2.5 D?

I've heard of that too. Don't really know myself, but having a stab i'd say it's a 2D production that utilises certain 3D techniques too. Or perhaps a 3D production that has been less rendered etc to have a more 2D appearance. Or perhaps it's some people's way of saying 'digital animation' (2D animation done on a computer)...

Haha, that narrows it down :rolleyes: -- and those could still be off mark!

It's a term been given to the composition of 2D and 3D elements within the same scene. For example 2D animated characters against a 3D rendered background.

Another example would be flat, 2D planes with textures of 2D animated characters composited in a 3D program for complex scenes that would be too difficult with a 2D compositing program. An example of that could be a crowd scene where the camera pulls through the crowd. Even though the characters are flat, they're arranged in 3D space so as the camera passes through them there's enough perspective change to give you the feeling of everything being 3D enough.

It's not completely 3D, it's not traditional 2D either, but rather a marriage somewhere between the two.

When Dreamworks was still doing hand-drawn animation , films such as "Spirit" and "Sinbad" were described in press materials as being "Tradigital" animation, a fusion of hand-drawn character animation with CG elements which placed a greater emphasis on cinematography and effects , such as one might typically see in a live-action film. The same sort of thing was being done at Disney on films like "Treasure Planet" (and in subtler ways on films that mostly feel hand-drawn like "Lilo & Stitch" , but actually have quite a bit of CG elements combined with the hand-drawn character animation.) This "tradigital" approach (traditional animation + digital effects) might also be called "2.5 D" .

I've seen the term 2.5D used by a great Canadian animation studio, Copernicus Animation . They use a variety of fusion techniques to combine traditional hand-drawn animation with Flash , After Effects and other software programs. Copernicus's web site says :
[I]
"Our specialty is 2.5D, a fusion of traditional cinematic values and today's latest technologies. We apply 3D lights to each character individually , use depth of field, motion blur, shadowing, and multi-layer compositing in order to achieve the Copernicus cinematographic look we call 2.5D"

[/I]One of the owners of Copernicus , Murray Bain, has a blog where he sometimes discusses their techniques : Murray Bain Blog .

Definitely check out the music video they did for the Jimmy Swift Band CD "Turnaround" :

Copernicus animated music video for Jimmy Swift Band

Director Brad Cayford discusses the "2.5D" techniques they use in an interview on Cold Hard Flash :

Brad Cayford Interview on Cold Hard Flash

Although I haven't seen the term "2.5D" applied to the work of Grey Kid Studio , I think their approach has the same kind of things Copernicus is talking about (lighting , depth of field, motion blur, shadowing , multi-layer compositing) . Check out this article about some of the techniques Grey Kid uses for their "2.5D" animation :
[URL=http://www.2-4-2.co.uk/projects/giss/articles/index.php?aid=619200601]
Grey Kid Production Notes - Gone in 60 Seconds[/URL]

Of course , it seems to me that around 1937 to 1941 the Disney studio was using every trick in the book , including lighting , depth of field, motion blur, shadowing , multi-layer compositing to achieve a "2.5D" look in such films as Snow White, Pinocchio , Fantasia, Bambi , so maybe it's not such a new idea ? Later on it got too expensive to do all this fancy rendering on top of the cels and shooting a lot of scenes with multi-plane camera, so the later Disney features , while quite elaborate , tended to have less of an emphasis on 3D lighting and shadows , eventually going almost entirely "flat" , emphasizing the graphic line work in films like Sleeping Beauty , The One Hundred and One Dalmatians , and The Sword in the Stone, among others.

I've seen the term applied to Disney's digital background technique called Deep Canvas. It's a software method of creating backgrounds that fuse traditional painting technique with 3d models, giving them a painterly edge.

I've also seen this term applied to 3D sculpting tools such as Zbrush and Mudbox.

While most of your posts are generally correct, I'd say that it's more commonly referred to the 3D compositing of 2D elements. Many times documentaries will use this technique to give some "life" or "depth" to an image. You can take a photograph, cut it up into layers, and stack those in a 3D compositor at different depths. Then, if you "push into" the image using a 3D camera in the compositor, the previously "still" image seems to have depth.

See The Kid Stays in the Picture for some great examples.

- Jason

I seem to recall the term being used in reference to some background work in "Mulan". Backgrounds like the Great Wall were painted flat, and then those paintings were mapped onto polygon "ribbons" which were then manipulated to create depth. It gave the illusion of a 3D wall approaching the camera in z-depth without the modeling and texturing requirements that normally would be necessary.

While most of your posts are generally correct, I'd say that it's more commonly referred to the 3D compositing of 2D elements.

If this is directed to me, I agree with you that it's more commonly referred to the 3D compositing of 2D elements, I was merely stating that

I've ALSO seen this term applied to 3D sculpting tools such as Zbrush and Mudbox.

Which is a correct statement and just adds to the overall disscussion of this subject.

Here is another explanation of what "2.5d" is. In flash, it is moving the symbols of a character in perspective to give the illusion that things are moving in a 3D sphere when they are still only in 2d.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/design_character_05.html

Here is a quote from the page: (Author Chris Georgenes)

In this lesson, I'm going to reveal a truly killer Flash animation technique that will actually create what some consider a convincing 3D effect. The cool thing is you never leave the Flash environment; you remain in the 2D realm. You are now in a dimensional limbo. If it's still 2D but looks like 3D, then what exactly is it?

Welcome to the world of 2.5D animation.

Yup, 2.5D animation. I made that name up. I don't claim to have invented this technique but so far the name, two-and-a-half D, may be mine.

Chris, of course, is mistaken, but I'm looking forward to reading the tute.

I'm not sure if this term is used in-house at Toon Boom, but Toon Boom allows the animator to set up 2D objects in 3D space, then move the camera through the set. The camera, of course, can only point in one direction--it can't pan or tilt, but it can go up/down, left/right, for/aft.

Just a thought.

I remember Chris talking about "his" 2.5 D approach at a Flashforward conference a few years ago. I don't know that I'd heard the phrase before, but I had also already done stuff in Flash that simulated 3D and I thought, "yeah, that's kind of clever--that describes it". Maybe I'd thought of the phrase too, but forgotten it.

You'd probably have to do a lot of research to discover who coined the phrase first, (and what they meant when they thought of it) but you're probably going to find a lot of people that think they originated it. It's just one of those things floating in "Idea Space" that a lot of people were bound to think of simultaneously.

I never thought it was one of those "Wow! I wish I'd thought of that first!" kind of things. I just thought it was sort of clever. I also thought it could be applied generically to any number of approaches. Until the World 2.5D Consortium convenes to hammer out the specifics, it's probably going to used to describe a variety of techniques.

I dunno about you, but isn't a head allowed to be turned in 2D format without it being described as 3D?!

Yeah, it looks clever what has been done there with flash symbols, but 2D doesn't mean SNES Mario 2D platforms - so i wouldn't describe that as 2.5D. Dunno about you guys...

2 + 3 = 5
5 ٪ 2 = 2.5
The first time I heard the term was over a decade ago when PDI did a Coke commercial for Japan that had anime like CG characters that were toon shaded.
I think any technique that is a combination can be said to be 2.5 D.

...Or even the illusion of 3d by a 2d program like Mr. Georgenes' example.
It's just a catch-all term, folks.

Yeah, everybody's descriptions have been correct. It is a general term just for the combination of 2D and 3D.

This merging of 2D and 3D sounds like an advance course so I hope that the schools have it or will have it soon. These post are great and I will looking up all the information provided.

No it's not necessarily advanced. It can be just a matter of compositing techniques which just depends on what software you use really. The compositing module for RETAS for instance has a 3D camera which can allow for some pretty convincing 3D-like camera moves. As long as schools don't completely separate 2D and 3D courses from each other then there has to be some level of the two combined. At least I would think.

not sure if this has much relevance, but that term is thrown around quite a big in regard to videogames, such as Paper Mario:

Yep, like everyone has said, its just combining both 2D and 3D techniques, but I think the term's use is pretty varied.

Yep, like everyone has said, its just combining both 2D and 3D techniques, but I think the term's use is pretty varied.

hmm if thats the case would movies say like "titan AE" be considered 2.5 animation?

I've never seen it myself, but Disney's Treasure Planet would also be a good example of this. It uses an updated and expanded 'Deep Canavs' process (which, by the way, i would love to get my hands on!! Anyone pick the software up after the Disney turnout :D ...)

I think examples like Titan AE were never termed 2.5d, but rather just referred to as a "hybrid" or combination of 2d and 3d animation.

My understanding is that 2.5D is basically the creation of a 3D effect using 2D elements, not necessarily the combination of 2D and 3D elements. I think "hybrid" is a more accurate term to describe the combination process.

I first heard the term during the audio commentary for Disney's Mulan where they explained how they created the establishing shots of the Great Wall. By placing two-dimensional, hand-painted overlays into a three-dimensional space, they were able to move the camera over them and create a sense of depth that couldn't be achieved with a classic multiplane shot.

Just a curious newb question, but how did they implement 2.5D? Was a camera sequence for a 3D BG run with the characters layered on top? If so, was this in Maya, Premier? Or a specially written application?

Every shot in an animated feature has many layers of compositing in it. As to the application, not sure but it might have been one of the "usual suspects", such as After Effects.