Glossary term

3D Animation

What is 3D Animation?

3D animation creates moving images in a 3D environment, giving digital objects the illusion of motion through 3D space, using techniques like rigging, keyframing, and motion capture to produce realistic or stylized movement.

How does 3D Animation work?

This powerful visual storytelling technique brings characters and environments to life through carefully crafted movement sequences that convey emotion, physics, and narrative elements.

Modern 3D animation workflows combine artistic skill with technical processes - beginning with rigging that creates controllable skeletal structures, continuing through keyframe animation or motion capture data application, and culminating in rendering that produces the final visual output. Development platforms provide increasingly sophisticated tools for animation blending, procedural movement systems, and physics-based secondary motion that enhance believability.

How is 3D Animation used?

Beyond entertainment applications, 3D animation serves critical functions in fields ranging from architectural visualization to medical simulation, where accurate movement representation helps users understand dynamic processes.

As computational power increases, real-time animation capabilities continue to evolve, enabling interactive applications with increasingly sophisticated movement systems that respond dynamically to user inputs and environmental conditions.

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