Does it cost that much money to render frames in these animated shows?

Casually Hardcore · April 2019

I first notice it with Dragon Prince Season 1, cause that frame rate is really jarring, but then I started to notice it in many shows that is 3D animated. Ultraman goes from being a slideshow to being super smooth and back. It's really distracting, and I wonder if there is some kind of artistic thing I'm missing or if this is a way to save money.

Platy · April 2019

Probably also a way to save time when you have limited hardware available

Hobnail · April 2019

I do it

BahamutZERO · April 2019

that's an interesting question!
I have no idea!

Norgoth · April 2019

Not sure if it’s true or not but I remeber reading that these kinda stuttery CGI shows are filmed at the same FPS as animated shows, 24fps but we’ere used to seeing computer stuff at like 30fps+

BahamutZERO · April 2019

2D animation is often also actually drawn on 2s, essentially at 12 FPS

WeedLordVegeta · April 2019

It's a time thing, Netflix shows operate on a wildly accelerated calendar

These shows are often several season ahead on storyboards by the time season one airs

Ringo · April 2019

I find the art in SheRa to be distractingly simplistic

If the rest of the show wasn't as great as it is it would definitely deter me from watching

rhylith · April 2019

Norgoth wrote: »

Not sure if it’s true or not but I remeber reading that these kinda stuttery CGI shows are filmed at the same FPS as animated shows, 24fps but we’ere used to seeing computer stuff at like 30fps+

Only video games are at frame rates above 24.

The only two modern theatrically released films to try 48 FPS have been The Hobbit and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and the high frame rate has been largely panned by both critics and audiences because it makes everything look fake.

Tonkka · April 2019

Yes, it takes time to render more frames, even if it is for a CG show.

BahamutZERO · April 2019

eh it's not like the 90s where you took days to render a pixar-quality scene. I'm reading an anecdotal account that it took them about 4 hours to render each frame of toy story 1 in 1995, and it took them 2-4 minutes for each frame when they re-rendered it in 2011 for a rerelease.

Interestingly they also say toy story 2 was much harder to render than TS1 and took 20-30 minutes per frame on 2011 hardware.

Rorshach Kringle · April 2019

why? you offering to pay?

Tonkka · April 2019

I mean, this is part of why anime is so prevalent, and you see more western animation teams taking to the same style, as having to only draw/render every 3 frames instead of every 2 frames is faster and cheaper. Different scenes also depend on what "team" is working on specific scenes. More important and action based scenes will have far more attention paid to them, and will take resources from other more static and less important scenes. One big scene may have far more storyboards and senior animators involved, while others are laid out vaguely and mostly dialogue from the script and left to the new animators/interns.

That's my understanding, at least.

BahamutZERO · April 2019

Is anime mostly drawn on threes? That's the first I've heard of it. Anime definitely didn't invent spending most of the effort and budget on a few key scenes or action sequences though, look at Scooby Doo or other TV cartoons from that era.

Tonkka · April 2019

Yeah, that's why anime looks so different from shows like Scooby-Doo and animated US shows. I wasn't actually applying that scene focus on anime specifically, just overall in animation and film as well. Like second unit directors filming scenes in movies while the Director focuses on other more important scenes.

BahamutZERO · April 2019

I think it's still mainly the art style that makes it look different, though

Veldrin · April 2019

Low frame CG shows often look stilted and stuttery partly because they don’t utilize stretch, squash and smear frames that traditional animation does to give the illusion of more fluid movement.

Though I’ve noticed it is becoming a bit better lately. Season 2 of The Dragon Prince definitely made good use of it a lot more often and the frame rate was much less obvious than s1.

CidTheSquid · April 2019

Delurking because I know the answer! I'm a feature anim professional who is loosely aware of how modern tv prod works.

The answer is yes, but for fundamentally different reasons between CG (whether it's 3D or 2D) and hand (ish) drawn.

Starting with 3d (and many 2D), every frame costs both the time of character animators and computational render time, at a minimum. On a recent feature, we had some sequences where some frames could take multiple hours to render. This is largely because in CG, our appetite for rich visuals has only increased with time; the joke in R&D is that we're trying to keep up with the artistic appetite and that any optimization we implement will just increase visual fidelity.

Additional visual effects, such as fx, character fx, and complex lighting setups only add to both the human resource cost and the render/sim costs.

In 2D, additional frames are often cheaper... With a few catches. The first is that budgets for these shows are incredibly shoe-string compared to feature. If they're heavily cg and 2D, it may not take much time to render on the sort of machines feature might use - but they most likely haven't been given budget to buy and maintain those machines. The other half is all 2D involves some degree of hand-drawn anim of individual frames, even if it's on a wacom. Your cost per frame is definitely measurable, which means it's noticeable to producers looking to cut costs.

Another nuance that applies to both - the cost of iterations and redos. There are often errors, whether it be through rendering, hand drawn mistakes, or data corruption. These issues have to be caught during review sessions, and while tv is much faster paced and less perfectionist than TV, the cost of having to fix issues that can't squeek by can dramatically increase cost per frame.

This is an ultra abbreviated breakdown - there's a lot more that goes into it, but essentially it's all about the money.

Now back to lurking and writing absurd optimizations in an attempt to get a big sequel to fit in under it's render budget. (I'm trying to get a process that can be 10-20 minutes per frame down to under 5)

Casually Hardcore · April 2019

Well, now I know.

Though I wonder why Nickelodeon gave what appears to be endless amount of money towards Avatar (I'm assuming based on just how amazing that show looked) and Netflix gave what appears to be a pittance for Dragon Prince.