Hello Everyone! I wanted to know, in your own opinion is it possible to use computerize program, 3d program such as 3dsmax, to come to such results as to the stop motion median? I hear that stop motion animation it takes time but, I was always wondering how can we come out with the same quality results from a movie cinematic, for example: "The Corpse Bride"? By the way have you guys seen the movie? What did you think about it? Thanks! Julio A. Cruz

It should certainly be possible to reach the same results (and surpase them in some regards). At the same time, though, part of the stop-motion aesthetic is its manual nature. Each frame is "lovingly" crafted by hand.

It would be similar to trying to get "toon-shading" in a 3D package. You can emulate, but probably not ever quite capture all the details... and by the time you did, you may end up putting in more or less the amount of work as real stop-motion.

Of course, the advantage of emulating stop-motion on the computer is that stop-motion is real, physical 3D, unlike traditional animation which is a 2D representation. And 3D pacakges are good at "real" 3D. It's just a matter of tuning the shaders (to get the "clay" look) and crafting the animation appropriately (each frame is keyframed, no interpolating, no mocap).

One of the big deals in regards to Corpse Bride and computers is that they are apprently the first feature film to be shot with a digital SLR as opposed to traditional 35MM film. That's pretty cool, as that's how I planned to do my next stop-motion (the last two I did were captured with digital *video* cameras, so no where near the resolution as DSLR).

South Park is a good example here. When Parker and Stone first made their cartoon, it required a stop-motion type of action where they would replace the people's mouths with different shapes to make words and do the same with body parts and such. It was all like paper forms.

This required too much time to develop a whole episode, especially on a weekly basis (as Comedy Central demanded of the guys). So, they had to sink money into a computer development package that could simulate the world of South Park but just plain do it quicker.

as people allready said, i also suppose it is quite possible, and even allready done (like southpark).

it might not have the same amount of love in every frame but it can save you a lot of time if you do it right i suppose.

a few factors come to my mind that make a 3d-animation look like stop motion.
low framerate, like 12 fps or less, you could even mix framerates, additionally you could even scrap the usual tween animations in some parts and pose the models frame by frame.

use replacement method for mouths and reocurring structures

shaders and models that look real (i.e. for clay animation don't make models that would be impossible to do with real clay, etc)

absolutely no motion blur or any other effects you see on film but not on photo

some depth-of-field might come in handy