Polygon modeling starts out with primitive objects made up of polygonal faces that are then built upon using various poly modeling tools such as extrusions. These can be divided into polygon, NURBS, subdivision surface, and “digital clay”. Before we get into the software, lets talk about modeling techniques. 3D Modeling Software Modeling TechniquesģD modeling is a large part of the full 3d animation pipeline. You can simply use your 3d modeling and animation program to build simple objects, animate them, and export to a package such as After Affects for editing, compositing and final output. You do not necessarily need to use specific previsualization software (although they do exist, such as Toon Boom Storyboard Pro, Moviestorm, Boords). It can be a storyboard, which can be drawn on paper or in Photoshop or Illustrator, and it can be an animatic, which is a simplified animation to block out the camera moves and shots. Previsualization can have a few different forms. Let’s get into the software tools that may fall under the umbrella of 3d animation. If you do your animations on your own, you may have to do all these tasks yourself. Depending on how large the company is, you may wear multiple hats. When people say 3d animation software, they are usually referring to the entire process which involves 3d modeling, texturing, lighting, rigging, animation, and rendering. This is a general term for the process of creating animated movies. Now lets break down the commonly used term “3d animation”. There are some extra tools you may need for this type of 3d animation but more about that later. This means that you can use many of the same tools created for 3d animation. Let’s get into what these software packages are, what each one brings to the pipeline and how they compare.įirst let’s realize that “medical 3d animation” is a subset of “general 3d animation”. In some cases this is a requirement, and in other cases its just makes sense to make the workflow faster and easier.

In fact, for each of my animations I use several pieces of software, depending on the animation. Having studied in school and used for work 3D animation programs such as Maya and 3DS Max, and a number of other programs to create medical 3D animations over the years, I can honestly say that this is not a simple question to answer. The best software for medical 3D animation is…not so fast.

Software maya