31/5/2023
I+D+i
On this occasion we are going to compare the processes between the software "Maya" and the VR software "Quill".
Quill is a recently created programme that allows modelling and animation in an entirely three-dimensional environment, using virtual reality. For this purpose, glasses developed by Oculus, called "Oculus Quest", are used. These allow you to move around a virtual environment, generating a feeling of total immersion in the virtual world.
Traditionally in the world of 3D animation, software such as 3ds Max, Maya... etc, whose main peripheral is the mouse and keyboard, have been used. Thanks to the technological evolution there are now other tools that allow us to have more friendly peripherals for artists. Tools with more intuitive interfaces that make the learning curve shorter.
To carry out this analysis, two different teams have been commissioned to carry out the same project.
The members of each team have demonstrable experience in the use of these tools, so their level will not influence the final result, as they all know the tool.
Both teams started from the same animatic and from these designs
This was the result of the two pieces of animation
The piece made in VR with "Quill".
The piece made in the traditional way in 3D with "Maya".
The time taken by each team in all the processes was analysed, these were the results:
1.- Point-to-point software comparison
Pre-production process
In the modelling process, the VR team took 22 hours, while the traditional team took 96 hours. Let's analyse each of the modelling sections to understand this data.
Character modelling
If we analyse how both softwares work, we can see that they are totally different. While in Quill you draw three-dimensional polygon tracings in space, in the traditional ones you model from polygons perfectly placed and aligned.
This means that the mesh generated by Quill is very complex and cannot be retouched, you can only add more mesh on top or delete the strokes to modify it, while in traditional programmes you can retouch the vertices and edges as you wish, thus creating very perfect models at the level of structure that give few failures in the following production processes.
Props modelling
Again the VR team has taken less time, but the quality of the finish is worse objectively speaking. The peculiarity of the Quill is that although the result has its limitations, it is quite close to the designs, so the quality/cost ratio is very good.
VR Team
Traditional 3D equipment
Modelling Set
The modelling of the set was very simple as they were simple images uploaded as backgrounds, so it is not relevant to the research, yet the traditional team again took longer than the VR team.
Rig
The Rig refers to the skeleton of the characters and the set of handlers that make it up. In Quill the rig is a simple structure of folders that contain each of the mobile elements of the character, these parts have their axis in the joints, so it is more similar to a stop motion doll than a digital 3D one. Other major differences are:
It has no inverse kinematics, so everything is done through direct animation, nor the option to make a "skin", i.e. a skin that is modified according to the movement of the bones, nor does it have modifiers such as the "morpher" that allows you to move from one mouth to another, so all the mouths must be modelled separately and animated by substitution, just as it would be done in a stop motion production.
All this makes the rig very easy to make and therefore the execution time is very low, in this case the VR team has taken 2 hours to make all the rigs of the characters, while the traditional one took 68 hours.
Surface
In this section we also find notable differences between Quill and traditional programs, Quill does not have a material editor with the options of a traditional 3D program, it only allows you to create self-illuminated materials, with a solid colour and apply a level of transparency to them.
There are no textures so everything is painted from strokes and three-dimensional brushstrokes composed of polygons.
This peculiarity means that the programme does not allow for realistic finishes in any way, no matter how many hours we spend in the process of creating characters or objects, they will always have a 2d and very pictorial look.
This is undoubtedly a limitation that makes its use unfeasible for certain productions. However, for finishes with a more 2D look, to make sketches and previews, it can become an ideal tool due to its speed of work.
In this case the figures also show Quill as the winner, taking into account its finishing limitations, we can see how the traditional team spent 33 hours, while the VR team only spent 23 hours.
At this point we have concluded the analysis of the pre-production phase where we clearly see that the VR team has been the fastest with a total of 45.5 hours of work, compared to 197 hours for the traditional team.
B. production process
Blocking
For this process the VR team spent 43 hours while the traditional team spent 29 hours.
We can observe that for the first time we find that the traditional animation team improves the time of the VR team.
The lack of a rig and inverse kinematics makes the positioning of the poses in Quill too laborious, having to move each joint independently. In 3D animation with traditional software, there are handlers that make this task much easier and allow us to be more agile in these processes.
Animation
As we have already said in the previous section, Quill has a very "artisanal" way of animating, many of the movements have to be done frame by frame and retouching them often involves repositioning the doll practically in its entirety, nor does it have a curve editor to correct imperfections in the animation, there is no possibility of adding a new curve to retouch some movement, this means that in a production process, where there are many changes and adjustments until the final result is achieved, its implementation is complicated.
However, it does allow certain animations that are more typical of 2D and that are very laborious with traditional 3D programs, these are the ones made through deformation.
Quill allows us to deform the objects at our whim in each of the frames and get sensations such as trails of movement, squash and stretch effects that give a more 2D look to our animation, which gives it a great advantage over other 3D software.
It also allows other types of animations in real time, which is very revolutionary in this type of software.
With Quill we can animate objects by activating play and in real time move them around the stage. This allows us to move the camera around the 3D environment and simulate a handheld camera, or animate particles and see their effect in real time by making modifications on the fly.
Another disadvantage of Quill is the Lip Sync animation, which refers to the synchronised placement of the different mouths on the puppet to make it look like the puppet is talking. While in traditional software there are tools to speed up these functions, in Quill there are none, they have to be placed by hand in each frame which slows down the process enormously.
After seeing all the handicaps that Quill has in this section, it is normal that the data gives us that the traditional animation team took less time, with a total of 30 hours, compared to 46 hours for the VR team.
Cache
This process is not necessary in all productions, in this case the traditional team has not had to use it, while the VR team has no choice.
Although the Render Cache is used for several things, in the case of Quill it is necessary if you want to do some postproduction to the video, Quill doesn't have many rendering options and if you want to export to a layered compositing program or if you want to put another type of lighting you need to use other software, in this case Unreal has been used.
To transfer the material to Unreal is done shot by shot, this process took the VR rig 14 hours, while in the traditional rig it took no time at all.
Lighting
The lighting process, in this case, took 7 hours on the traditional equipment, while it took zero on the Quill equipment, this is because in Quill there is no lighting as such, it is simulated in the Surface process, this speeds up the production although the possibilities of render finishes are very limited.
Render
In the rendering process we have not measured the time of the machine working, as this would depend on the machines where it was done, what we have measured is how long it takes to prepare the plans for the machine to start working.
In this case the traditional equipment took 3 hours, while the VR took 13 hours, the VR equipment had the disadvantage of having to put all the plans in Unreal to be able to render them, this makes the process slow down the production as the different steps are still not very optimised, although Unreal is a very powerful rendering software, the ingestion of each plan from Quill is still very laborious.
Composition
The work of digital composition, share a peculiarity in both teams and is that you have to work in external programs to carry it out. The advantage of the VR team is that the programme in which it has been carried out is Unreal, so in the previous process the hours of intake of this process have already been counted, in the traditional team on the contrary, all the rendered images must be taken to another programme to be able to carry out this process, this means that the composition takes more time for the traditional team.
In this case, the VR team did it in 12 hours, while the traditional team did it in 23 hours.
In short, we can see from the data obtained that the pre-production process was 79% faster with the VR processes than with the traditional processes.
While the production process was 28% faster in the traditional way than with the VR tools.
Las herramientas VR son ideales para los procesos de prototipado de animación pero de momento no son tan eficaces en procesos de arte final
2.-Comparison of the two pieces of animation taking into account the visual and finishing aspect.
Our analysis continued by focusing on the perception of the finish of the piece made in VR and the one made in traditional systems.
This survey was carried out in collaboration with the Carlos III University at the Getafe campus, the test consisted of showing the two videos to several students in two classes who were given a questionnaire to see what they felt and to draw conclusions about the quality of the videos.
Question 1
Have you found any difference between VR teaser and Standard?
100% of respondents answered yes.
Question 2
If you've found differences, please explain them
The differences that can be seen in view of the answers are basically of two types, some based on the difference in the animations, which refer to the style of the different artists who worked on the piece and which we do not consider relevant, and other differences at a visual level, here we clearly see how the VR animation seems of less quality than the Standard video, and several of the respondents think that it is a Work in progress which reaffirms our conclusion that today it is a programme more for prototyping than for final finishing.
Another of the opinions expressed is that the VR piece is more 2D and for a more child audience, while the other is more 3D and would be for a more adult audience.
Question 3
Do differences between teaser VR and Standard seem to you to be significant for an animation production?
73% of people answered yes and 27% no.
Question 4
What target audience do you think the teasers are adressed to? [VR]
What target audience do you think the teasers are adressed to? [Standard] What target audience do you think the teasers are adressed to?
The VR piece despite being the same script was perceived as being for a more child audience, due to its 2D appearance, the Adult box was more often ticked in the Standard version, so the audience perceived the traditional 3D style for a more mature target audience.
Question 5
Who could sponsor/finance each teaser [VR]?
Who could sponsor/finance each teaser? [Standard].
In the results to this question we found no relevant differences between the two animations.
Question 6
Regarding the date of production, when do you think each teaser could have been produced? [VR] [Standard] [Standard] [VR
Regarding the date of production, when do you do you think each teaser could have been produced? [Standard] [VR] [VR] [VR] [Standard
Considering the respondents who saw a difference between the two
47% determined the VR animation to be from the "2020s-2010s".
45% that the Standard animation is "Recent".
Therefore 81% of respondents who saw differences between the two animations identified the video made with traditional 3D software as more modern, this is because Quill's finish is more similar to 2D and this is perceived as older.
Although VR technology is more modern, the tools developed for it today are not good enough to be perceived as a technological leap.
Question 7
How long do you think it took to produce version B? [VR].
How long do you think it took to produce version B? [Standard].
The perception of the time taken to produce the two videos is the same for both teams.
So the degree of difficulty is the same, although the VR team took 40% less time than the Standard team.
Question 8
What media do you think it is targeting [A]?
There are no differences relevant to our study
The general conclusions we can draw are that people definitely perceive the VR piece as being of lower quality, partly because of the 2D finish offered by the programme, and this finish makes it look old-fashioned. Although it is a new technology with many possibilities, it is still far from being able to be used in productions for final art, which do not have a 2D aspect, as its finish does not reach the standards that the public expects from animation productions.
Its finishing speed, especially in the previous processes, makes it ideal for prototypes, animated sketches, stories... in short, all those processes that involve pre-production.