need advice on animating uninteresting product.

[WKSouthwest]

Hello everyone,

I'm hoping i can get advice from people who are more creative than i am. i am more of a graphical designer than 3d, but accepted the responsibility of keyshot. i mostly do still animation for our marketing material. but need to start focusing on animations more as well.

We serve the mining and industrial industry, so most of our products are solid structures or attachments. in other worse, there isnt much wiggle room for animation creativity.. or maybe i am wrong and there is.


Ive attached some test renders, let me know what you think. with the red and green bucket, i can animate the smaller attachments on it as a fade animation or it sliding into frame onto the bucket as animation.. but thats about it.

Thank you in advance!

Waldo

[Esben Oxholm]

Hi WKSouthwest.

I would take a step back and consider what the purpose of the animations are.
Do you want to show specific functions? Do you want to show the product in an objective and neutral way? Do you want to create excitement?
Having an idea of the end goal and what know what job the final animations need to do will help you give some ideas of what should happen.

When you know the purpose go to youtube and search for animations that do what you would like to achieve. Look at the camera angels, camera movement, timing, music, lighting, etc. and use that as a guideline for your animation.

Hope it helps a bit

[WKSouthwest]

Hi Esben,

Thank you for taking the time to reply, i appreciate it!

We don't do too much of showcasing our models online. We would mostly use it for presentations and to email documents to clients with our engineering and manufacturing recommendation.

So what ive done in the past is animate parts onto the model, telling about the type of material, grade, engineering specs, and highlighting certain parts to explain downsizing, weight reduction, shrinkage and expansion.


The main end goal for these animations would have to be showcasing features of our own engineered products vs OEM (original equipment manufacturer). Showing off the benefits, and also have an attention to (referring to the green and red bucket) those bars and small attachments on the buckets.


But any type of animation ideas you have that you can share would be great.. i'm just tired of the turntable effect, dont use that anymore, too boring in my opinion.


Kind regards,

Waldo Kriel

[MisterNeil]

Hello WKSouthwest,

I suggest if you have a marketing or sales team, perhaps you can ask for their input on what are the product(s) key items that should be communicated in the animations. Afterwards, sketch a storyboard first on paper (and revise if necessary), before creating any 3D renderings. By doing so, you'll have a better idea on your vision for the project and be able to discuss with your colleagues soon afterwards.

It will take time, but the research and planning stages are just as important as creating the animations as well. BTW, before I make my presentation using hi-res 3D animations, I instead save low-res previews in KeyShot using the Preview feature on the Animation timeline. It renders fairly quickly and you can save a video file that can be shared.

Good-luck!

Neil

[mattjgerard]

In order to get ideas, I would spend hours on Vimeo and Youtube searching for product videos. That way I could get ideas of how to highlight, move and animate different parts of products, how to spin, ease in/out, color and other tricks to make my animations more interesting. Lots of stuff out there, just have to dedicate some research time to go watch and take loads of screen grabs for reference. There was a string of electric shaver videos that really caught my eye a while back. These guided the start of my styling into a larger series of videos I did for a major client I had years back. Take bits and pieces and create some ideas for your own. And post back we would enjoy seeing your progress and give more advice!

https://vimeo.com/178318793