmacey/MastersProject/MSc17/02/FGalluzzi_Master_Thesis.pdf

Edge-Enhancement – An Algorithm for Real-Time Non-Photorealistic Rendering: http://wscg.zcu.cz/WSCG2003/Papers_2003/D73.pdf

Towards Real-Time Photorealistic Rendering: Challenges and Solutions: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/258694.258701

I’m currently looking into researching cel shading in 3D Modelling. I’m currently researching this topic as it has become more prevalent in the last two decades of media, with primarily games using this form of shading of 3D modelling to create an art style reminiscent of early comic books. Some cell shading can also be similar to cell shading but not actually be truly cell shaded in technicality, as cell shading refers to stripping shaders in the place of flat colours and shadows as defined by TVTropes. Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CelShading

Some of the examples of cell shading in media have been in both video games and in other media like shows and movies, some of the earliest examples were Jet set radio (2000) The Iron Giant (199) and as Recent as something like Arcane (2021) and Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of the Wild (2017).

I feel it’s important to research this subject as it’s both something i’m interested in and would like to use in future projects, but also highlights achieving different art styles within the media of 3D Modelling and experimenting with things like shaders to get more stylized views of 3D Objects. Usually 3D Models in media and animation sometimes adhere to a very similar artstyle as they are rendered in similar ways with similar programs, and using something like cel shading can be used to combat this feeling of sameness in media and allow for different feelings and looks through new projects.

Some of the keywords that i used in researching this topic were “Cel Shading”, “Cel shading in media”, “Cel shading Animation”, “Cel shading 3D Modelling” and “Cel Shading in history”.

Four sources i found for this were a Dissertation on Cel Shading: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.691.5831&rep=rep1&type=pdf

2D Shading for cel animation: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3229147.3229148

Enhanced cartoon and comic rendering: https://diglib.eg.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10.2312/egs.20061047.141-144/141-144.pdf?sequence=1

And advanced real time cel shading techniques in opengl: https://www.cs.rpi.edu/~cutler/classes/advancedgraphics/S12/final_projects/hutchins_kim.pdf

Researching this is important to my project proposal as i’d like to do a 3D Animation for my project and have been researching different shaders for this purpose to go with a stylized 3D Animation. Cel shading is one of the styles i have been looking at and may want to pursue further.

M y topic of interest is Fluid Dynamics, the Keywords i chose related to this were Water Dynamics, Fluid Dynamics in 3D, fluid dynamics in maya, fluid dynamics in 3d animation and Realistic water.

One of the references that provided motivation for my reference was the maya website that described both how these worked and links to ways to do them in maya https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2018/ENU/Maya-SimulationEffects/files/GUID-2A5FDEDD-9467-432B-B1FA-359C7A2D1D2F-htm.html#:~:text=For%20dynamic%20fluid%20effects%2C%20Maya,bodies%2C%20and%20interact%20with%20particles.

And the other reference was a wikipedia article talking about the use of specifically 3D and talks about the overall concept

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_animation

Using JSTOR, i found a paper talking about the proposal of using UE4 For Autogenerated marine animation https://www.jstor.org/stable/26853332?searchText=Water%20in%203d%20animation&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DWater%2Bin%2B3d%2Banimation%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2FSYC-6294%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A70f5be719b94dcf80918797707e8e5a6

And using EBESCO i was able to find fluid dynamics on point clouds https://doaj.org/article/51f98a8d0ea44897881ab1b62d66ddd1