[Hawkeye_a]

Animation shows like Futurama. i mean what kind of software and hardware do they use ?

Cheers

[wdlove]

I certainly hope that they are using a Mac. Maybe it's Maya.

[ghporter]

The Simpsons is animated in Korea and/or Japan (it seems to vary depending on the season). It's all cell animation, not computer generated. Since Futurama is from Matt Groening, whyo does The Simpsons, I think it's done the same way.

South Park used to be the cutout animation it has always looked like, but it's been computer generated (no I don't know what they use to do it) for quite a while.

[tooki]

No cartoon -- including the Simpsons -- has been 100% manually drawn on cels for many years. Most are now done on a computer, where they can just move objects and lines for most frames -- and have the computer generate the remaining frames using morphing.

Futurama, in fact, is partly 3D-rendered (!) using a custom rendering engine to make it look like a cartoon. (The ship is the most-seen 3D object in the show.)

Southpark, IIRC, has been 100% computer from day 1. Only the original look and style was paper. All production was computer-based.


Cartoons are pretty much entirely done on SGI and Sun machines running custom software.

tooki

[ghporter]

Interesting. All the credits refer to animation houses, but not to any technology within those animation houses. Of course since the credits roll for about two seconds, it's kind of hard to read all of them. Futurama's cartoon-like rendering is GOOD, because it really does look like ink on cells. As a longtime fan of Warner Brothers animation, I've kind of paid attention to cel animation when I've seen it, and Futurama sure does look good. Thanks for the information!

I was told that the first several episodes of South Park were done at least partly with paper while they were working out some issues with their rendering system. That may have been an exageration, or more likely a reference to their early shorts before the series started.

[hyperb0le]

Originally Posted by ghporter

The Simpsons is animated in Korea and/or Japan (it seems to vary depending on the season). It's all cell animation, not computer generated. Since Futurama is from Matt Groening, whyo does The Simpsons, I think it's done the same way.

I think that Futurama, at least parts of it, is computer-generated. In most shots when a spaceship is flying, it looks like it was done in a 3D package.

Edit: I'm an idiot. Note to self: make sure not to reply to a page you opened 2 hours ago...

[jcadam]

Edit: I'm a retard

[Hawkeye_a]

Yeah i agree, the illusion of a 2D cell shaded look is near perfect in Futurama. im sure the technology has been developed over the past decade or so, what with disney migrating to it a long time ago (Computer aided...to fill in between the keyframes). But Futurama, really merges 3D and 2D for a cartoon flawlessley imo. I'd really like to know what tools they use.

I think most Animation packages include a cell shader, but i havent seen that kind of quality from Maya and 3DSM (in my limited experience).

[Millennium]

Most animation is done at least partly on computers these days. However, that animation is not always 3-D rendered. Futurama uses cel-shaded 3-D rendered objects, but it's more common to use a collection of 2-D illustrations, not unlike the cels of the past (but more consistent in drawing style and much easier to tweak). For those who use 2-D illustrations, it's altogether possible that they use something as mundane as Freehand or Illustrator.

As for South Park, tooki almost has it: the TV series was in fact 100% 3-D rendered from Day One. "The Spirit of Christmas", the original short which inspired the series, actually was done using shapes cut out from construction paper, but the TV series itself uses 3-D rendering to emulate that look.

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

I think most Animation packages include a cell shader, but i havent seen that kind of quality from Maya and 3DSM (in my limited experience).

Even when there isn't true cel shading from an animation package, it's possible to emulate it in a rendered movie:

• Set up your models with "false" colors. By "false", I mean that every object you want to be outlined needs to have a different color and 100% luminosity (that is, it should ignore lighting and just display the full-strength color). It doesn't matter what colors you use as long as they contrast, because these colors will disappear anyway.
• Render the movie with the false-colored models. Note that it should be identical to what you want the final movie to be, except for the coloring and outlines.
• Use After Effects or some similar package to run the Find Edges filter on the movie. This will produce nice, crisp outlines. Set this "outline movie" aside.
• Set up your models with the colors you actually intend to use. This time, you need to play with the lighting settings so that colors will fall off drastically at certain points, rather than blending smoothly. Render the movie again. This produces a "lighting movie" with the right shading, but no outlines. Once again, this should be identical to what you want the final movie to be, except for the outlines.
• Use After Effects or some similar package to superimpose the outline movie over the lighting movie. This is the final movie, with cel-like shading and outlines.

This is a very naive algorithm, of course, and it's probably not at all how The Big Boys do it. However, if you want to play around with POV-Ray or something similar which doesn't do cel-shading on its own, this will do what you want.

[Kvasir]

In an interview with Matt Groening (last year ?) he said that

"The Simpsons is still hand-drawn, it’s just inked and painted digitally rather than paint slathered on cells. But actual pencil drawings are scanned into the computer."

Groening apparently has a real passion for the classic art of cartooning and keeps the computer use to a minimum to keep an honest look and feel to hand rendered cartoon animation.

Wikipedia says that SouthPark is using Maya (previously used Power Animator).

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Kvasir

Wikipedia says that SouthPark is using Maya (previously used Power Animator).

Wait a minute, I can change that...

-t

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by Millennium

As for South Park, tooki almost has it: the TV series was in fact 100% 3-D rendered from Day One. "The Spirit of Christmas", the original short which inspired the series, actually was done using shapes cut out from construction paper, but the TV series itself uses 3-D rendering to emulate that look.

Actually, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" was also done on construction paper. After that it was 100% computer.