Top Five Software used in 3D Animation, VFX & Gaming Design

Posted by AAFT School of Animation on October 7th, 2017

Animation movies like Kung Fu Panda, Finding Nemo, Cars, Frozen, Toy Story, and The Lion King have captured the hearts and minds of viewers around the world. The imaginary creatures or the fancy islands created and animated to give a real-time appeal delight every age-group.

Computers have brought in a revolutionary change in the traditional animation where characters and expressions are hand drawn on a transparent piece of paper, one frame at the time. Rough drawings are sequenced and then cleaned-up to have a clear idea about the number of frames needed for the desired action. Later, during production the individual frames are photographed, put together and viewed rapidly in sequence to create the illusion of motion.

Advances in technology today have made animations in movies, television and video games very realistic. Many software have come up in market that aid animators to produce highly engaging and impressive animations. Career-oriented 3D animation courses teach different software to create different style of animations: 2D-Vector Animation, 3D Animation (or CGI), Motion Graphics and Stop Motion.

The best Animation Colleges in Delhi provide advanced training programs that allow students to get acquainted with multiple animation and multimedia technologies and to learn the ways to generate a series of images to create animated shots.

This article will focus on some of the important Animation Software available in the market. Working knowledge of these will help students gain good employment in this dynamic creative field. To begin with, there are two basic types of animation that students must understand.

The first is 2D animation (or 2-dimensional) which has limited texturing and effects to it, such as shadows and shading. The characters and other components of a story thus created have only 2 dimensions, that is, width and height. The best example here will be The Lion King (movie) and The Simpsons (TV cartoon).

The second is 3D animation (or 3-dimensional) where characters and objects have width, height and depth. There are tools in software to add texture, effects, particles, shading, shadow and lighting to create realistic impression. Famous Hollywood movies, Finding Nemo and Frozen, are outstanding examples for this particular type of animation.

List of 3D Animation Software taught at Animation Institutes in Delhi

1. Autodesk 3DS Max

3DS Max from Autodesk Media and Entertainment is a professional 3D computer graphics application that allows animators and game artists to execute a comprehensive 3D modeling, animation, rendering, and compositing.

Its flexible plugin architecture and compatibility with Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8 versions makes it the most preferred animation and rendering tool.

2. Autodesk Maya

The software provides an integrated, powerful toolset which helps solve complex rendering problems and makes it simple to render high-quality images quickly and efficiently. Compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems, Maya is used for animation, environments, motion graphics, virtual reality and character creation.

3. Blender

Blender animation software is an open source that provides cross-platform interoperability, namely Windows, Mac OS and Linux. For beginners, it is a great 3D program as it has an integrated workflow, and an easy to understand toolset to begin modeling, texturing, lighting, animation and video post-processing.

4. Cinema 4D

Cinema 4D is versatile 3D program for motion graphics artists and After Effects users. It supports Windows and Mac OS.

5. LightWave

LightWave is 3D computer graphics software by NewTek. It is widely used in films, television, music videos, games development and product design. The software has comprehensive functionality to create motion graphics, visual effects, architectural visualizations, virtual production, pre-visualizations and advertising. It supports platforms Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8) and Mac OS X.