360° images

There are four variables to consider when you plan an animation inside one of our studios. These combine to determine the amount of time an animation takes to produce.

The nature of the product

Different products present different challenges and some are easier than others. Some are rigid and some are soft or need to be wired to hold their shape. Some are cylindrical and some are irregularly shaped. Rigid products are easier than soft ones.

The more detail you wish to show in the final animation the better quality the item needs to be. Scratches, tears, bumps and blemishes may be invisible when producing a 400 pixel wide animation but all too noticeable when showing something at a larger size.

Will it be stop motion or continuous?

For a continuous animation the turntable moves the product and the camera shoots automatically, capturing the number of images specified within one revolution. With stop motion part of the product is moved after each shot – for instance the doors on a model car are opened and shut frame by frame. Stop motion animations take longer.

The number of shots you take

You can choose to take between 4 and 200 shots in a single revolution. 20 shots will take about 2 minutes to capture, 200 shots at least ten times as long and 4 shots less than a minute. Other choices are 8,16,20,40, and 72 shots.

The post production you undertake

The most time consuming part of creating an animation can be the post production. This is the term used to describe the work done to the pictures after they have been taken but before they are compiled into an animation.  The more images you use to create your animation the more images you will be dealing with in post production.

That said in our first example there is very little post production. Within the software one can manipulate the contrast and brightness levels and apply that to all images. Thus post production is a one minute job. If you have a subject with good contrast then 20 shot rotations can be achieved form start to finish in under 10 minutes.

At the other end of the scale images can be exported to an image manipulation programme and each can be rectified. In this case the tatty edges of the biscuit box have been tidied up as well as the background removed. This has been done to each of the images before the images were re-imported and stitched together.

In conclusion an animation can take from minutes to hours, perhaps even days for a very large difficult product shooting 200 shots. Ultimately the decision is a commercial one  – a high volume product that is interesting all the way around deserves more time and more screen space than something producing less revenue.