Computer animation

An example of computer animation which is produced from the "motion capture" technique
3D game character animated using skeletal animation.
In this .gif of a 2D Flash animation, each 'stick' of the figure is keyframed over time to create motion.
A ray-traced 3-D model of a jack inside a cube, and the jack alone below.

Process used for digitally generating animated images.

- Computer animation
An example of computer animation which is produced from the "motion capture" technique

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"Bones" (in green) used to pose a hand. In practice, the "bones" themselves are often hidden and replaced by more user-friendly objects or simply toggled invisible. In this example from the open source project Blender, these "handles" (in blue) have been scaled down to bend the fingers. The bones are still controlling the deformation, but the animator only sees the handles.

Skeletal animation

"Bones" (in green) used to pose a hand. In practice, the "bones" themselves are often hidden and replaced by more user-friendly objects or simply toggled invisible. In this example from the open source project Blender, these "handles" (in blue) have been scaled down to bend the fingers. The bones are still controlling the deformation, but the animator only sees the handles.

Skeletal animation or rigging is a technique in computer animation in which a character (or other articulated object) is represented in two parts: a surface representation used to draw the character (called the mesh or skin) and a hierarchical set of interconnected parts (called bones, and collectively forming the skeleton or rig), a virtual armature used to animate (pose and keyframe) the mesh.

A scene from Diary of a Camper, an early machinima production

Machinima

Use of real-time computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production.

Use of real-time computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production.

A scene from Diary of a Camper, an early machinima production
Hugh Hancock founded Strange Company and coined the term machinima.
A scene from a machinima portion of "Make Love, Not Warcraft"
The ILL Clan performs its machinima comedy talk show Tra5hTa1k with ILL Will in front of a live audience at Stanford University in 2005.
Matt Kelland of Short Fuze (left) and Keith Halper of Kuma Reality Games at the 2008 Machinima Film Festival with the Mackie award for Best Technical Achievement

Most often, video games are used to generate the computer animation.

A frame from Namakura Gatana (1917), the oldest surviving Japanese animated short film made for cinemas

Anime

A frame from Namakura Gatana (1917), the oldest surviving Japanese animated short film made for cinemas
Frame from the opening sequence of Tezuka's 1963 TV series Astro Boy
Anime artists employ many distinct visual styles. Clockwise from the top left: Dead Leaves, FLAG, Serial Experiments Lain, M⊙NS†ER, Mind Game, Lucky☆Star, Cat Soup, and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
Same character portrayed in different anime styles.
Akihabara district of Tokyo is popular with anime and manga fans as well as otaku subculture in Japan
Cosplay of Madoka Kaname and Kyubey from Puella Magi Madoka Magica during Tracon 2013 event at the Tampere Hall in Tampere, Finland.

Anime (アニメ) is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan.

VeggieTales logo used since 2015

VeggieTales

VeggieTales logo used since 2015
Mr. Lunt, Pa Grape, and Larry the Cucumber at the Celebrate Freedom 2007 concert.
A mint condition bucket meant for gardening purposes officially sold under the brand of Big Idea Entertainment

VeggieTales is an American Christian computer generated musical children's animation and Christian media franchise created by Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki under Big Idea Entertainment.

Theatrical release poster

Toy Story

Theatrical release poster
The El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles, where Toy Storys premiere took place on November 19, 1995.
Lasseter with the Special Achievement Oscar

Toy Story is a 1995 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures.

Morphogenetic Creations computer-generated digital art exhibition by Andy Lomas at Watermans Arts Centre, west London, in 2016.

Computer-generated imagery

Morphogenetic Creations computer-generated digital art exhibition by Andy Lomas at Watermans Arts Centre, west London, in 2016.
A fractal landscape created in Terragen.
A computer-generated image featuring a house at sunset, made in Blender.
A CT pulmonary angiogram image generated by a computer from a collection of x-rays.
Computer-generated wet fur created in Autodesk Maya.
A yellow submarine in Second Life.
Metallic balls created in Blender.

Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the use of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art, printed media, video games, simulators, computer animation and VFX in films, television programs, shorts, commercials, and videos.

Pixar

A Pixar computer at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View with the 1986–95 logo on it
A Luxo Jr. figure display in Hong Kong
John Lasseter appears with characters from Up at the 2009 Venice Film Festival.
The Steve Jobs Building at the Pixar campus in Emeryville
The atrium of the Pixar campus

Pixar Animation Studios, commonly known as just Pixar, is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films.

Animation "on twos" has been used for over 100 years, being used for instance in Fantasmagorie (1908)

Inbetweening

Process in animation that involves generating intermediate frames, called inbetweens, between two keyframes.

Process in animation that involves generating intermediate frames, called inbetweens, between two keyframes.

Animation "on twos" has been used for over 100 years, being used for instance in Fantasmagorie (1908)
This animated GIF demonstrates the effects of Adobe Flash shape, motion, and colour tweening.

"Ease-in" and "ease-out" in digital animation typically refer to a mechanism for defining the physics of the transition between two animation states, i.e., the linearity of a tween.

Creating a racing game in Blender Game Engine

Game engine

Software framework primarily designed for the development of video games, and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs.

Software framework primarily designed for the development of video games, and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs.

Creating a racing game in Blender Game Engine
Some game engines experience an evolution over time and develop a family tree, like for instance id's Quake engine which resulted in the id Tech family

The core functionality typically provided by a game engine may include a rendering engine ("renderer") for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection (and collision response), sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threading, localization support, scene graph, and video support for cinematics.

Theatrical release poster

Tron

1982 American science fiction action-adventure film written and directed by Steven Lisberger from a story by Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird.

1982 American science fiction action-adventure film written and directed by Steven Lisberger from a story by Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird.

Theatrical release poster

Eventually, Lisberger decided to include live-action elements with both backlit and computer animation for the actual feature-length film.