Wow, making 2D look like 3D. I think this is pretty impressive!

[mmmaarten]

Hi,

It's an older video and I don't have Netflix so I've never seen the film Klaus, but for people who didn't see this 'making of' video yet; I think this is still, three years after that making of video, pretty impressive.
Bottom line; they let the computer do educated guesses on where the lights and shadows should go on their 2d characters and even found a way to do non-flat/3d texturing on 2d characters. Sounds like a real fun workflow, especially now that they could combine that with 3d worlds and objects. I'd say that's best of two worlds' workflows!

[hayasidist]

a longer discussion on this (from 2020) is here: viewtopic.php?t=33459

[mmmaarten]

a longer discussion on this (from 2020) is here: viewtopic.php?t=33459

Interesting. Thanks for posting.
Just skimmed a bit through it already now and watched one of the videos in there about the process they had to shade, but damn... it's way more manual work than I expected by seeing the video I posted. marketed great, but reality was clearly waaaaay more work. Love it that they put so much quality into it though. Looks superb! So much better than the original vector graphics

[Greenlaw]

...but damn... it's way more manual work than I expected by seeing the video I posted. marketed great, but reality was clearly waaaaay more work.

Klaus's director visited our studio when the movie premiered and talked about the techniques. Their tracking and interpolation methods were not fully automated but the result was definitely more stable and less work intensive than it could have been if it was a fully manual process. They also combined 2D and 3D techniques where appropriate, the criteria being that everything is cool as long as it looks consistent and integrated. Again, not as easy as it sounds but still much easier than if everything had to be completely handrawn. This kind of flexibility meant a lot of cross-training for traditional and digital artists, and in the end, everyone benefitted.

Animation is always hard work because once artists get a new 'shortcut', we immediately raise the standards.

[slowtiger]

You can do that sort of stuff if you have that sort of a budget ...