Where does the computer animation industry go: how graphics changed and why is it a big deal (part 1)

The computer graphics industry has changed a lot recently. It’s not just about the animation and the image any more; it is about how to create and use graphics in a way that helps people get things done without taking too much of their time. Although it is not always entirely helpful to them.

Graphic design software is now being used for situations where you wouldn’t expect it: for example, graphic designers are creating 3D models with Photoshop or using Maya to build interactive websites.

This new way of using graphic design software has created an explosion of new opportunities for animators and graphic designers alike. Plus, think about the impact of AI: endless new ways of image-making are ready to emerge exponentially. This article will explore how the computer graphics industry has evolved over time, and the impact this evolution has had on animators’ jobs.

We will take a look at all the reasons graphics is changing, and explore what to expect in the future.

Are you on board? 

How did it all start?

Let’s get back in time a little bit. Computer graphics have been around since the early days of film, but they didn’t really become important until after World War II when computers were developed. By the 1990s, most films were entirely made in digital form.

Today, almost all films are made digitally; only very old films are still shot on film (and even then they’re usually digitally transferred). A big change in computer graphics came with the introduction of 3D software like Autodesk Maya and Adobe After Effects.

When these programs first came out, there was no way for animators to create digital models or animations without them — and now there are many other types of digital modeling software available as well. Again, AI makes everything different, but we’ll get there later. 

wanna see me do it again? ⚡️ https://t.co/HMQq53GyeK pic.twitter.com/dXaWaUEztV

— Adobe (@Adobe) January 23, 2023

When these programs first came out, they were incredibly expensive—but now anyone can download them for free from the internet! This has made it easier than ever before for people without much experience or training to create professional-looking animations at home.

In addition, improvements in technology have made it easier for animators to collaborate on projects, which has led to more creative freedom for artists who want to break out of their comfort zone and try something new. The ability to collaborate also means that we’re working in real-time, rather than having to wait months for feedback from other animators or editors who may be located around the world. 

We can share ideas instantly, which makes it easier for everyone involved to contribute while still respecting each other’s work styles and processes.

Visual hybridity

According to some theories, the main shift – first in visual language, then, on the screens – happened when people created so-called visual hybridity. Understanding this term isn’t hard, right?

“Within about five years, modern visual culture was fundamentally transformed. Previously separate media – live action cinematography, graphics, still photography, animation, 3D computer animation, and typography – started to be combined in numerous ways. By the end of the decade, the “pure” moving image media became an exception and hybrid media the norm. However, in contrast to other computer revolutions such as the rise of World Wide Web around the same time, this revolution was not acknowledged by popular media or by cultural critics.

What received attention were the developments that affected narrative filmmaking – the use of computer-produced special effects in Hollywood feature films or the inexpensive digital video and editing tools outside of it. But another process that happened on a larger scale – the transformation of the visual language used by all forms of moving images outside of narrative films – has not been critically analyzed. In fact, while the results of these transformations have become fully visible by about 1998, at the time of this writing (early 2006) I am not aware of a single theoretical article discussing them.

One of the reasons is that in this revolution, no new media per se were created. Just as ten years ago, designers were making still images and moving images. But the aesthetics of these images was now very different. In fact, it was so new that, in retrospect, the post-modern imagery of just ten years ago that at the time looked strikingly different, now appears as a barely noticeable blip on the radar of cultural history.” 

Lev Manovich, Deep Remixability

This is reflecting the state of visual development these days: mixing images and approaches to get better ones. Visual hybridity is what we saw at the very beginning of the emergence of visual tools like AutoDesk Maya, and what we see today due to the thriving of AI.

Improved tech background

Recently, Mac has presented improvements to chips – basically by presenting the new ones, announced in June. This is a clear example of how the graphic is changing due to a piece of better equipment. 

What can these chips do? Effects rendering in Cinema 4D is up to 6x faster1 than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro and up to 30 percent faster than the previous generation. M2 Pro features 40 billion transistors, 200GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, and up to 32GB of fast, low-latency unified memory. Color grading in DaVinci Resolve is up to 2x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro and up to 30 percent faster than the previous generation.

The development of chips and computers has affected not only the quality of the image and their photorealistic looks but the requirements to the animation studios and animators. When the tools are developing, you have to grow, too.

The impact on computer graphics of AI

So, finally, we are here. AI, of course, is the main influencer not only on the way graphics changed, but basically every single process we are observing today. Here’s a recent product of Microsoft that explains itself in the following way:

“The model is trained to generate 3D digital avatars represented as neural radiance fields. We build on the state-of-the-art generative technique (diffusion models) for 3D modeling. We use tri-plane representation to factorize the neural radiance field of avatars, which can be explicitly modeled by diffusion models and rendered to images via volumetric rendering.

The proposed 3D-aware convolution brings the much-needed computational efficiency while preserving the integrity of diffusion modeling in 3D. The whole generation is a hierarchical process with cascaded diffusion models for multi-scale modeling. Once the generative model is trained, one can control the avatar generation based on the latent code derived from either an input image, text prompt or random noise.”

One of the main reasons why computer graphics industries have evolved is that with the rise of VR, AR and MR, graphics have become much more immersive and engaging. You can now do things with graphics and visual content that you couldn’t do before.

You can create virtual worlds that people can explore and interact with, or you can create computer animations that let people experience something as if it was real life. You can control many aspects of virtual reality and computer animations, making them as realistic as possible.

Computer graphics have also changed, as many new graphics have been created that weren’t there before. New types of graphics help to create new and interesting visuals, and new ways of creating graphics mean designers and creatives have more creative freedom. AI has transformed what used to be an expensive and time-consuming process into something that can be done by anyone with an internet connection.

With AI, the job of animators became easier – as a loyal team member, AI can do something technical and not creative much faster than we would do. However, addressing the question of replacing animation studios with AI – no, it can’t. We have been mulling over this question in one of our previous articles, check it out.

The more companies like Google, Meta, and Apple work with image-making technologies, the more we get changes in computer graphics and standards of visuals. For example, Shutterstock in the last few years has purchased the 3D rendering stock agency TurboSquid, a platform PicMonkey, and the stock agency Pond5.

“With its industry-leading library of high-quality content, its focus on bringing new creative offerings to market, and its expertise in creating a scaled ecosystem that compensates and connects contributors to creators, Shutterstock is the ideal partner for industry leaders investing in creating new experiences powered by AI,” the company says.

“By tapping into Shutterstock’s collection of millions of images, videos, and music, Meta plans to use these datasets to develop, train and evaluate its machine learning capabilities.”

Meanwhile, Microsoft has invested more than 10 million dollars in Open AI, developing new tools for graphics and image generation. 

We are happy to announce the next phase of our partnership with Microsoft: https://t.co/mqx3ZJNGfL

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 23, 2023

How does it affect animators?

So, AI is a competitor now, according to many people. But we see it kind of differently. The team of animators now has to follow all the changes more strictly, to create more up-to-date results instead of delivering works that won’t fit new graphic possibilities. It leads to several scenarios: either you have to push your animation studio in growing or find new team members that already possess the understanding of the new tools.

For example, there are new professions like a designer of interactive media that has to work with TouchDesigner, Arduino, Cinema 4D, After Effects, and MadMapper. Curious, huh?

On the other hand, animators have more possibilities for expressing themselves and the capabilities of making videos gaudier. Now, asking an animation studio to create a video, you’ll have more options in terms of visuals. However, the script writing, for instance, hasn’t changed much. It leads us to another point. The outcome of animators’ works has changed, and its variety is extreme. But the internal process of animation creation has altered only a little bit.

Conclusion

Two main reasons the graphic is changing are easy to follow: it is new, more powerful production of chips and AI influence on a variety of visuals, including the emergence of the new ones. In this article we tried to look from a bird view on the industry, and have emphasized only vital reasons.

All of this makes us understand that neural networks from being only-for-geeks-to-use have become — or about to become — an everyday tool animators use in their works. 

In the next part, we’ll take a more in-depth look at certain areas of computer animation graphics and how it changed. Keep up with us, and if you have any questions, don’t forget that we have a bunch of space under the article – write down everything you think in the comments. That’s it!