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How to get great Animations
for Multimedia in Advertising

You have a product or service and you want to make money. Multimedia lets you attract attention and stand out from the pack. How do you stand out? 3D animation in a Product Presentation is a great way to catch the eye, explain details, and communicate how your product solves the customer's problem.

Professional Product Presentations

A Product Presentation needs professional treatment. Not still images sliding across the page, not amateur voice recordings. A presentation must impress at the same time it clearly explains your message. Combine animated models, professional voice overs, subtle special effects, and smooth delivery into a clear, impressive statement of your products value to the viewer.

Communication

To get that presentation made at reasonable cost and on a deadline, both you and the animator need to communicate clearly in writing. Up front, you will sign off on a description of the job and that will become the holy grail that you both seek over a period of days or weeks. That job description is written by the animator, but based on what he/she understands from your description. Given that the description is detailed, you should see every important detail of the project called out. If something is not in the description or is different from your expectations, it is likely the animator did not understand and this is how you both are assured that the final description is exactly what you, the client, intends and wants. Only when you see the details as understood by the animator will you know for sure you have communicated what you intended.

Changes

That description is the best picture of what the project should deliver and serves as a reference for any changes to the project after the start date. You should understand the cost of changes – either by the hour or by fixed cost. That should be a part of the project agreement up front.

Feedback and Drafts

Once you have a project defined, it takes time to implement and along the way you should expect to see drafts of pieces or segments for approval. These are important because when you approve them the animator will assume that the quality, timing, colors, etc are acceptable unless something is clearly stated as 'unfinished' or not yet ready for review. Again, written feedback is wonderful because the animator can refer back and check his/her memory. If in doubt, always ask for clear directions of what aspects of the animation are up for review and which are unfinished.

CAD Models

You have to deliver to the animator enough information, data, drawings, logos, etc. for that person to accurately reproduce the 3d models of your product and to combine them in the product presentation. If the product is a physical device and you have already paid someone to design it in a CAD software program like Autocad, then it behooves you to reuse that 3d CAD model in the animation. Most animators can import the Solidworks or Autocad file and convert it to a file format that works in most 3d animation software. They are not the same and it is important that you determine the animator can import your CAD model before the project starts. Otherwise, the animator must recreate the product over a period of hours or days and, depending on the detail, may not get all the details just right by looking at still photos of the product. If you have the CAD model, definitly use it. The animator still has to import it, clean it up, fix any imperfections introduced by the import and then color or texture the model to look real. But at least the size, proportions and hundreds of details will be exactly like your original product goal.