{"id":3735,"date":"2021-11-02T07:37:55","date_gmt":"2021-11-02T13:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinityanimation.com\/blog\/?p=3735"},"modified":"2024-06-10T15:44:57","modified_gmt":"2024-06-10T21:44:57","slug":"trinity-animation-inc-a-midwest-3d-animation-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinityanimation.com\/blog\/trinity-animation-inc-a-midwest-3d-animation-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Trinity Animation, Inc. – A Midwest 3D Animation Company"},"content":{"rendered":"

27 Years of Animation Experience<\/span><\/h2>\n

I was a hobbyist first. I spent a lot of time learning watercolor during high school and then\u00a0airbrush in college, to see how close I could get to a photorealistic image. Some of my early paintings were like early 3D renderings – spheres and tubes,\u00a0planes and grids, shiny chrome and glass, bright colors. But I always focused on photo-realism.<\/span><\/p>\n

At that time, computer imagery was making some interesting things but most of it seemed pixelated and unattractive, except for fractal art – images based on math, like the “Mandelbrot.<\/a><\/span>“<\/span><\/p>\n

\"ImageMy revelation about computers and photorealism came about as I was exploring shareware or free software licenses. Local “BBS’ systems would allow you to dial in and download various shared applications, including fractal art materials.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the early 90s, the industry was finding its place, and technology was evolving fast. I didn’t know what I had when I got the VIVID Raytracer<\/a><\/span> by Stephen Coy. It seemed to\u00a0lock up my 286 processor. Finally, I decided it might be slow to calculate so I let it run all weekend. On Monday it had been completed! Well, something was completed. I couldn’t view it, because graphics cards could only display 256 colors at the time. So after running the image convertor, there it was: a set of X\/Y\/Z axes. But! Made of chrome and casting shadows and inter-reflecting! Wow, this was amazing. Everything changed\u00a0that day. I could see a convergence of creativity and computers and all kinds of commercial possibilities. So I started learning to make my own scenes and render them out.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Typical,
Typical early raytracing image – this one using POVray.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Around that same time, Autodesk started selling a commercial 3D animation tool called 3D Studio. It was a scanline renderer – too ugly for my taste – but it allowed complex animation. During the next few years, I explored all I could get. In 1993, not long after getting married, I made a second proposal to my wife – that I start my own 3D animation business.<\/span><\/p>\n

I worked hard to make it viable so I wouldn’t have to go back to Engineering. I had some lucky breaks with local companies like Marketing Resources (now The frank Agency<\/a><\/span>) and Butler Manufacturing<\/a><\/span>, creating custom animation with my own copy of 3D Studio. I hired my first employees and got a big break when a business friend asked if we could work on some shots for a major movie called “Starship Troopers.<\/em>“<\/span><\/p>\n

Our first couple of years we officed in the lower level of my house in Lee’s Summit, MO. Soon\u00a0<\/span>I realized that we really needed to have a proper office for employees to come work. We leased space in 1996 at the Bayberry Business Center in Lee’s Summit. We grew bigger there and they accommodated us with 4 progressively larger offices – the last one over 3,000 square feet. Finally, in 2019 we were ready for a major change and moved to the beautiful high-rise in\u00a0Overland Park’s Corporate Woods office park.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Modern 3D Animation Studio<\/span><\/h2>\n

Creating visual effects for a major Hollywood Motion Picture (TriStar\/Sony Pictures) was a major step up for Trinity Animation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our collaboration with Peter Kuran at VCE<\/a><\/span> (VCE is Kuran’s very successful visual effects house where he had worked with Director Paul Verhoven before on Robocop<\/em>) on other projects, convinced Kuran that Trinity Animation would be able to deliver on a few scenes he needed assistance with. His role as intermediary helped us learn on the job and to do things right – we owe a major debt of gratitude to him.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, we started this work, we made the switch to the 3ds Max<\/a><\/span> platform – the same one we use to this day. It was a completely different architecture and also was at version 1.0 so it had few extensions and fine-tuning. But we were able to get the shots completed and enjoy the glamour of our association with a cult-classic film.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the years following Starship Troopers<\/em>, the studio and the animators would shift to different tools and workflows, and different types of clients and deliverables, all\u00a0while consistently serving our clients’ needs and delivering great work on time and on budget. Our company’s North Star is always to serve our clients and create their visuals as best we can. Everything else flows from that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once a studio has more than a few animators working together, it becomes necessary to set up standards, protocols, and other business practices to avoid growing chaos. For example, if everyone uses a different style of naming their files, like “movie-final-final-02-final.mp4” (among other similarly named files) it can make your staff seriously frustrated when that artist is out on holiday and we’re trying to find the final movie for a customer. So we worked through those growing pains in our first decade, and at the same time grew our infrastructure and invested in our own render farm.<\/span><\/p>\n

A render farm is a collection of connected computers that are used to crunch images. A one-minute movie has 1800 frames, and each frame may take a few minutes to a few hours to compute at full quality! To complete the animation in a reasonable time, a studio would need to either outsource this to a commercial render farm, trusting that it is given priority and the images will compute correctly, or, get a bunch of computers and do it in-house. Trinity Animation has always done its rendering in-house. So every year we buy some new ones and sell some old ones, and we usually house\u00a040 to 50 of the most powerful CPU workstations available. With our own farm, we can be sure of getting our jobs done right and on time – a real stress relief in fulfilling our promises to our customers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Servicing a Growing 3D Modeling Industry<\/span><\/h2>\n

With my background in engineering, technical and architectural animation projects were our first specialty and continue to be a focus for the company. We are uniquely positioned to understand and accurately carry out visualizations where we are promising the viewer that what they are seeing is really close to what will be created. In the early days, we had a number of “how it works” animations including Caterpillar engines and triple-pane windows. Later, we worked on the Branson Airport and Greg Norman golf courses in Australia.<\/span><\/p>\n

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